By Murtaza Ali
Featured in IMDb Critic Reviews
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| Court (2014) - By Chaitanya Tamhane |
Our Rating: 9.0
IMDb Ratings: 8.0
Genre: Drama
Cast: Vira Sathidar, Vivek Gomber, Geetanjali Kulkarni
Cast: Vira Sathidar, Vivek Gomber, Geetanjali Kulkarni
Country: India
Language: Marathi | Gujarati | English | Hindi
Language: Marathi | Gujarati | English | Hindi
Runtime: 116 min
Color: Color
Summary: A sewerage worker's dead body is found inside a manhole in Mumbai. An aging folk singer is tried in court on charges of abetment of suicide. He is accused of performing an inflammatory song which might have incited the worker to commit the act. As the trial unfolds, the personal lives of the lawyers and the judge involved in the case are observed outside the court.
Court is a 2014 National
Award-winning Indian indie film written and directed by debutant filmmaker Chaitanya
Tamhane. Chaitanya opts for a bunch of newcomers to play the pivotal characters
in the movie: Vira Sathidar as the balladeer Narayan Kamble, Vivek Gomber as defense lawyer Vinay Vora, Geetanjali Kulkarni
as public prosecutor Nutan, and Pradeep Joshi as Judge Sadavarte. Court is produced by Gombar with assistance from the Hubert Bals Fund of International Film Festival Rotterdam. The movie premiered at the 71st Venice International Film Festival in September 2014,
where it won the Best Film award in the Horizons section while also bagging the
Lion of the Future (Luigi De
Laurentiis Award for a Debut Film) for young Chaitanya. While Chaitanya’s
film prima facie come across as a courtroom drama, there are many ways to
approach the film.
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| Vira Sathidar as the balladeer Narayan Kamble in Court |
First, as a character study
about four distinct but brilliantly sketched out caricatures: those of an aging
folk singer accused of abetment of suicide, an upper class Gujarati lawyer who
represents him, a Marathi-speaking pedantic female public prosecutor, and a particularly
conservative judge who presides over the hearing. These caricatures constitute
a formidable quartet—a pivot around which everything else revolves. While the
characters complement one other quite well, at the same time, they seem endowed
with their own set of idiosyncrasies and contradictions which help breathe life
into each one of them.
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| A Still from Chaitanya Tamhane's Court |
Second, as a social
commentary on the endless plight of the backward castes in modern India: the
Dalits continue to face hardships despite everything that has been done to
guard their rights and interests. The major cause of course is illiteracy. Even
though a considerable chunk of seats is reserved in educational institutions for the
scheduled castes and tribes, the fact of the matter is that the standard of primary
education in our country continues to be below par. In Court, Chaitanya
masterfully feeds us with the pitiful tale of a sewerage worker who, in the
absence of any safety gear, has to rely on alcohol induced inebriation to
overcome the stench of the gutter he is responsible to clean and maintain.
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| Judge Sadavarte presides over the court's proceedings |
Third, as a critique on the
Indian legal system: How lawmen tend to twist and manipulate simple and
straightforward things, thereby making it nigh impossible for the layman to
understand and interpret the law. How desperately dependent, judges and lawyers still are on the
arcane/obsolete laws passed during the time of the British Empire (Kamble is arrested on the basis of
the Dramatic Performances Act of 1876). How the common man suffers when these
laws get wrongly or inappropriately interpreted by the judges while reaching
their verdicts. How lost, oppressed and disoriented a layman feels while
standing in the court of law that’s actually supposed to protect his interests.
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| Vivek Gomber as defense lawyer Vinay Vora |
Fourth, as a mockery of the immoral modus operandi the police
often adopts in order to get the accused convicted in the court of law like
fabricating evidence, presenting stock witnesses to influence the outcome of a
case, or charging the accused under wrong sections of the IPC to ensure that
the bail is not granted. How police acts as a mere puppet in the hands of the politicians/ruling
party. In Court, we get to witness how Kamble becomes a soft target for the
police. It is highly likely that the police was only following the orders of the
state administration which must have felt intimidated by Kamble’s revolutionary
ballads.
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| A police constable brings Narayan Kamble to the court |
Fifth, as an exemplum of how a traditional art form can be used to
inspire and awaken the masses from the deep slumber of ignorance and
indifference or to incite the common man against the administration, thereby
posing a threat to national integrity. It’s widely known that during the early
days of the freedom struggle against the British, traditional folk theatre
forms like 'Jatras' were extensively used to spread the message to the vast
sections of the society. In Court, it’s Kamble’s Lok Shayari that performs a
somewhat similar task of stirring up the masses against the omnipresent
oppression, hypocrisy and prejudice. But the artist too mustn’t forget that
when there’s widespread unrest and chaos, only a fine line separates critique
from crime.
