Tiger Mom:
In the opening sequence of the film, an Indian infant is being taken away by two white women; the mother runs after them, tries to hang on to the car, then chases it shrieking, and takes a dramatic fall. This indicates right away that the melodrama in Mrs Chatterjee vs. Norway, will be dialed up and the decibel level remain deafening, unfortunately wrecking what could have been a moving story about a mother’s indomitable courage.
The film, directed by Ashima Chibber (My Dad Ki Maruti), is based on the case of Sagarika Chakraborty, an Indian woman in Norway, whose two young children were taken away by Velfred (Barnevernat in reality), the child protection service, ostensibly because she was an unfit mother. She wrote about her ordeal in a 2022 book,The Journey Of A Mother, which has been turned into a movie script by, Sameer Satija, Rahul Handa and Chibber. They have taken the salient points from the book, and admittedly taken creative liberties from page to screen, and in the process thrown out any vestiges of restraint.
Rani Mukerji plays Debika Chatterjee, married to oil rig engineer, Anirudh (Anirban Bhattacharya), with all the outward signs of ‘Bengaliness’ – bright Jamdani saris, photos of Ramakrishna Paramhans, Sarada Devi and Swami Vivekananda, in front of which she blows the conch every morning. Strange that she has a regular supply of Indian provisions to prepare traditional meals, but seems to have no contact with any others in the town of Stavanger, except a nodding acquaintance with a few at her son’s school. After spending several years in the country, she speaks not a word of Norwegian, and the supposed science graduate communicates in the broken English of an uneducated woman.
The shock of her children—the younger one still breast fed– being snatched away would unhinge any mother, but Debika is repeatedly seen to be screeching, wailing or thrashing about in hysteria, which, to an undemonstrative European society, looks like mental instability, and actually nixes her chances of getting her kids back. If feeding the children by hand, allowing them to sleep with the parents or putting the black dot on the son’s forehead gives the Norwegians the idea that she is a bad mother, her constant stridency confirms it. In getting the actress to perform loudly like she were in a large amphitheatre, Chibber strips Debika of the sympathy the audience would otherwise feel for her.
There is very little background about the state of her marriage, except a dialogue about domestic violence, and no explanation for her complete isolation. The husband is more interested in his pending citizenship application, than the trauma of his wife and children.
There is racism at play, obviously, but an intriguing subplot about Velfred running a financial scam involving children of immigrants it left mostly unexplored.
Debika’s persistence and her appeals to an Indian minister (Neena Gupta) visiting Norway for a deal gets the Indian government involved, as it had in reality, with politicians Sushma Swaraj and Brinda Karat coming to the aid of the distraught mother.
When the film shifts to India, where Debika’s theatrics would be considered normal behavior, she actually calms down and acquires the dignity that would have worked for her in Norway, not to mention the audience. Jim Sarbh and Balaji Gauri playing lawyers on opposite sides of the lawsuit, go by the established norms of screen courtroom dramas, and bring to the film a much-needed spark, but it is too little too late; by this time, Rani Mukerji going at it like a soldier with a grenade has done the damage.
(This piece first appeared in scroll.in)
