MARATHI MOVIE - COURT

I finally got down to watching the movie COURT which is referred to as a Marathi movie but in fact is not.  One can describe it as a multi-lingual Indian movie.

Opinion about the movie seems to be sharply divided, with a majority of the folks who have watched it largely describing the movie as a “Big bore, a waste of time and a movie in which absolutely nothing happens”.  Some of these observations bear an uncanny resemblance to what a critic once said about Samuel Beckett’s book WAITING FOR GODOT – “Nothing happens – it is terrifying”.  GODOT is acclaimed as a work of literary genius for all times.  And yes, absolutely nothing happens in it.  I remember having had to really struggle through reading it. But I also know it has stayed with me and has affected me in a way that is difficult to describe by putting pen to paper.  In fact I have had a similar experience with quite a few books – Catch 22, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pather Panchali, 1984, The Iliad, the 12^th Chapter of the Bhagvad Geeta.  Nothing seems to happen, you have to really labour your way through them pondering en route whether they are worth the effort. Yet you find that such creations stay with you and it is only much later that you realize that the drip-drip at the back of your mind for all those years was the creation seeping into your thought.  Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations and Tilak’s Geetarahasya are possibly the most sublime examples I have come across.  Of the former I have managed to digest ten pages, of the latter three paragraphs.

Of course, it does not necessarily mean that every movie or book that tortures you is valuable.  But it might give us a perspective on COURT.

I prefer to steer clear of either saying I liked COURT or I hated it.  I don’t feel it necessary to give a verdict.   Too many of us are in too much of a hurry to state an opinion.  perhaps we should give ourselves time.  Twenty or so years ago a movie by the name USKI ROTI (उसकी रोटी) played on Doordarshan.  Nothing happened in that movie. But it has left a niggle at the back of my mind.  I am not for a moment trying to subtly establish myself as a person with refined and sublime tastes. Because the other movie that I remember was a Doordarshan movie in which a Marathi actor Dilip Kulkarni played a police inspector.  I don’t remember the name of the movie and it was a regular movie in which an investigating officer solves a homicide.  So some movies stay with you, others don’t.  That’s one way of judging movies. 

Tarantino once said that there are two kinds of movie lovers – one who just like watching movies and two, those who like watching movies they like.  Tarantino is of the former kind, I am of the latter kind.  Maybe there is a sub-kind – those who love movies that, from the first frame unto the last do  one of more of the following unto them – move them to tears, raise their hair, lift them into a state of  euphoria, make them feel vindicated or proud or angry – essentially evoke strong emotions.  Well, COURT is not one of those movies.  And since I suspect a large percentage of the population is today inclined towards movies that inject emotion copiously, it is not likely that COURT will win too many fans.

I will now venture into the thoughts that COURT triggered within me.

ONE – WE ARE AN IRRATIONAL PEOPLE PRETENDING TO BE RATIONAL

This observation will invite patriotic wrath upon me.  So be it.  But I really don’t mean this in a self-deprecating way.  Is it really terrible being irrational?  Square root of 2 is an irrational number.  Pythagoras actually had a student murdered for suggesting this.  Yet Mathematics is the queen of sciences.  I think the problem is not that as a society we are irrational.  Rather the problem is that we have embraced systems of functioning that require rational thought, yet we continue to think irrationally.  The judge in the movie supposedly practises rational jurisprudence, yet is extremely irrational – he summarily dismisses a witness appearing in court wearing a “sleeveless” dress.  He believes that the correct medical treatment for a kid who does not speak yet otherwise seems to be active and chirpy is not speech therapy but numerology.  The said judge, with his irrational thought process,  would do a most commendable job as the adjudicator in a khaap/jaat panchayat (caste court) or in Maharashtra as the respected elder of a गावकी (village council).  But put him in a pivotal position in a system of justice which is based on the assumption that Aristotelean logic is the basic level of thought and you have what we see in COURT.

We need to either imbibe rational thinking or go back to systems designed for irrational thought.

In passing I must mention that the actor who played the judge’s role has enacted it to absolute perfection.

