Court

Chai­tanya Tamhane’s cam­era watch­es from a dis­tance. His sta­t­ic wide shots cap­ture the dra­mas of inter­sect­ing lives in Mum­bai, let­ting mean­ing grad­u­al­ly reveal itself. Evi­dence accu­mu­lates until there is a vivid picture.

The tri­al of a provoca­tive singer named Narayan (Vira Sathi­dar) pro­vides the sto­ry arc, but this is not a gener­ic legal pro­ce­dur­al. Tamhane plots his scenes to play out at a nat­u­ral­is­tic pace, cam­ou­flag­ing social details with­in banal sit­u­a­tions in the vein of the late, great Chan­tal Aker­man. His depic­tion of the Indi­an judi­cial sys­tem is cor­us­cat­ing, but this is not imme­di­ate­ly clear from the film’s gen­tle tone.

Before Narayan is arrest­ed he is shown teach­ing a group of small chil­dren. He chants three sets of ques­tions and receives three sets of answers before the police come to escort him away. There are no hys­ter­ics or speech­es, just one event inter­rupt­ing anoth­er. He is up on the charge of incit­ing a sew­er­age work­er to com­mit sui­cide through one of his songs. Vinay (Vivek Gomber) defends him in court. Nutan (Gee­tan­jali Kulka­rni) is the pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor. Lat­er we see both lawyers’ home lives. The quest­ing, pro­gres­sive male will act like a sulky child to his par­ents. The female lawyer will pass a bus jour­ney exchang­ing domes­tic tips with a friend. Their jobs are just a part of their day.

It is mar­vel­lous that Tamhane doesn’t weight any of his scenes more heav­i­ly than oth­ers, espe­cial­ly when the con­tent ranges from light­ly humourous to total­ly infu­ri­at­ing. Narayan is a harm­less if defi­ant old man of fail­ing health. It is an insult against rea­son that he is being tried for caus­ing sui­cide by song. Insti­tu­tion­al cor­rup­tion and out­dat­ed laws min­gle togeth­er mak­ing it impos­si­ble to ful­ly under­stand which is the key influ­ence over indi­vid­ual author­i­ty figures.

By show­ing his char­ac­ters from an inscrutable dis­tance, let­ting us appre­ci­ate their foibles with­out under­stand­ing them inside-out, Tamhane indicts the legal sys­tem itself, rather than char­ac­ters with­in it coast­ing on the waves of their lives.