Movie Review : Court

Title : Court
Language : Marathi
Year : 2014
Director : Chaitanya Tamhane
Genre : Drama
IMDB Link
Watch trailer on YouTube
Lead Role : Usha Bane, Vivek Gomber, Pradeep Joshi

As the title seems to suggest, Court is a courtroom drama on the very outset. But it is not all about two lawyers traversing through the sections of IPC and the final verdict by the judge. Rather the movie goes on to show us glimpses of their personal lives, including their public dealings, homely chores and social circles.

A folk singer by the name Narayan Kamble is framed and brought in for a trail. He is accused of having inspired the alleged suicide of a sewage worker through one of his poems. To draw an analogy from the timeless classic 12 Angry Men, the plot focuses more on the process than on finding out if the accused is indeed guilty or not.

The debutante director has succeeded in presenting the sequences in a realistic manner. This is probably novel in Indian cinema, whose courtroom dramas are famous for punch dialogues and emotional outbursts by lawyers and others.

It is a considerable achievement for the writer-director that his first endeavor won the Best Film India Award, besides being chosen as the country's official entry for the Oscars. That said, I must say I failed in understanding why the movie was selected in the first place. As for me I did not find anything that could be described extraordinarily brilliant or out of the box. This is the second time I am being let down by a film that represents India at the Oscars. The other movie was Gujarati film The Good Road. Perhaps knowledge of the language is necessary to enjoy the finer nuances. For instance, after watching the Malayalam movie Adaminte Makan Abu, I was totally moved.

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