TWO – MANUFACTURING AN ENEMY – THE BINAYAK SEN SYNDROME

If I were to find myself in the middle of a failure, I would broadly have two options in front of me.  One - fix things, trying to convert failure into success.  Or two - which is easier to choose – pin the blame on someone.  The rulers of this country seem to have chosen two.  And by rulers of this country I don’t mean the incumbent government.  This has been going on for at least three decades.  After years of pursuing option two, the government and administrative machinery have now perfected the art of manufacturing enemies.  It might have started with the old and convenient “foreign hand”.  If you recall the movie in vivid details as I do, you will realize that never has a motive been discussed for victimizing Narayan Kamble.  Nobody seems to have nursed a real grudge against him.  He does not seem to have really, really offended anybody.  But he is just there – nice and convenient, awaiting crucifixion for a crime which the state routinely commits against sanitation workers.  I don’t know what we should call this – the theatre of the absurd? – it most certainly is Kafkaesque.  The Municipal Corporation of Mumbai has cash reserves of … hold your breath … forty thousand crores lodged as bank deposits.  But it cannot fix our gutters.  So it may choose to compensate  by picking an accused, uttering his name and phrases such as “abetment of suicide, sedition, anti-national, terrorist, Indian Penal Code, arson, bombs, national security, security threat” in the same breath, thus successfully manufacturing a villain in the process.  A perfectly Kafkaesque story.  Narayan Kamble is Josef K.  Try this exercise – ask the next ten people you meet who Dr. Binayak Sen is.

THREE – SO MUCH FOR STEREOTYPES

I grew up in a middle class (whatever the hell that means) Maharashtrian family in Mahim. We were brought up to believe that all the sensitivity and fairness in the city of Mumbai is crammed in the working class tenements of Dadar, Shivaji Park, Parel, Vile Parle etc.  And all the insensitivity, corruption and cruelty resided in Peddar Road, Alta Mount Road etc.  Life’s experiences vaporized these stereo types, sending one through succesive feelings of denial, incredulity and eventually chastened wisdom.

I really liked the inversion of one of the most cherished stereotypes from my childhood.  It gave me perverse pleasure to hear the lady public prosecutor from a hard working, middle class Maharashtrian family say something to the following effect – “Why doesn’t the judge just get on with it and put him away for twenty years?”.  And the contrasting scene of the wealthy, high society lawyer Vinay Vora breaking down and sobbing softly in the seclusion of his bedroom.  I am not for or against either demographic in a blanket manner, but I do enjoy the crackling noise of a stereotype crumbling under the weight of its own illogic.

FOUR – BAN THE GODDAMNED MOVIE

I have heard that the repressive military junta that ruled Greece a few decades ago had banned WAITING FOR GODOT.  It seems they did not understand what Beckett was trying to say (who the hell does!?) but they were worried it might have an influence on people that would be inimical to the regime.

If you don’t understand it just bloody ban it.

Since we were are living in the age of bans, especially in Maharashtra, I would strongly recommend that the government ban the movie for its seditious, criminal nothingness.

FIVE – AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH

Narayan Kamble is a performing folk poet.  The actor’s stage renditions of the traditional Marathi folk song form “powada” (पोवाडा ) are powerful and endearing.  That much is granted by most patrons of the movie.  In one such scene the denouement of a folk song is quickly submerged by a dance number wherein school girls gyrate to a hugely popular, raunchy foot-tapping Marathi item number.

So we have poignant “powada” lines such as…

अरे रान रान रान चला उठवू सारे रान रे, जाण जाण जाण जरा दुष्मनाला जाण रे (Pandemonium is here, Time to rise and revolt, Time to know your enemy)

ह्या कत्तलीच्या राती...पोळले हात त्यांना विस्तवाचे दान रे (These nights of massacre,<the rest is untranslatable>)

पैश्याची लागे मात्रा, माणसाचा होई कुत्रा, कुत्र्याची रूपे सतरा (The delusion of illusion, Money – it reigns supreme, Has turned man into a mongrel, This mongrel has 17 breeds…)

..followed by the following suggestive lyrics laced heavily with innuendo

कामावर जायला उशीर झायला, बघतोय रिक्षावाला, ग वाट माझी बघतोय रिक्षावाला (I am late for work, the rickshawwalla is “waiting” for me).

