Under Construction Directed by Rubaiyat Hossain
Under Construction
Directed by Rubaiyat Hossain
Starrings: Shahana Goswami, Rahul Bose, Shohel Mondol, Mita Rahman
Country: Bangladesh
Year: 2015
Review Author: Roberto Matteucci
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"My daughter's son lives in London and eats pork."
Since 1996, Bangladesh’s gross domestic product has grown by about 6% per year, despite the unstable political situation, corruption, and the lack of infrastructure. The most important industry is that of textiles, alone is 80% of exports.
Among the uncertainties, there is terrorism, which has hit the country hard.
Bangladesh is the protagonist of the film Under Construction by director Rubaiyat Hossain presented at the 13th World Film Festival of Bangkok.
The director explains the title:
“The reason I call it Under Construction is because the background of the film is Dhaka city and if you look at the city, you cannot find a single spot where a building is not being constructed – so the city, as such, is being constructed – it’s in a transitional phase. The urban citizen is also in the making and so is the modern Bengali woman.” (1)
Rubaiyat Hossain belongs to the nascent upper class. She studied in the United States, her films participate in international festivals.
Under Construction is an intellectual, well-filmed, modern story about feminine pride.
Raya represents female pride. She is a famous actress, wealthy, she married a rich man, who travels for business around the world.
For years, Raya has acted on stage the play Red Oleanders, by the Bengali-language writer Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize winner in 1913. The plot is about Nandini, an energetic, evolved woman who, bravely, defends gold miners from an overbearing king.
The similarity between Nandini and Raya is the key to reading the film:
“It is a contemporary story and it’s about your everyday life.” (1)
It is the contrast between two types of society: the ancient traditions society, and the advanced one, which tries to transform itself with many difficulties. Raya's mother embodies the conservative aspect, used to thinking according to past patterns. “Do you know what people call actresses? Whores!" She thinks about the daughter's job.
The old lady represents the antique time, although she too was a victim of machismo: her husband abandoned her years earlier. Raya's sneaky enemy is her husband Sameer. He seems progressive, he knows the world, he is polite, educated, but in reality, he is an insensitive and male chauvinist. He has decided the future for Raya: she must be a mom, she must leave the theatre. When he argues with her, Sameer does not reply. He believes himself superior, the only moment of anger, is at the end, he offends his wife: "You are so selfish Raya!"
Rubaiyat Hossain is ruthless with Sameer, in one scene she symbolizes him as a snake in the Raya's bed.
Skilfully, the author inserts other characters and themes.
Moyna is the maid of the Raya's house. She is a simple girl but treated with affection and friendship. Moyna meets a bricklayer, he works in a nearby building under construction. She becomes pregnant and quits her job to follow her spouse to a slum in Dhaka.
Moyna is the opposite of Raya, socially, culturally, economically. She is a typical example of the majority of Bangladeshi women. The principle is the husband is the head of the family: “married solve any problem, right?"
Raya visits her, disgusted, in the shack where she lives. Maya's fate is marked. She is forced to work even when she is gravid; from the neighbouring hovel, the two ladies hear a husband beating his wife.
The social theme is the state of the cloth workers.
On April 24, 2013, crumbling a big palace with many laboratories collapsed in Dhaka. The shops and banks, in the same building, were evacuated the day before, as a crack was visible. The owners of the textile factories, on the other hand, constrained the labourers to work. The dead were 1134 and the wounded thousands.
The life of Bangladeshi workers is terrible, subjected to appalling conditions and pressures to contain costs.
A theatre director offers Raya to continue playing Nandini. An even more courageous Nandini, who leads the revolt of oppressed women, who, for hours, work in a sewing machine.
Being an actress or having a child? It is Raya's dilemma, but she will choose.
The author narrates a story full of women, of all classes.
The baby girls have the same treatment: in one sequence a little girl is crying. She has to pierce her earlobe to put the earrings on, but she does not want. Her mother's answer is cruel: she must, otherwise, she would look like a male.
While the streets are a crowd of female humanity, eager for improvement, in the other lane, at the same moment, groups of men are marching, shouting terrifying slogans: "Hang the atheists."
Can these two humanities coexist?
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