Review: Damian Szifron's "Wild Tales" is a rollicking ride into lunacy.

After my initial viewing of Damian Szifron's Wild Tales two months ago, I was left -- scarily -- in a particularly malevolent mood. Having never taken a liking to anthology films, this was a charming surprise even for someone who prefers feature films to shorts. With six shorts, six perfectly dark, hilarious, impressively immoral and utterly deranged shorts, Szifron demonstrates his aptitude for handling atmosphere and suspense and tonal shifts. And with each viewing, Wild Tales becomes a deeper, more exhaustive examination of what happens when ordinary mortals are driven to the extremities of desperation. 

With the brand of black comedy that the very Irish McDonagh sibling duo, Martin and John Michael, have made their forte (with four films, namely In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, The Guard and Calvary, between them), Szifron churns out six immaculately balanced and wildly inventive satirical short films with a common theme of vengeance. Bravely cynical about the future of Argentina, it portrays upright people trying to break free of tyranny and oppression by taking to violence as a way to vent their frustrations. There is no escape; this is gorge of pessimism and we are made to take the plunge. There is the inescapability of the symbolic spurt of brutal violence, but it is almost poetic in its impact. And, in a mad way, it adds to the film's persistent comical undertone.

Much has been discussed about volatile opening short film that sets the mood of the film, that makes the rest of the shorts look slightly pale in comparison. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if it gains a cult status, and I wouldn't mind if it does either. It is so ambitious, so deliciously savage that it's hard not to be a little breathless after it ends. And dazzled. Reproducing its flavor in the subsequent shorts, Szifron imbues his film with great verve that never dampens. Till the scathing last shot, till the last person snaps, the film remains feisty with a subtly seditious edge. Truly, a piece of cinema as polished, as smart and as assured as this is as scarce as a comet. 

The only problem -- as is the problem with many anthology films -- with Wild Tales is, not all shorts work as well. "The Rats" and "The Proposal" might be brief endeavors that would be terrific as independent shorts, but here they do not blend in as well owing to the patent lack of diabolical twists. With the other films bursting with revelations by the dozen, these two follow a disappointingly predictable trajectory. But to Szifron's credit, none of the ventures can be classified as bad or even mediocre. But, alas, the picture overall looks a shade distorted. 

Wild Tales is one of my favorite films of last year, and a film that ousted Sion Sono's brilliant Why Don't You Play In Hell? as the most fun I had had at the movies in a long, long time. Relish it in whichever way you see fit, but the universality and the tragedy of its message cannot be eluded.

Perusal: The Characters of Chaitanya Tamhane's "Court."

A few days ago, I had the good fortune of watching Chaitanya Tamhane's intellectually rich and contemplative character study, Court, a film that was decidedly the finest I had seen all year. A whole week has passed since then and not a moment has flown past without me going back to it, for it is a film that caters to only those who are willing to dig deep into the details crammed into its mundane world. Tamhane weaved a wryly cynical inspection of the lives of those who are a part of the judicial system, transcending at this point other Indian courtroom-dramas that seldom bothered with such a thing, and while it also doubles as a critic of it, one can't help but wonder that there is more to Court than a detractor's view of the flimsy Indian judicial system.

For me, Court was foremost a story of alienation, and an observer of caste and gender differences.

Forsaking any hint of a plot with deliberate brashness, Tamhane moved to the outside of the courtroom and invaded his characters' personal lives. It is this move that caught my attention, because I wasn't used to it as an Indian cinegoer. In 1984, Saeed Akhtar Mirza delivered a sardonic rendition of the failings of the judicial system with the sublime Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho, wherein he astutely explored the psychological and emotional repercussions that legal proceedings have on those who are a part of it. And he also did it by invading his characters' personal spaces and painting their backstories using finer strokes. 

But what discriminates Tamhane's film from the classic is that the youngster is far more interested in people than personas. 

Tamhane's decision to draw a straight comparison between the lives of the public prosecutor and the defense lawyer is curiously clever and amplifies the mystical quality about them. It was an appraisal of caste, of gender and of the conduct of two people with two different approaches to their jobs in that environment. Every character is cloaked with a thickly psychological undercurrent, making it impossible not to invest in or explore it.

But as the concise and fitting title of the film suggests, it is the courtroom where we actually find out how their backgrounds mold them as lawyers. 

The character of Vinay Vora (played by the film's producer, Vivek Gomber) is a lawyer with a feeble sense of humor and a spirited conscience. He is a modern-day embodiment of Robin Hood, one who shops for exotically packed veggies and liquor in an air-conditioned supermarket, one who doesn't forget the pleasantries even while conversing with people who are not used to them, one who will willingly empty his pockets to bail his penniless client out but one who, at the end of the day, will visit a pub with a plush ambience to unwind. A quiet, self-assured and brooding character who is undeniably well-educated, well-read and brought up in an affluent household, it's evident from the way he conducts himself in the courtroom how his upbringing shaped him as a person. Adopting a practical and pedantic approach to the case, he accentuates his academic background by choosing to speak in English, switching to Hindi only while cross-examining, and quizzing the witnesses bluntly without beating around the bush. 

