Sometimes, the most impressive thing a movie can do is get you invested in somebody you, on paper, shouldn't sympathize with. Writer/director Sandhya Suri reflects this creative impulse with her new film Santosh, which chronicles widow Santosh Sani (Shahana Goswami) taking over her late husband's police officer job to keep a roof over her head. After all, she doesn't want to back and live with her judgmental horrible in-laws. So she proceeds to work in North India law enforcement under the stewardship of Geeta Sharma (Sunita Rajwar).
Suri prickles the audience's sympathy in a mid-movie sequence where Santosh is tracking down a “suspect”, Saleem (Arbaaz Khan). This young fellow is a Muslim man who previously texted a young girl that has now been raped and murdered. Santosh is following this figure as he walks back to his home, with this lady walking around empty corridors, dingy hallways, and dimly lit pockets of society to keep track of her target. Watching Santosh Saini walk across these spaces, my throat was clenched with anxiety. She is, after all, a woman alone at night walking in precarious spaces. Goodness knows I can’t walk across a parking lot sometimes at night without getting harassed. Heaven can only imagine what could happen to her!
Yet, that sympathy for her well-being occurs after the viewer has seen Santosh Saini begin to indulge in the classism and corruption of her colleagues. Heck, she and her cohorts are only pursuing Saleem because he’s of Muslim descent! What a fascinating hat trick Sandhya Suri has pulled off in this Santosh sequence. Quietly (through just tight camerawork and Goswami’s physical acting), Santosh Sani’s vulnerability as a woman is apparent. Yet viewers are also conscious of how she’s propping up and supporting a society built on oppression. At once, she is endangered and, like Walter White, the danger herself!
This terrifically suspenseful sequence threads a very delicate needle quite superbly. Like 2023's excellent The Teachers' Lounge, Santosh is a yarn about how a woman trying to be the "good person" in a corrupt system is still propping up a corrupt system. Suri’s script also wryly takes a traditional police cinema story structure and reinforces its innate darkness. The relationship between the older, experienced Sharma and Sani is right out of the vintage cop movie playbook. The former character is initially hostile and cold to the newcomer before Sani proves her “worth”. In other films, this would be a narrative skeleton to hang wacky antics and wry one-liners on. Not so within Santosh.
Instead, this relationship is the backbone of Sani going from a widow trying to keep a roof over her head to yet another cop slapping protestors and engaging in acts of torture. In movies all across the world (not just in India and America), viewers are encouraged to root for the cops and whatever they have to do to save the day. Dwayne Johnson can physically torture suspects in Fast & Furious 6 and it’s played off as a cheer-worthy moment. Sandhya Suri’s script, meanwhile, chillingly advises viewers to take another look at such narratives.
Sharma and Sani’s relationship isn’t far removed in many respects from the lead dynamics of crowdpleaser movies like 48 Hrs., End of Watch, or Rush Hour. However, the duo engage in and prop up unspeakable acts of violence and cruelty against ordinary people. No matter how many times Sharma publicly says the police force needs to “reflect women’s experiences”, these two are still part of a corrupt system. No matter how many ladies wear badges, the cops still won’t help distraught souls if they don’t belong to the “right” caste. Santosh’s unflinching depiction of the horrors such mismatched officers engage in implores us to challenge who our media portrays as “heroic”. The very kinds of characters you root for in other movies can be capable of grave atrocities.
Speaking of horrors, Santosh’s most grueling sequences concern Sharma, Sani, and other officers torturing Saleem. Given the erasure of Muslims in both mainstream Indian cinema and the country's general society (hey, just like in America!), there’s clearly an urgent intent behind Suri’s camera explicitly capturing Islamophobic police violence. A scene of Sani picking up a piece of metal to finally engage in these horrific acts, meanwhile features the most striking piece of camerawork in Santosh. Suri and cinematographer Lennert Hillege place the camera on Sani’s weapon, lending an immediate immersive quality to this sequence. The way we only witness Sani from a tilted, slightly distorted angle also deftly suggests how terrifyingly she’s changed since Santosh’s start.
Still, save for this important Sani-centric sequence, Saleem’s lengthy abuse did leave me yearning for slightly more distinctive camerawork and editing. The history of global cinema is rife with haunting depictions of torture. This means a lot of default visual impulses for depicting these hideous actions have already been well-trodden. Santosh’s innate approach to capturing Saleem’s misery can’t quite escape comparison to the imagery of other movies. Plus, I wouldn’t have minded some extra glimpses into Saleem’s personal existence beyond him whimpering for his life.
These visual problems echo Santosh’s odd habit of falling back on very standard styles of framing and blocking. Even if its imagery needed a tune-up, the production is still a mighty effective work, particularly in its third act which refuses to wrap the proceedings in a tidy fashion. After delving into so much harrowing material, Sandhya Suri admirably commits to a messy ending culminating in a nicely ambiguous closing sequence. Even before that finale, though, her filmmaking already impressed me after she got me so invested in Sani being alone at night mere minutes after I was cursing her behavior against protestors! Securing audience investment in morally grim characters, that’s the ultimate signal a movie like Santosh is doing something right.