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.
(Not For Reproduction)
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