Review: Mangesh Joshi’s “Lathe Joshi” is a gently moving tale of a man trying to adapt to the modern world.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

The most striking sequence in Mangesh Joshi’s Lathe Joshi sees its mostly silent protagonist, Vijay Joshi, arriving at a busy intersection. The light is not yet green but horns blare. And then, just as he’s about to cross, the light turns green and the vehicles swarm in his direction. They go around him, cutting each other, and nobody stops to let him cross. He stands there, lost. The world is in a damn hurry. It has found a way to get around problems. It is not, at least not necessarily, solving any of them. And Vijay Joshi is yet to catch up.

Joshi appears to be a most simplistic man. Having led a life of routine, he has not stopped once in his tracks and had a look around. The buildings have become taller. The people have become more impatient and cold. He does not know this yet. And one day he is told that he has lost his job to a machine. And it is on this day that he finally has a look and is scared of what he sees. This fear is unclear, something he has never felt before; it is born partly out of desperation and partly out of ignorance. For thirty-five years he has operated a lathe machine. He knows his way around it, all right. To his peers he’s more often “Lathe Joshi” than “Joshi saheb.” And yet, someone has invented a machine that has the ability to surpass his throughput and match his artistry with it, and it certainly did not take thirty-five years to build. It is discernible to us, however, that it cannot challenge his passion. Never that. But how much weight does passion really hold in the world that is far too obsessed with automation?

In most films concerning the relationship between man and machine, there is a thin undercurrent of pessimism pinned to the proceedings. Automation leads to unemployment, which inevitably leads to despair. There is much scope for human drama. But Lathe Joshi does not seem to be interested. It’s more neutral in its examination of a man’s stint with unemployment brought about by automation. Vijay Joshi isn't angry. He does not protest nor does he grumble. He accepts it, not like a man who was ready but like a man who has lost the courage to fight. He is now awake to the modern world, a capitalist world that has been consumed by greed, where machines are employed for throughput and not quality. A world that, perhaps, no longer accepts a beautifully made piston as a résumé. And in this world it is extremely important to upgrade, his peer tells him at one point. This declaration is sandwiched between a brief exchange in which his peer confides in him that he does not comprehend how the machines he has been hired to supervise work, and a tea-boy getting them tea out of a machine. When asked why, the tea-boy simply says the request was for “quick” tea. It is not a particularly incisive detail, but we get the point. They did get tea, but cutting down on manual labor will have consequences when it comes to flavor.

For the most part, Lathe Joshi comes across as two films rolled into one: one about a man trying to keep his dignity during the tumultuous period of unemployment, and the other about him trying to adapt to a home that has already been taken over by machines. His blind mother lives off the noise emanating from the television and a small electronic machine that plays a religious chant over and over again. His wife is wonderstruck by the small miracles of a food processor. And his son, their portal to the modern world, is adept at computer repair and has hardware components strewn all over the house. Machines had penetrated Joshi's personal life a long time ago. But he, someone who has quietly spent most of his life around the cacophony of one particular machine, was oblivious to it. He curiously inspects his son's hardware components. At one point, his blind mother is more skilled than him at changing the television channel. When he offers to help his wife, who runs a small catering business, with an order, she rebuffs him. Unlike him, she’s embracing technology, albeit with the usual hesitation. Joshi, on the other hand, is trying to wrap his head around machines and doing a miserable job of it.

Empathy drives the narrative of Lathe Joshi. The many insights it offers can only come from a place of understanding. At one point, Joshi’s son, the smart aleck of the house, is too slow for the world. It is hardly worth doubting that director Mangesh Joshi has observed these characters and their little dilemmas up close. There is no attempt at turning Vijay Joshi into a hero. We do not feel angry for him. When he wants to buy his own lathe machine, his son tells him he’s too old to run his own business. Maybe he should just sit back and relax. When his son buys a new car, Joshi wants to know when he learnt driving. These are little observations but they contribute significantly when we are trying to put this character into context. For a character who is given only a few lines to say, Vijay Joshi is someone we come to understand and empathize with. And the others who make up his little world – his wife, his mother and his son – are given just the right amount of space for us to examine where they lie in the world he’s been forced to inhabit. We walk away knowing how each of them will go about their lives three or maybe four years from now. And to accomplish this is no mean feat.

Conversely, Lathe Joshi seems to slump just a tad in places because of its repetitiveness. Technology has taken over everything, and they mean everything. The grouchy old woman need not visit a temple to offer her prayers anymore. She can simply go to a website. What’s more, she can even buy a gift while she is at it. The constant reminders about how deeply technology has penetrated our lives are quite unnecessary in a film that is at all times, in one way or another, doing exactly this. But these are simply nitpickings.

