The Rapist: Aparna Sen’s The Rapist, When A Woman Grapples With The Trauma Of

On Mar 10, 2024

Updated Mar 10, 2024, 05:19 PM IST

Aparna Sen’s The Rapist sees Konkona Sen Sharma in the lead role alongside Arjun Rampal. More about the film inside.

Aparna Sen’s The Rapist: When A Woman Grapples With The Trauma Of Rape

There have been some notable films on the aftermath of rape. But none as profoundly moving as Aparna Sen’s The Rapist. Co-produced by Sameer Nair and Applause Entertainment, this is Aparna’s 16th film. The Rapist plunges into the divide between haves and have-nots, between rape and consensual sex, and between being a victim and a flagbearer. This is a film that is designed to change mindsets.

The sensitive subject has been touched upon in the past in a Hindi film, Manik Chatterjee’s 1976 film Ghar in which the raped woman’s marriage is split wide open by the trauma. The film is remembered to this day for its fabulous music by Rahul Dev Burman, and nothing else. Rekha spent most of the screen space looking with smoldering self-pity into wide open spaces with her makeup refusing to fade even though she played a deeply disturbed woman.

Konkona Sen Sharma in The Rapist is all there. She is so invested in her role that at times it feels like we are watching a woman being sucked into the vortex of an existential crisis from which no therapy can pull her out. She is deeply immersed in her character’s pain and makes The Rapist the most significant film on the subject of rape in Indian cinema.

Aparna says she didn’t want to portray the assaulted heroine as a victim. “Cinema is evolving and so is the audience. In the past potboilers if a woman was raped she ran to the nearest cliff and jumped. Thankfully our society has evolved. We believe in healing rather than grieving. India is changing. I am part of that change. It’s about what occupies my mind at a given time. My last film Ghawre Bairey Aaj was about the bogey of national Hinduism. I cannot make 36 Chowringee Lane today.”

Says Aparna, “The Rapist is my first full-length Hindi feature film. The language has to happen organically. My first film 36 Chowringhee Lane had to be in English because the protagonist was an Anglo-Indian. Or Mr & Mrs Iyer one protagonist speaks Tamil the other Bengali. So which language should they communicate in. English, right?”