Gomber's finest moment--or maybe Tamhane's--was how he played him in the scenes featuring characters that were lower to his character in stature. He empathetically invites a friend of his client to lunch instead of asking him to wait when he is interrupted, drops the prosecutor's witness off in his car while calmly instructing her how to wear a seatbelt and promising to find a job for her, but is curt with his parents. 

Does empathy or sympathy drive his actions? Is the character a patronizer of sorts? 

As the public prosecutor and adversary, Nutan (played by Geetanjali Kulkarni) comes across as someone who has swallowed whole books on law. Mechanically quoting passages from numerous books, she is a by-product of everything the character of Vinay Vora isn't. Discarding basic logic for the sake of theory, making seemingly overblown statements in an attempt to implicate the accused on some charges and deprived of any zeal whatsoever while fighting the case, Nutan is a character that is the most multidimensional, most enigmatic of the lot. Unlike her rival, she buys her vegetables from the station (in Mumbai, the phrase "from the station" implies frugality) and dines silently in a modest restaurant, speaking only to remind her children to chew their food properly. Her face remains impassive even when she adds a forced "I strongly object" and it doesn't see much of a change when her opponent knocks a final nail in the coffin. From making small talk about olive oil and saris to expressing her exasperation at the futility of dragging the court cases on for years, it's a brilliantly realized and nuanced performance. 

But two things about the character caught my attention. Interestingly, Nutan isn't someone who might reject a chance of gaining leverage by crucially choosing to speak in a dialect that she has in common with the judge, and one that she knows fully well that the defense lawyer doesn't quite understand. But does she choose to conduct the proceedings in a language that all three of them are comfortable with? No. There is a thin trace of cunningness in her, of smugness, one that comes to the surface near the end when she brings up fresh and rather absurd charges against the accused and almost believes them, offering no explanation for it whatsoever. Even while she tediously builds a case against the accused--whose background, I surmise, is closer to hers than it is to the defense lawyer's, a stinging bit of irony--her queries seem practiced, distant and dispassionate. 

What I'm all agog to know is, is her decision to choose to conduct the proceedings in Marathi despite the defense lawyer's repeated protests and rarely look him in the eye a way to condescend to him? Isn't her decision to watch a Marathi propaganda play that is clearly against a minority similar in essence to the case of the person's she is trying to implicate?

Probably the character who is more abstruse than Nutan is of Judge Sadavarte (played by Pradeep Joshi), whose eyes convey years of wisdom, shrewdly weighing his words before uttering them unlike the caricatures posing as magistrates in other Indian courtroom-dramas who gabble deadpan lines of dialogue. The least sketched among the lot, Sadavarte is evidently a man of principles; he chides a woman who turns up in a sleeveless top for violating the code of conduct in the court and refuses to listen to her case. Regressive, perhaps, and superstitious to boot, it's in the final minutes of the film that show him taking a brief family vacation where this mysteriously distant character materializes into a multilayered one. While his family takes dips into the pool fully clothed, Sadavarte stretches out on a sofa, preaching superstition as a cure for a child's problems. While having dinner, it's interesting to note that the men and women sit on different tables, and he, once again, likes to be the one talking. 

It's a nice touch of detail to see how his job rubs off of him even in his social gatherings. Not used to being inferior to anyone, he talks over his kinsfolk, an air of condescendence wrapped around him. There's also a peculiar lack of empathy when he cuffs a kid who plays a prank on him, thus fulfilling my initial impression of him as a hardened man of scant sentiment. 

And the character at the core of this fascinating mess is Narayan Kamble (played by real-life social activist, Vira Sathidar), an incendiary and folk singer who just won't stop his diatribes against the society that has failed him. Fiery and composed, his stimulating and spiteful performances land him in jail for abetting the suicide of a manhole worker. In a quietly powerful, astonishing sequence, he refuses to be anything but forthcoming even when his future is possibly jeopardized. Answering each question he is asked as he is cross-examined with brutal candor, it earns him an amused chuckle from the only other man of principles we know: the judge himself. A clone of the big man, perhaps?

Although a victim of the country's judicial system and corruption within it, Tamhane accentuates the tragedy of his story when Kamble is arrested the second time on botched-up charges of terrorism as he is publishing a rather irreverently-titled book "A History of Humiliation." It symbolizes how even the freest of individuals cannot save themselves from the tentacles of a shoddy system. 

