Is Rehana a feminist?
No,
the personality we see in Rehana has no connection with feminism.
Rehana Maryam Noor, it seems to me that director Abdullah Mohammad saad had tried to tell us it is the story of a feminist, he had portrayed Rehana as a feminist. I would like to say that he had successfully tried to convey a misleading and erroneous message about feminism.
Characterizing Rehana as a feminist, Where Abdullah Saad meant to feminist is temperamental, irrational, obsessive, egotistical, masculine, vindictive, etc. That is what patriarchal media has been trying to do for many years. And feminists in this country have identified and acknowledged Rehana as a feminist. This is where saad succeeds terribly.
In Rehana Maryam Noor’s central character Rehana, we watched the mental crisis of a woman with autism whether she has autism called Asperger’s. This type of person has a defect in childhood development which results in the person failing in optimal social behavior, not understanding the attitude, mental state, and intention of the people around. In the real world, lumbering elephants are exposed to the aggression of speeding midgets.
At the same time, Rehana suffers from Asperger’s and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). She is stuck in a circle of irrational obsession (repetition of useless thoughts) and compulsion (reaction to that thought) in her thoughts and her actions. As a result, She does not know what her focus is, what she will do, or why. She is frustrated, this frustration makes her more arrogant.
In the movie, Rehana is a single parent. Although, I failed to know whether Rehana’s husband is dead or she is divorced. Rehana is the main breadwinner of her family. She stressed. She is an over principled and obsessive ethicist teacher at work. At work or at motherhood, all her thoughts and reactions are to satisfy her own ego.
As a mother, she is murky, stubborn, and timid. Because of her inflexibility, she made the girl her opponent. Her decision was not to let her daughter perform in the school show, she is afraid to reveal the reason behind it and it is also a fear to make include her daughter in the decision-making. Rehana played a terrible mind game to her daughter is actually meant she plays a short game to scare the girl.
Can a feminist ever play such a short pass? Rehana’s brother finally asks her, ” are you doing this for WHO?” For Emu or your own? ”. This question is Rehana.
We see Rehana an obsessive ethicist who doesn’t have time to go to a parent meeting at her daughter’s school. She finds it more important to protest her student’s sexual harassment than to meet the child’s class teacher. Although, she is ignoramus about the student being abused by the professor or it was a relationship of mutual benefits. But Rehana’s ego and obsessive compulsions make her so reactive that she even ignores the statement of the victim student.
Her inconceivable action goes against morality and she preserves a lie to accuse her male colleague and is finally forced to compromise. Does a revolutionary feminist protest anything with the help of lies? The director’s political motives are essential in the discussion of the story of the movie. In the beginning, we see Rehana performing ablution perfectly, praying namaz, and putting head clothes; it hints she is a practicing Muslim.
Now with the whole story of Rehana’s struggle, I don’t understand where the necessity to be a practicing Muslim. Director Saad submitted only to idolize a moderate Muslim into feminism, where a veiled, uncompromising, Namazi woman knocked on the door of Islamic feminism with a widely circulated feminist message, “In the play, there is no girl or boy”!
In the hospital scene, while taking a seven-minute feminism class without a clue Abdullah Mohammad saad gave a message that “wearing a nose pin is a good deed”. With a smile, these words are said by Rehana’s sister-in-law that the nose ring is a memory of her husband. Questions are very important, at least for those who know Saad’s grooming and surroundings. Everyone is against feminist politics.
I don’t understand what story the director or scribe wanted to tell in this one-hour and forty-seven-minute movie Single Mother Parenting Stress? Protest against sexual harassment in the workplace? School inequality for boys and girls? I don’t know why Rehana stays in her workplace day after day! To reduce the making cost? I don’t know. Of course, not knowing this is perhaps art. “Where is the head, where is the throat / Not all words can be said / If you say it then the weight decreases / Saying no is art”!
I don’t understand what story the director or scriptwriter wanted to tell in this one-hour and forty-seven-minute movie.
The stress of a Single Mother Parenting?
Protest against sexual harassment in the workplace?
School inequality for boys and girls?
I don’t know why Rehana stays in her workplace day after day! To reduce cinema-making costs? I don’t know.
I haven’t read more about movies; I don’t want to talk about camera vibrations throughout movies. However, the attempt is excessive suspense was very annoying. Even more annoying was being forced to turn blue to bring about depression. This seems to be the trend.
A raw storyteller’s half-baked story has turned into a complete movie by the Azmi Hoque Bandhan’s performance. Badhan is really incredible artist and there is no need to compete with anyone other than herself in the performance.
Even after that, go to the hall, please watch the movie.
Good luck to the “Rehana Mariam Noor” team.
Writer: Sadia Nasrin (Sanjog Bangladesh)
