India’s one and only Vidya Balan plays India’s one and only Shakuntala Devi in a light and comically entertaining turn, while revealing the personal life of the titular mathematical prodigy. Set back and forth from the 1960s through to the 1990s in Bangalore, Calcutta and London, this comic biopic is gorgeously shot with cinematography on par with Hollywood films, but that’s just the outer wrapping of a long overdue Bollywood film. Why, because the story is about a woman in India struggling to find equality in a man’s world? Not Shakuntala Devi. And certainly not Vidya Balan.
Balan is not your regular Bollywood glamour girl, and for good reason. Unlike the long list of actresses who won major beauty pageants before finding a Bollywood casting agent, Balan was never a beauty queen before making a mark in Indian cinema. Instead, with films like The Dirty Picture and Kahaani, Balan is widely known for revolutionizing the portrayal of Indian women in female led roles. This trend continues with Shakuntula Devi, but as a family light biopic that takes you into the world of the “Human Computer” a title bestowed on her by Western nations.
While the film telegraphs known aspects of her public life – Being too cool for school and entering the Guinness World Records – it’s her lesser known personal life that takes center stage during the second half of the film. Here we see fame and fortune consume Devi in a way that throws her personal life, including her daughter and husband into the shadows. Grappling between the mother and wife that she is, and the mathematical superhero the whole world wants, forms the rest of this film. It’s here in the second half where the narrative takes on a bit of TV styled soap opera and unnecessary melodrama. But as it turns out, Shakuntala Devi is more about the mother than the mathematician, and more importantly, a real life example of an independent woman who had the four-square power to live life queen size, and on her own terms and conditions. This alone makes the film inspiring, but also far more entertaining than her male counterpart played by Dev Patel as Srinivasa Ramanujan in The Man Who Knew Infinity
Shakuntala Devi is streaming on Prime Video.