The beauty of this film is, we know exactly where these characters lie in the scheme of things even when the film does not enlighten us. It provides with startling clarity a picture of how these mortals are lonely in their crowded milieus, how the court case is their only way to reclaim some credibility, how their credos clash in search for truth and how it's just an ego game when the truth becomes too absurd to handle. We see a bunch of characters fighting for something that cannot lead to any personal rewards, but they fight on nevertheless. And for what? It's just their way of life. Is sidelining the truth is their way of life? And everything boils down to how, at the end of the day, they simply go with the flow. 

Court is proudly pessimistic about the future of this country, and all the more intriguing because of it. 

In a metaphorical shot near the end, the courtroom slowly and silently empties, like a battlefield after a particularly bloody battle. But as Tamhane portrays it, it's a battle of little consequence.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Chaitanya Tamhane's "Court" is the best film of the year, thus far.

The Indian courtroom has seen a great amount of needless dramatics in film over the years. It has been turned into a shrine for theatricality time and time again by unworldly filmmakers who have not quite grasped its significance or perhaps its scope. B.R. Chopra's landmark courtroom-drama Kanoon paved the way for Indian auteurs to explore this genre in 1960, but somewhere along the way, the symbolic courtroom has been reduced to a place where justice and forced patriotism come after an enthusiastic display of histrionics.

Informed of the gross misinterpretation, young Chaitanya Tamhane takes it upon himself to set the record straight and debuts with the fantastically poised Court, a downright spellbinder that delivers what is an intricate and composed study of the country's shaky judicial system. What begins as an unassuming trip into the predicament of an aging folk singer who is picked up on charges of abetting the suicide of a manhole worker swiftly and with careful deliberation deviates from its central thread to study the context of a lower court.

The first and last shots of the film piqued my curiosity. It opens with a cluster of children packed densely in a small room reciting poetry and ends with the protracted image of an old man dozing in a large, empty garden. The two shots mystifyingly contrast with each other; in the first, an old man sits among the kids, evidently fond of them but in the last, another old man is clearly shown to be disapproving of them. What does it imply? Were these bits of details mere coincidences? There is a world of meaning imbuing these frames but Tamhane does not shed any light on it. That's probably how I would sum Court up: there is a cosmos of thought behind each frame, each little detail, but it is intentionally left inscrutable, unexplained. Tamhane provides a window for thought, for questioning everything that we see and everything that he insinuates, and Court can only be enjoyed, for lack of a better word, if we truly indulge in it. And if we possess the patience to sit through it. 

As the film progresses, we figure that there's something more to it than just a story of a wrongly accused man. And this is particularly aggravating, for we find out what is on Tamhane's mind only at the end of the film. Like a seasoned auteur, he skillfully calibrates how much we know about the characters, diligently and patiently sculpting them throughout the film's runtime. We follow them around as they go about in their personal lives and how they transform from hardened lawyers and judges to commonplace folk who take the local transport to go home, who have silent dinners that are punctuated by the sounds of television and doorbells. Tamhane juxtaposes their private and professional lives and urges us to look beyond their versions in the courtroom. And at the end, we have a multidimensional portrait of each one of them, so true to life that one might fault them for being real individuals. And these lives are so desperately lifeless, the characters being alienated victims of their own selves, that it is strangely affecting.

Court is, by no means, an ordinary feat. The story is really quite plain and eternally evolving, but the approach is levelheaded and purposeful. There were lengthy spells when I grew restless and then there were spells when I wanted the film to go slower to soak up the detailing. It succeeds in providing an authentic, often amusing and disheartening depiction of how a lower court functions and how an acquitted person ultimately ends up being a casualty of its quirks. The writing is incisive and dryly funny, with seemingly improvised dialogue lending a layer to the film's naturalistic setting.

What impressed me above all was Tamhane's attention to the technicalities. The camera is usually static and penetrating, rarely capturing any intimate close-ups of the characters (a premeditated move, as Tamhane stated in an interview previously) and that hinders us from studying them up close. The editing is--bafflingly--slack, which pokes me to pose the question: was it intentional and why? The pacing is languid, probably a figurative indication of the slow delivery of justice by the judicial system, but the editing pattern mildly frustrates.

Eventually, Court is nothing but a productive character study that supplies plenty of fodder to the intellect even if it is at times immensely indulgent. One is constantly compelled to question and interpret what each scene means, how it shapes the characters. It takes us deep into the minds of the people who are involved in the cases that are argued upon everyday in the drab courts. And the actors who play them, mostly non-professionals, are miraculous. The disparity between their personal and professional selves is what makes Court remarkable.

It's a debut of rare maturity and confidence and subtlety. Coming from an Indian filmmaker, this is an act of reassuring cynics like me that the film scene in this country is really changing.

Court is the best film I have seen all year, and possibly the best Indian courtroom-drama since Saeed Akhtar Mirza's 1984 satirical masterwork, Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho!. And after a long time, I was ecstatic to watch a film with an audience that recognized a great film when they saw it. I partook in paying a prompt homage to it by applauding when the end credits rolled.