I am not sure whether the film would prove to be more meaningful upon a second viewing, but if I do watch it again, I have one particular moment which I would like to savor. It has Joshi visiting his ailing ex-boss, and the guard at his ex-boss’ house is most reluctant to let him in. A call is made through the intercom. His ex-boss cannot come to the phone, of course, so his wife does. The guard mentions that “some Joshi” wants to meet the old man before handing the phone over to Joshi himself. After bringing the receiver to his ear, the woman asks him if he is “Lathe Joshi,” and a smile slowly breaks on his face, lighting it up. He’s been given his identity back. It’s something one cannot put a value on. In a world that no longer seems to recognize his talent, here is hope. I felt my heart soar. And it hadn't soared like this in quite some time.

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Review: Nagraj Manjule's "Sairat" is a powerful tale of forbidden love.

(Contains gigantic spoilers, a lot of them.)

I don't remember the last time an Indian film left me dazed.

In February, Vetrimaaran's white-knuckled crime-drama Visaranai came close, but Sairat is a different kind of beast. It doesn't want to turn us into cynics right away. It takes its time, introduces us to its characters and its world, makes us fall and believe in true love. It is the kind of love that is rarely seen in Indian cinema: It blossoms from awkward glances and stares to letters and secret meetings. It thrives in its details and its optimism. Sairat treats love as a kind of delicate emotion, something that cannot be just expressed using a few words. Indian cinema has often simplified it through its modern 'rebel' version of love, where young guns profess their love for each other openly in an attempt to defy the social norms society has imposed upon them. Nagraj Manjule begs to differ. His version, the subtle one, is more relatable, overwhelming and joyous.

Sairat is, however, far from perfect.

It is a superbly written and decently acted romance that grabs you when it takes flight and then rams you into its stony realism. It is a bit of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, a bit of Alaipayuthey/Saathiya, and a bit of Ishaqzaade. And yet, with a lot working in its favor, Sairat doesn't quite manage to sweep one off their feet. It does manage to get its message across, courtesy a rare empathetic touch, and its treatment makes it different. I have always maintained that any director who has great empathy for his characters can never make a bad film, and Sairat is a prime example. Manjule, who often incorporates his observations growing up in a casteist society, has lived this story, has lived through these episodes, and now wants to tell us that story. It is a film that beautifully captures the details of small-town life, and of the hierarchy that exists within it. It begins with a young man running through the fields to catch a glimpse of the girl he likes, and when the canvas is expanded a bit after the story takes a turn, those fields are set fire to when he elopes with her. These fields hold a special significance. They begin with being an obstacle, something he has to cross to catch a glimpse of her, then become something of a comforting nest for them when they get involved. They can be themselves in the fields, and the fields shield them from the ire of the 'outer' world. It is a neat little detail. It helps develop their romance, and when the fields are set ablaze, a part of the romance ends. Now they have a world to face.

But till that moment arrives, Sairat, like Manjule's debut Fandry, seems content in being a charming love story. It has none of the occasional jabs of the former and none of its angst. It is hopeful, making us believe if only for a while that the world exists without the invisible barriers of caste. Fandry had this parallel, too. We see an ideal world of flourishing fields and radiant smiles, an ideal world, and then we see how casteism blots it. Fandry, where the lower-caste boy's anger at being made to face the hurdles of prejudice slowly builds till he finally snaps and lashes out, followed a similar trajectory. But here, Manjule does not want to make an out-and-out arthouse venture. Sairat is a decidedly mainstream film in comparison, with lush fields and blue waters glowing a bright yellow replacing the morose imagery of Fandry, and elevated by a terrific soundtrack from Ajay-Atul that throbs of energy. It is an interesting decision and a necessary one, for the second-half is the exact opposite of the first in its tone and treatment. The contrast has its own potent effect. Suddenly, the sheath of fantasy is lifted and what we get is a gripping story about two lovers on the run in a world that is a far cry from the one they chose to fall in love in. No more do the flowers blossom, no more does the sea shine golden. Tempers flare and the village is enveloped by fear and dread. We almost expect a gunshot to ring out somewhere or a knife to come flying out of a pocket. But Manjule shows us nothing of that sort. He milks the tension and leaves us with clammy hands.

So, in a way, Sairat emulates Fandry when it stops being a romance. There is simmering tension in every frame. It shakes us out of our reverie as we plunge into the grimness of the 'real' world. And here, we see in shrewdly placed details how different they had grown up to be. Take, for instance, the scene where they eat at a roadside stall. The boy drinks out of a tumbler spotted with dirt, enough to revolt the girl he loves. He has to buy her a water bottle and he still doesn't sip from it once she's done. He prefers the tumbler. It is a fairly obvious detail that suggests how their respective backgrounds have divided them over something as simple as a drink of water. In another scene, when they are shown a grimy shanty by a kindly woman, he sets to work immediately and silently to make it livable while she doesn't move. She complains of a pungent smell and the dust while he doesn't say a word. He has grown up and grown into a world of grimy shanties, and has fought for himself all his life. This is no different. He even cooks for them because she doesn't know how to. When she finally does, he doesn't approve of her efforts. The cracks in their relationship deepen.

That is the beauty of Sairat. While Hindi films often tend to show two lovers escaping the castle and from the clutches of the monster inside it, here is one that is more interested in what happens next. They have accepted each other, but will they accept the flawed versions of each other?

