Smile Pinki Review

Smile Pinki Review

Smile Pinki

Created by: Megan Mylan

Cast: Pinki Kumari Sonkar, Ghutaru Chauhan, Dr. Subodh Kumar Singh,
Pankaji Kumar Singh

At five years old, Pinki has already endured a lifetime's worth of
trouble. Born with a cleft lip, she has stopped going to school
because, her father Rajendra explains, the other children called her
names and made her feel ashamed. It's "because of the eclipse," her
father explains, the one that occurred when she was in the womb. "It
was God's will."

Meeting with Pankaji Kumar Singh, a representative from the GS
Memorial Plastic Surgery Hospital, Rajendra doesn't believe anything
can be done about Pinki's lip. In particular, he worries about paying
for an operation. It's "completely free," insists their visitor.
Rajendra, his wife, and their in-laws all look skeptical now. A moment
later, however, they're making plans to travel from their village,
Uttar Pradesh, to the hospital in Varanasi. It's no surprise, given
that she's the titular subject in Smile Pinki, the Oscar-winning short
documentary that premieres on HBO on 3 June.

As producer/director Megan Mylan recalls, she was approached by Dr.
Subodh Kumar Singh (no relation to the social worker Pankaji), with
hopes of publicizing the work of the NGO Smile Train in association
with GS Memorial. After some deliberation, she agreed to take on the
project ("I have a background in working in international
development," she says, "So I have a pretty high bar for what I think
is an appropriate model of ways that Americans can be effective"),
with the understanding that her preferred "verité " approach might be
applied to a "good story" with ("very strong, individual characters."
In this case, children going through "once in a lifetime experiences"
seemed apt subjects.

With Pinki at the center, the film looks in on the experiences of a
few other children discovered by Pankaji, including 11-year-old
Ghutaru, who has not only stayed out of school but has also largely
stopped talking (as his cleft palette affects his speech). The film
opens on a schoolyard scene, with children in uniforms dancing in a
circle, their sense of community and hope manifest. This, the film
suggests, is the life available to children with cleft deficiencies,
if only they undergo corrective surgery. (From here, Rajendra adds,
his daughter can look forward to a better future: "If it's done,
she'll be able to live a decent life and get married").

In India alone, an estimated 35,000 children are born with cleft
deficiencies every year; the film notes that impoverished children are
eligible for free corrective procedures, but their parents either
don't know of such options or resist them because of fear and
superstition. (More than one conversation with doctors reveals that
mothers tend to be blamed for the defect, with some then abandoned by
unhappy husbands.) The film makes this background clear through
repeated shots of the villages where Pinki and Ghutaru live: people
herd goats or work in fields, their bodies bent over and wiry; they
collect water from wells and ride bicycles along dirt roads. Their
poverty is a fact of life, endured without complaint and rendered here
without commentary; preparing for his journey, Ghutaru pulls on a pair
of clean pants several sizes too large; at the hospital following the
surgery, Pinki's uncle makes what appears to be his first phone call
ever. "We are all fine," he reports, with some help as to how to hold
and speak into the receiver.

While such details provide helpful background, Smile Pinki keeps
focused on the kids' experiences. When, at the hospital, a mother
expresses her relief to learn that her family is not alone in dealing
with a cleft deficiency, the camera looks over at Pinki, wordlessly
gazing up at a slightly older girl. At another table, a doctor asks a
father how his daughter's hands have come to be so worn, only to learn
that the man has her doing housework since his wife's death—until the
man remarries, the doctor understands, the daughter, no matter her
youth, is responsible for domestic chores. The staff members
repeatedly tell patients their lives will change, that they will
especially need to go to school: "Once your lip is fixed," one doctor
instructs, "You need to either study or learn a trade at your aunt's.
You won't play all day, right?"

The film doesn't look into possible reasons for cleft deficiencies,
which range from missing vitamins or faulty pituitary gland activities
to some sort of genetic cause, mentioned here by Dr. Singh. He focuses
on "decent treatment," noting that as the Smile Train program
succeeds, another problem has come up, a backlog of cases that means
some children must now wait for their surgeries. Pinki and Ghutaru
don't have to wait in the film, but are instead admitted, interviewed,
and apparently treated from the day they arrive at the hospital. It's
unclear whether this has to do with the camera crew that's following
them, but the experience serves to build another sort of community,
one that can be expanded through word of mouth. "You have
responsibility to help other patients," a staff member tells families
about to leave. "Without patients, a hospital is useless."