Review: COURT

Jaw Drop! Court Chaalu Aahe!

3 and a 1/2 stars

Mini Review:

Just when you think movies have become formulaic, along comes a film that does not insult your intelligence, keeps you riveted to the screen, makes you pay attention, and makes your jaws drop as you watch judiciary in action. Watch this film.

Main Review:

They say that once you are caught in the rigmarole of courts and the law, you could spend a lifetime extricating yourself. In astrology too, they say that Saturn casts it lumbering, testing shadow only for seven and a half years (the 'sadhe saati'), but once you get on the wrong side of the law, there's no escape...

Keeping that in your mind, you watch the story unfold in the most non-descript court you have seen. So ordinary and so evil, you wish for the comfort of the courtroom theatrics you have seen in Hindi movies like Damini, Meri Jung, Shahenshah, Insaaf Ki Awaaz, Kanoon, Justice Choudhary, Vishwanath and more... You want lawyers to present evidence dramatically and with a flourish, you want to hear them say, 'Me Lord!' and yell, 'Objection!'...

There is, alas, no drama here. But you watch helplessly as the court insidiously chips away at logic and reason and takes cover behind the most ridiculous laws. You watch the law go after a folk singer with the same cruel certainty as a child's fingers would slowly pull off a dragonfly's wings...

Initially you are quite zapped by the aimless shifts from the goings on at court to something that makes you think, 'What the heck is this?' And then you get it! And you delight in the wickedness of the director. He is deliciously evil as he plays with your emotions and makes you get into every character's head and then turns you upside down when you see that the court remains inhuman even though the characters are all too vulnerable and like the person sitting next to you on the bus...

This movie could do with better subtitles. But the subtitles add to the ordinaryness of the days in the lives of the men and women in the justice system.

You must watch this movie simply because it is a unique piece of cinema. And also because it could happen to you some day...