Marathi film ” Court ” is india’s entry to oscars 2016

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Marathi film Court becomes India’s first official entry for Oscars! Directed by Chaitanya Tamhane, one of the leading international magazines described the film as, “an impressive debut that flays alive India’s judicial system thanks to an intelligent, superbly understated script!” Directed by Chaitanya Tamhane, this 116 minutes duration film is now the official entry for Oscar awards from India.

The Marathi film Courtan absurdist drama about a trial in India that takes almost precisely the opposite structural approach, devoting as much screen time to the mundane personal lives of the prosecutor, the defense attorney, and the judge as it does to the case itself. Thus it has excellently demonstrated how many different, equally rewarding ways there are to tackle any given subject.

Initially, there’s at least some ambiguity regarding the case of Narayan Kamble (non-professional actor and real-life activist Vira Sathidar), a folk singer who’s arrested and charged with having abetted the suicide of a sewer-maintenance worker. Kamble had performed near the dead man’s home just two days before the corpse was discovered underground, and prosecutor Nutan (Geetanjali Kulkarni) presents a witness who states that one of Kamble’s songs at that concert urged impoverished workers to shed light upon injustice by killing themselves. Kamble’s own prickly testimony, in which at one point he claims not to have written such an inflammatory song “yet,” doesn’t exactly endear him to the judge (Pradeep Joshi), nor to the viewer.

Court movie selected for Oscars

 

Remarkably, Court is the first feature written and directed by Chaitanya Tamhane, who at 28 possesses the formal assurance of a filmmaker with plenty of experience. Tamhane shoots the courtroom scenes using stark, fixed angles, but the heart of the movie consists of the more fluid sequences that follow the characters around as they go about their daily business. One gorgeous, subtly revelatory shot pivots around Vora in an upscale bar to showcase a woman singing pop songs in English and Brazilian; there’s no dialogue at all (apart from the singer’s stage banter), and the scene doesn’t advance the story, but it’s one of many ways that Court emphasizes the defense attorney’s wealthy, privileged background, which makes for a stark contrast with the profession he’s chosen. (When Kamble is finally granted bail, after months in detention, Vora pays it, knowing it’s unlikely that he’ll ever see the money again.) At the same time, though, Tamhane refuses to demonize Nutan, the prosecutor, who lives a lower-middle-class existence and treats her job with the bland, obligatory professionalism one would expect from someone in retail. Even the extent to which racism may influence Kamble’s prosecution—he’s Marathi, and there are occasional snide remarks about “immigrants”—gets stealthily underplayed, at least to Western eyes.

Given how strenuously Court avoids creating easy, pat parallels between the personal and the political, it’s a bit disappointing when the film’s epilogue makes precisely that mistake. The final shot, in particular, is way too on the nose. For the most part, Tamhane improbably succeeds in creating a damning courtroom drama that derives much of its power from observing the cogs in the machinery when the machine is switched off.

The way this movie has dealt with the subject as sensitive as Indian courts, the film nailed it with the amazing portrayal. Full of black humor the film presents an impressive portrayal of paradoxes and contradictions that surround the Indian courts. The characters are very well thought and each and every actor in the film look surreal and convincing. Not many know that this court room drama already has 18 international and prestigious awards in its kitty!

 

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