Here’s the blurb for the movie Pink Saris that made me want to see it:

Sampat Pal Devi doesn’t take any guff. A short, powerful woman in a hot pink sari, she fearlessly challenges and intimidates men twice her size in a community where she is considered a second-class citizen at best. Leader of the Gulabi (Pink) Gang, Sampat Pal fights tirelessly on behalf young women from India’s lowest caste, who are known as Untouchables.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? I thought so, too. And for the first thirty minutes or so I was pretty sure I’d like this documentary. Watching Sampat comfort the women who’d been hurt by their men, then go scold the men made for some great scenes, but by the end of the first hour I wasn’t feeling quite as much sympathy for Sampat, and by the end of the movie I had the feeling that she was a busybody with control issues who collected abused women the way some crazy old ladies collect cats.

I realize things are always more complicated than they seem, and I know practically nothing of the complexities of India’s caste system and the ways that women seem to be bartered like sacks of grain. Maybe a social system like that can only be wrestled with in the most flamboyant ways. If Sampat was showboating for the camera, and I’m pretty sure sure was, perhaps she believed she was doing it to help the women who came to her house for shelter. Perhaps in a small way she really was helping them. I couldn’t help but get the feeling that she was doing it to feed her own sense of self-worth, though, and after I watched her throw one of the women who came to her for help right back into the crazy family she was running from, apparently for the sake of scoring some political points, I lost practically all my sympathy for her.

I gave this movie three stars. A well-made movie, but I was disappointed by the subject.