Reflections

Most of the comments I've been providing on films this week have been written fairly quickly -- I've liked "x" for these reasons; didn't care for "y" because ...

Yesterday I saw a film called "Yes Madam Sir" which defies easy categorization.

The film is a documentary on Kiran Bedi, shot by a first-time film-maker (Margaret Doneman) from Australia.

Bedi is notorious in her native India. The first female police officer in Delhi, she has accomplished much in the face of an openly obstructive police, legal and legislative bureaucracy. She has been denied promotions, been given "suicide mission" assignments and, through it all has succeeded beyond all reasonable expectation.

In some respects, this is a "triumph over adversity" doc where the film-maker has been given extra-ordinary access to Bedi's public and private life. It's inspirational, shot from the point-of-view of someone prepared to fight the status quo.

And yet...

While the film itself is well put-together, blending interviews, news segments and footage of Bedi at work, it's her character that raised questions for me.

In a world that is positioned somewhere between the past of feudal or colonial India and a modern, democratic state (or, at least, a state in transition to a fully democratic system), she added a further dimension of using the media to illuminate the things others tried to keep hidden. In doing so, she has created a public persona that seems to exist, if not in opposition, but in a somewhat uncomfortable relationship with the things she is trying to achieve.

One of the principal interview subjects is her daughter Saina, who frequently refers to her as the persona "Kiran Bedi", rather than as her mother. That separation between the public and personal worlds comes up several times.

If there's a fault in the documentary, it focuses so much on the public persona that any kind of objective analysis of the impact of the changes she wrought are not addressed. What remains is a slight tone of bitterness in that there is a repeated cycle of "Kiran Bedi went to 'x' and made the following changes. After a time, she was transferred/dumped/left and her successor proceeded to unravel all the things she'd done". We have to take it on faith that this was a bad thing.

As a first-time film director, Doneman may have made the mistake of getting too close to her subject and losing the benefit of distance.

Following the screening, Ms Bedi emerged with the director and participated in the Q&A. That same tone of bitterness persisted. She talked about being passed over as the Delhi Police Commissioner, a position she felt was rightly hers. Ironically, her sense of entitlement was a reflection of the same status quo that the documentary had tried to challenge over the previous 90 minutes.

Bedi has an international reputation, so I suspect that this film will find a distributor, if only for viewing on Newsworld, TVO or the Documentary Channel.
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