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Movie Name: Phule
Directed by: Ananth Mahadevan
Starring: Pratik Gandhi, Patralekha, Alexx O’Nell, Sushil Pandey
Genre: Biography, Drama
Running Time: 129 Minutes
Release Date: 25 April, 2025
Language: Hindi
Rating:
Production Companies: Dancing Shiva Films, Kingsmen Productions
A husband and wife, it was the time of child marriage when girl child was refused education and pushed into marriage, he chose to educate his wife and were a social reformer they went to campaign for increased rights for underprivileged.
Phule: Movie Overview
Phule is an upcoming Indian Hindi-language Biographical film directed by Ananth Mahadevan and produced by Dancing Shiva Films Kingsmen Productions Films and Zee Studios. The film is based on the lives of Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule. The film stars Pratik Gandhi and Patralekha in titular roles. The film was scheduled to release on 11 April 2025. But got postponed; now it will release on 25 April 2025.
The biopic on Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule was announced in April 2022, with Pratik Gandhi and Patralekha cast as the lead actors. Directed by Ananth Narayan Mahadevan, the film aims to depict the couple’s contributions to social reform and education in India. Filming began in April 2023, with key scenes shot to portray the historical narrative. The first look of the film was released on July 11, 2024, showcasing its focus on the reformers. Principal photography was completed by October 2024.
The biopic Phule, starring Pratik Gandhi and Patralekhaa, was initially scheduled for theatrical release on April 11, 2025, coinciding with the 197th birth anniversary of Mahatma Jyotirao Phule. However, the release was postponed to April 25, 2025, following objections from a section of the Brahmin community in Maharashtra regarding the film’s depiction of their community. The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) requested the filmmakers to make several edits, including the removal of a voiceover referencing the caste system and specific caste-related terms, as well as modifications to certain dialogues and visuals.
Movie Trailer:
Movie Review:
Pratik Gandhi brings home the Mahatma
Ananth Mahadevan’s straight-cut biopic of Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule is more educative than immersive
Bollywood seldom tells stories of Dalit assertion. It mostly sees the marginalised as victims who need the compassion and cover of an upper caste saviour. Perhaps, that’s why the inspirational story of Jyotirao (Pratik Gandhi) and Savitribai Phule (Patralekhaa) remained off the radar of commercial filmmakers. Known to pick up challenging subjects, this week, writer-director Ananth Mahadevan turns his lens on the intrepid Maharashtrian couple that challenged the prevailing social order and the upper caste hegemony in the 19th century through education and progressive values, and started a mission against caste and gender discrimination.
Unlike last week, when Kesari fictionalised the story of C. Sankaran Nair beyond recognition to cash on some chest-thumping moments, Mahadevan is sedate, largely sticks to the recorded history, and doesn’t lend his work an overtly agitative tone.
The film opens with a wide-angle shot of the fields of Marigold. Gradually, we discover that Phule gets his surname from the flowers his family grows in the fields granted by the last Peshwa ruler for their floristry services. Flowers are offered to the deities, but the gardener is kept out of the temple. Even his shadow is proscribed. His family and immediate society have accepted it as an order dictated by the scriptures, but Phule stands against the “middlemen” between the Almighty and man. Inspired by the French Revolution, he quotes from Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man.”
Mahadevan brings to light the hypocrisy, the unspoken vice in religion. The Brahmins want the numerically superior Shudras to take up arms to take on the Colonial power, but don’t want them to read, write, or have a voice. Through Savitribai’s trusted ally, Fatima, the film also opens a window to the orthodoxy among Muslim men towards girls’ education, which is not different from that of Hindu society.
The Lords open the education path for them, but to lead them to the Church. A strategist, Phule can see through the divide-and-rule tactics of the British and implores the high priests to set the house in order before taking on the foreign power.
Some moments make you chuckle at the conceit of a section of the upper caste. When a group of Brahmins sends men to eliminate Phule, he, laughingly, says that was the first time that Brahmins had spent money on him. When Phule conducts marriage rituals, Brahmins object and seek compensation. Phule asks if they would pay the barber when they shave themselves.
The CBFC has muted the tone, but those who could read between the lines will find answers to the Battle of Bhima Koregaon before Phule and B.R Ambedkar’s renunciation of the Hindu faith after him. Popular culture has focused so much on Mahatma Gandhi that we have forgotten that the non-violent struggle of the original Mahatma of modern Indian history continues unabated.
However, in terms of storytelling and craft, Mahadevan again disappoints. For a large part, the film reads like a visual essay, where each paragraph captures the highlight of their journey. Perhaps, to sidestep the opposition before the release, in a foreword kind of sequence, the film underlines that Phule had some Brahmin supporters and friends before moving to the opposition from the family and society; the Brahmin backlash, Phule’s critique of the caste system; dung and stones hurled at Savitribai; providing shelter to pregnant Brahmin widow and so on in a textbook style.
You can appreciate the sincerity in Mahadevan and writer Muazzam Beg’s storytelling, but it is more educational than immersive. The internal struggle and self-doubt of the protagonists hardly come to the surface, and the ideas of Phule sound more like teachings than lived experiences. One can see the battle to get a well of their own is hard-fought, but you don’t feel their thirst for change. Like most historicals, the film makes the mistake of seeing Phule through the prism of today by putting the halo behind him. Despite solid actors like Joy Sengupta and Amit Behl, it appears the Brahmin characters are there to be ridiculed. It means no suspense or surprise awaits us in their journey.
However, Pratik finds depth even in this creative flatness to portray the gravity of the struggle. The confident gait, the furrow on the forehead, and the transition to a man who realises that his mission will not be complete in his lifetime, Pratik coalesces different timelines and situations in his malleable frame. The understated ebullience of Patralekhaa feels more like 2025 than 1885, but together, they generate the vibe of a couple that grows from sharing a teacher-student bond to becoming soulmates.
