Court

Story: The film revolves around the case of ballad singer-activist Narayan Kamble (Vira Sathidar), aged 65, who is arrested on the grounds of allegedly abetting the suicide of conservancy worker Vasudev Pawar with one of his supposedly provocative songs.

Review: Criminal defence lawyer Vinay Vohra (Vivek Gomber), hailing from a rich Gujarati family takes it upon himself to fight for Kamble’s bail. Prosecution lawyer Nutan (Gitanjali Kulkarni) ensures he doesn’t. Kamble’s trial proceedings, Judge Sadavarte’s (Pradeep Joshi) understanding of the case, the difference in the mindset of a younger English-speaking Vohra and his seasoned middle-class counterpart who looks at the accused as nothing more than a ‘case’, forms the story.



If you have grown up on Bollywood courtroom dramas that harped on words like ‘insaaf, andha kanoon, Meelord (read: My lord), tareek pe tareek, adalat ka keemti waqt’ etc, predominantly in Marathi with English subtitles, Court is one heck of an eye-opener. It will startle you even more, if you haven’t had to visit the courts ever.

Debutant director Chaitanya Tamhane’s National Award-winning film works as a social satire. It breaks the stereotypes in the most understated manner to give you the biting reality of our country’s flawed judicial system. It smartly mocks the outdated laws, class divide that subconsciously shapes our thinking and lack of logical reasoning in the court of justice with rationalism and dark humour. Intelligently scripted and authentically executed, despite exposing the sorry state of affairs of our legal system, Court doesn’t seem politically driven or made with an agenda.

However, what impresses you the most about Court is how it captures the minutiae of its characters’ everyday lives and their backgrounds brilliantly. That routine train conversation between Nutan and her friend, Vohra’s lonely car ride back home after a hard day at work, Kamble’s relentless attempts at inspiring people through his Powadas (Marathi ballads), which earn him no money… you relate somewhere to each and every one of them and the circumstances in which they do the things they do.

Court not only mirrors the reality of court proceedings but also makes us question our own beliefs and notions.