It is over this thought that the film's most masterful sequence is built. A petty rift between the two turns into a major argument when jealousy and mistrust circle their love. He strikes her suddenly, in full view of the public. It is their first real fight, we find, and it takes a lot out of both of them. They weep separately later. She leaves, but returns soon after to find him inconsolable and contemplating suicide. The scene's subdued emotional power is enough to reduce a stony viewer to a blubbering mess. It also does a great job of representing the film's chief triumph: We are watching something familiar but our reactions are exactly what the director intended to arouse. We just know she will come back to him. And she does. We feel inexplicably relieved. Since we have seen them go from strangers to soul mates, every moment they share has become ours, too. We feel responsible.

I will digress a bit here. Because when my thoughts go back to the film's shocking conclusion that springs up rather abruptly, I feel both sad and confused. There's no doubt about how effective it was, considering how carefully and deliberately it had been constructed for maximum impact. (In fact, I couldn't help feeling the conclusion had been written first and the story was built around it once it was firmly in place.) It is cut from the same fabric as that of Fandry, only more cynical. The sight of bloody footprints signify a forlorn future. A life has been wrecked, and it had barely begun. Manjule wants us to know that the seed has been sown. And it all began when two people 'dared' to fall in love.

Sairat was arguably intended to stir up a fiery debate on how love is accepted -- or unaccepted -- in the modern society. And it does a remarkable job of provoking horror when all we did at first was revel in its vibrancy. The occasional unnecessary scenes aside, it is a brave film that deals with a touchy subject and tries just as bravely to be a commercial film. Let's just hope there's more to come while we relish this one.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Avinash Arun's "Killa" is a mesmerizing examination of childhood.

It is fast turning into a year of debutants. 

So far, we have had Chaitanya Tamhane's Court and M. Manikandan's Kaaka Muttai that have left indelible impressions, that have given us plenty reasons to whoop, that have left us feeling exceedingly optimistic for the future of Indian cinema. That's a good enough reason to celebrate.

But there is one film, one sensational film, that stands out among these gems, the vanquisher. Avinash Arun's profound and intricately constructed debut, Killa, is the film of the year. And I'm not talking about Indian cinema specifically when I proclaim that.

I have always believed that the most difficult of all stories to tell involve deciphering children and their emotions, how their minds function, how they survey the world we live in. It's a complex subject to explore that is often incorrigibly simplified, but when done right, I find that there is no greater joy than looking at the world through the eyes of children. Arun's Killa does exactly what one would look for in a film about children: it presents children as they are. Emotionally complex, eternally buoyant and frequently misunderstood. No falsities, no oversimplification. Only sensitivity. 

It's a quiet, almost meditative and painfully poignant reflection on childhood, the earthshaking distress we feel when we are estranged from our friends, how venting our unhappiness on the world becomes our only source of solace in these times, not realizing that the world already has heaps of problems to deal with in the first place. The balance it manages to strike between humor and poignancy is superlative. Rarely has a debutant demonstrated such tactfulness. It's generously scattered with moments so charming, so impossibly funny -- one of the factors that contributed to the humor is how truthful the shenanigans the kids pull off are -- that I could not resist grinning. It's almost as if we needed reminding that to enjoy a film, it needs to speak to us by telling us something about ourselves, not through disposable gimmicks. 

While Arun takes his time building his world in affectionate detail in the first-half, subtly establishing his characters and the relationships they share, it's in the second-half that the film turns into something more than what initially met the eye. Strained relationships are skillfully and unhurriedly examined in wordless scenes, through mournful glances and furtive smiles, and a boy finally comes of age. In an empathetically crafted sequence, he realizes the worth of having a mother from the unlikeliest of people. A world in which he was a misfit, a home in which he felt isolated become a part of his identity and he gradually comes to accept them as his own. It is in the capturing of this exquisite moment that Arun won my salute. It's a passing moment that is difficult to spot, for it is ever so discreet, but its overpoweringly wistful effect is felt somewhere near the end. It's the kind of moment that turns great films into enduring masterworks.

It only helps that Killa is one gorgeously shot film. The lush hills, mud paths, rusty bridges and blue seas are characters in themselves, being as much parts of the protagonists' lives as the landscapes, contributing a great deal to the film's moody atmosphere. I doffed my hat to Arun's spirited camerawork that engages us swiftly into the small but devotedly composed world. The performances, from even the smallest actors in the briefest roles, are brilliantly multilayered, and the young lot does wonders. They carry the whole film on their shoulders and make it look like a cakewalk. Parth Bhalerao, perhaps the most recognizable actor from the young lot, is particularly miraculous. His brusque Bandya is a character of warmth and goofiness, but he manages to imbue him with a sadness that is hard to describe.

Killa, eventually, is a heartbreaking film. A hushed montage of the people and places we have come to know and care for plays in the final few minutes, and ends with a moment of great hope. In a film that is full of heart, it is the heart it aims at till fade-out. 

It hardly needs pointing out that it is the film to outclass this year.

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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.