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| Geetanjali Kulkarni as public prosecutor Nutan |
It seldom happens in Indian
cinema that a filmmaker chooses to make a multilingual film—a rare feat that
Chaitanya accomplishes with Court wherein he employs as many as four different
languages viz. English, Hindi, Marathi, and Gujarati. Perhaps, it is an attempt
to push it beyond the dimensions of a regional film; interestingly, the movie
provides English subtitles even for those parts which are already spoken in
English. While Court is primarily targeted towards the English-speaking
audiences in both India and abroad, it carries a universal appeal as obvious
from the 23 awards (including 4 wins at BAFICI 2015) that it has won at film festivals in both India and abroad.
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| Advocate Vora visits the local slum |
The harassment of the layman at the hands of lawmen is not
uncommon even in the developed world. What happens to Kamble is far from being
a one-off affair; anyone who has been to a Sessions Court can vouch for it. In
India, the judges, like doctors, are hold in the same esteem as the God and yet
they are far from being infallible. In Court, a conservative judge refuses to
hear a woman’s case because she is wearing a sleeveless dress. Later on in the
movie, the same judge (when out on a picnic with family and friends) is shown
making exaggerated claims about the starting salaries of the IIM-A graduates.
In another scene, he is advising a man to take numerological consultation for
his sick son. And, in yet another, he is seen slapping a child after been
rudely awakened by a bunch of naughty children.
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| A Still from Chaitanya Tamhane's Court |
What is Chaitanya trying to tell us? That an illiterate man like
Kamble has more wisdom than a qualified judge. Or, that outside his position of
authority, Judge
Sadavarte is like any other man. Or, that a judge is a fallible human being,
after all. At the end of the day, the viewer is the best judge. Chaitanya wants
us see the different sides to his characters. He doesn’t want to spoon-feed us…
Yes, he does feed us with all kinds of details, but, at the end of the day, he wants
us to decide for ourselves. There is no black or white here, all gray! Kamble’s
poetry is ripe with pungent criticism and he is hell-bent on shaking the very
foundations of our faulty system. He doesn’t really care about the collateral
damage as long as he succeeds in delivering his revolutionary message (he says
in the court that he doesn't mind writing a song that would provoke the sewerage
workers to commit suicide). With Kamble, there are no half measures—he
is a kind of a double-edged sword that makes him both a hope as well as a threat
to the society.
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| Vinay and Nutan argue over Narayan Kamble's case |
The defense lawyer Vinay and the public prosecutor Nutan too have different sides
to them. While Vinay enjoys an upper class living often visiting pubs and
discotheques with his elite friends, he seems to have a soft corner for slum
dwellers and social activists like Kamble (perhaps, he has the intellect to see through
the societal class barriers). At the same time, he shows little
regard for his elderly parents; he is often rude to his parents who themselves
are indifferent to his beliefs and the signs of a generation gap are pretty
visible. Nutan, one the other hand, is indifferent
to Kamble’s cause (perhaps, her middle class upbringing makes her incapable of understanding it)
and embrace the antipathic sentiments of the middle class Maharashtrians towards
the immigrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. And yet she is a caring wife and a
mother beyond the office hours. While her staccato orations in the court come
across as quite irritating, her frivolous discussions
with her colleagues about the life’s drudgeries are every bit as fascinating.
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| Narayan Kamble performs on stage along with his troupe |
Overall, Court is a multifaceted work of cinema that’s extremely relevant to our times. It is a commendable attempt on the part of a young and upcoming filmmaker like
Chaitnaya Tamhane to come up with such a complex meshwork of cinematic art at
the very onset his career. Chaitnaya impeccably blends cerebral and emotional
elements while never compromising on subtlety and detail to conjure up a powerful social commentary oozing with tragicomic
motifs. In Court, Chaitnaya also succeeds in his attempt to recreate the Bombay
(now Mumbai) of the ‘80s and ‘90s. However, the fading of the old and the
emergence of the new (landscape as well as the values… when Vinay
questions the regressive traditions of the Goyamari sect in the court, he is ambushed and
beaten up in the open) is quite evident throughout the movie. The still camerawork (with camera often held at a distance), minimalist mise en scène, and the movie‘s deliberate pacing accentuates the slowness of the judicial process
in India. The manner in which the songs are woven into the narrative reminded
this critic of the films of the great Guru Dutt like Pyaasa
and Kaagaz Ke Phool. Although, it’s not meant for casual viewing, Court has
something to offer to everyone. The students of cinema most definitely need to study it. Court is a film that needs to be watched!
P.S. Court has been selected as India's official entry to the Oscars this year.
P.S. Court has been selected as India's official entry to the Oscars this year.
Readers, please feel free to share your views/opinions in the comment box below . As always your feedback is highly appreciated!
References:
Court (2014) Trailer
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Stunning review. Movie in my wish list now!
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked it... do share your thoughts once you have watched it! :-)
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