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In the land where Goddess Durga and Kali are worshipped and where powerhouse women like Mother Teresa, Mamata Banerjee, Suchitra Sen and Suchitra Bhattacharya have reigned supreme...is the average woman truly liberated? Or is she still chained and imprisoned by society’s unfair and archaic expectations of her being a “perfect” daughter, “self-sacrificing” mother, and “chaste” wife. Can any real flesh-and-blood woman ever really conform to such one-dimensional and limited expectations of her image? Eventually, the “halo” of purity that crowns a woman’s head, slips down and becomes a noose around her neck, strangling her, and binding her from being her true self.
Take One sets out to ruthlessly expose the hypocrisy and double standards of society, and the wafer-thin moral density of our social climate, with the story of Doel Mitra (Swastika Mukherjee), a Bengali actress who dares to walk the tightrope of ‘moral decency’, and faces the consequences of being a part of such a society.
This symbolic image (left) represents this core theme of Take One, as the ropes tying Doel Mitra denote the restrictions that society imposes on every woman, with the hope to “tie” her down and contain her within so-called “acceptable” social limits.
And her nudity in the image is symbolic of Doel’s extreme vulnerability during the brutal personal attacks directed at her by an enraged conservative public who strip her of all dignity, as they feel threatened by the free expression of her feminine sexuality when an MMS clip of a bold sex scene from one of her films is leaked on the Internet.
Amidst the public furore, Doel is in the middle of shooting a film version of the Ramayana in which she plays Sita, the epitome of chastity and purity, who is ironically now being represented on screen by a woman branded by society as a “porn star”. Ironically, both Doel and Sita, two morally “opposite” women, end up being victims of a harsh society that damns them as “fallen” due to the threat of their female sexuality. Even the Indian epitome of female “perfection”, Sita, could not break free of society’s expectations of “chastity” and “purity”, and was banished into exile. But Doel Mitra, the modern-day woman, and the voice of female emancipation in the film, bears the brunt of the public outrage all on her own, standing by her right to freedom of expression as an artiste and a woman.
Take One is a celebration of this intoxicating amalgam of feminine strength and vulnerability, which shines the brightest when a woman dares to break free from society’s shackles and asserts her right to do as she pleases with her own mind, body and spirit.
