 "Movie Review: Court")
The multilingual Court (Marathi, Hindi, English and Gujarati, with subtitles), after having premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September, has won 18 international awards as well as the National Award for best feature film. This cinematic marvel from 28-year-old writer-director Chaitanya Tamhane provides an entirely unique perspective that lays bare the fallacies of India’s legal system.
Inspired by real-life cases against activists such as Jeetan Marandi and Sambhaji Bhagat (it is the latter’s powerful ballads that stitch the narrative together), Court, Tamhane’s debut film, revolves around an abetment to suicide case filed against an ageing folk singer, Narayan Kamble (Veera Sathidar). The Dalit activist is charged with performing an inflammatory song which incited sewage worker Vasudev Pawar to drown himself in a manhole. The matter-of-fact nature of the arrest and the placidity with that the case unfolds in a lower courtroom in Mumbai sets the tone of the film.
Public prosecutor Nutan (Geetanjali Kulkarni) rattles off Kamble’s earlier hearings for sedition and suggests unfounded links to anti-national groups, reminiscent of the ongoing case against Binayak Sen. Defence lawyer Vinay Vora (played by Vivek Gomber, also the film’s producer) points out evidence against the suicide. The viewer realises that the worker must have died due to the inhuman working conditions in the manholes as the case invariably progresses from tareekh to tareekh.
Judge Sadavarte (Pradeep Joshi) has a reputation for speediness in delivering verdicts, but also believes in numerology and gemstones. Judges are expected to be fair and impartial, but Court subtly shows how they are vulnerable to prejudices and blind spots — exemplified by Sadavarte’s insistence on observing the law as it is enshrined (as opposed to observing its spirit) as well as his conservatism. The film reiterates how draconian laws such as Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2008 and archaic Victorian-era laws such as Dramatic Performances Act, 1876 affect people’s civil liberties in a post-colonial world.
Court portrays the impact courtrooms have on people who are caught in its intricate and unyielding web. In a poignant scene, Pawar’s wife talks in court about her husband’s working conditions, how he would always drink liquor to be able to bear the stench of the sewer and follows the cockroaches to guesstimate its poison levels. There are no heroic dialogues exhorting injustice, no filmy melodramatic music, no zoomed-in gavel-banging — there is just a plain critique of the myriad institutions that treat human lives so callously.
The film will draw you in with not just its procedural commentary but also its layered rendering of Mumbai’s diverse socio-economic and cultural fabric. The fly-on-the-wall approach, with long stretches devoted to leisurely camerawork and indecipherable chatter, can be laborious but with a tight run-time of two hours the film makes it work. Overall, Court is a brilliant existential tale of our times that even Kafka would have been proud of.
Inspired by real-life cases against activists such as Jeetan Marandi and Sambhaji Bhagat (it is the latter’s powerful ballads that stitch the narrative together), Court, Tamhane’s debut film, revolves around an abetment to suicide case filed against an ageing folk singer, Narayan Kamble (Veera Sathidar). The Dalit activist is charged with performing an inflammatory song which incited sewage worker Vasudev Pawar to drown himself in a manhole. The matter-of-fact nature of the arrest and the placidity with that the case unfolds in a lower courtroom in Mumbai sets the tone of the film.
Public prosecutor Nutan (Geetanjali Kulkarni) rattles off Kamble’s earlier hearings for sedition and suggests unfounded links to anti-national groups, reminiscent of the ongoing case against Binayak Sen. Defence lawyer Vinay Vora (played by Vivek Gomber, also the film’s producer) points out evidence against the suicide. The viewer realises that the worker must have died due to the inhuman working conditions in the manholes as the case invariably progresses from tareekh to tareekh.
More From This Section
Every time you leave the courtroom, you are made to enter the lives of the people who populate it, through which the film presents a strong criticism of our judicial and social system. Vora is a human rights lawyer, cherishes his wine and cheese and drives a Honda City from his town house to the court house every day. His social status does not prevent him for fighting pro bono cases such as Kamble’s. Nutan is a typical working mother in Mumbai, who travels by the Mumbai local and cooks for her family. A peek into her life shows she is far closer to Kamble than Vora but has been hardwired to show little empathy.
Judge Sadavarte (Pradeep Joshi) has a reputation for speediness in delivering verdicts, but also believes in numerology and gemstones. Judges are expected to be fair and impartial, but Court subtly shows how they are vulnerable to prejudices and blind spots — exemplified by Sadavarte’s insistence on observing the law as it is enshrined (as opposed to observing its spirit) as well as his conservatism. The film reiterates how draconian laws such as Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2008 and archaic Victorian-era laws such as Dramatic Performances Act, 1876 affect people’s civil liberties in a post-colonial world.
Court portrays the impact courtrooms have on people who are caught in its intricate and unyielding web. In a poignant scene, Pawar’s wife talks in court about her husband’s working conditions, how he would always drink liquor to be able to bear the stench of the sewer and follows the cockroaches to guesstimate its poison levels. There are no heroic dialogues exhorting injustice, no filmy melodramatic music, no zoomed-in gavel-banging — there is just a plain critique of the myriad institutions that treat human lives so callously.
The film will draw you in with not just its procedural commentary but also its layered rendering of Mumbai’s diverse socio-economic and cultural fabric. The fly-on-the-wall approach, with long stretches devoted to leisurely camerawork and indecipherable chatter, can be laborious but with a tight run-time of two hours the film makes it work. Overall, Court is a brilliant existential tale of our times that even Kafka would have been proud of.