I enjoy a rollicking item number as much as the next guy.  However the contrast, when put in context, is gut-wrenching.  I don’t see why both cannot co-exist.  But the fact remains that they do not co-exist.  The space for anything serious, thoughtful, incisive, trenchant and factual has almost completely been  taken up by the lurid, flashy, glitzy, raunchy, entertaining and amusing.  That clearly is a societal choice.  Perhaps this is what Neil Postman means when he laments the fact that we are amusing ourselves to death or when he bitterly rues the “redefinition of culture as a perpetual round of entertainment”.

SIX – DO WE REALLY NEED MOVIES LIKE COURT?

It seems to me – judging by the reactions to the movie that I have heard - that most of us don’t need such movies to be made.  But a handful of us do need them.  Fair enough.  Why do some of us need such movies?  The probable answer is rather unflattering for us as a society.  We need them because we walk through life with our eyes closed and our senses shut.  If one chats up the BEST bus conductor (for which one needs to get into a BEST bus), there is a fair chance that a COURT will play out.  Recently I had to visit the Panvel district court multiple times for an inheritance deed.  Outside the court building are two parallel stone benches under a tin roof.  I spent a few hours sitting there waiting for the lawyer’s lackey to call me inside to sign affidavits.  If one talks to folks sitting on those benches with a passive, resigned look on their faces, one can experience a few COURTs.  I met a bunch of folks from a nearby village where they said a massive mobile towers  were erected in the recent past and they have had multiple sudden and fatal cases of cancer.  I met a father who was waiting for his son to be brought to the court by the police to obtain a remand for a crime which neither the son nor the father knows much about.  The kid must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.  We know these things happen.  But we are inured to them.  We rush our way past these real life movies, by ensuring that our lawyer gets us first place in the queue, thus eliminating the chance encounter with hundreds and thousands of Narayan Kambles who languish around in the police stations, jails, courts and government offices of this country.  That, I believe, creates space for movies like COURT.  But it’s a space that does not interest most of us.  Amen.

So I come back to the purpose of this post – Did I like COURT?  I must say I did.  The movie did however leave the following  solitary bad taste in my mouth.  On 4^th May 2015, the Maharashtra Times featured on its front page a photograph of the young, superlatively talented director of the movie Chaitanya Tamhane, beaming into the camera as he received an award for COURT from President Pranab Mukherjee with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in attendance.  The caption said…

राष्ट्रीय पातळीवर विविध भाषा आणि हिंदी चित्रपटांच्या शर्यतीत स्वतःचे वेगळेपण सिद्ध करत बाजी मारलेले मराठी दिग्दर्शक चैतन्य ताम्हाणे याच्या “कोर्ट” या चित्रपटाचा रविवारी सुवर्णकमळ देऊन गौरव करण्यात आला.  दिल्लीत विज्ञान भवन येथे राष्ट्रपती प्रणव मुकर्जी यांच्या हस्ते ६२व्या राष्ट्रीय चित्रपट पुरस्कारांचे वितरण झाले. (COURT, the movie directed by Chaitanya Tamhane, the Marathi director who held his own in the face of national competition from movies in Hindi and several Indian languages, was awarded a golden lotus on Sunday.  The 62^nd National Movie Awards were given away by President Pranav Mukerjee at Vidnyan Bhavan in Delhi).

What I am grappling to understand is how the creator of the movie could have allowed himself to be felicitated by the custodians and perpetuators of the very system he has parodied in such a nuanced yet incisive manner?  If that is how it was to end, I am better off with G.A. Kulkarni’s books.  To me, the photograph was the movie’s last mile failure of credibility after a very strong initial 99 mile run.  Unless of course, I am missing the whole point which might be – manufacture Narayan Kambles and then preen over one’s  faithful and artistic portrayal on paper and celluloid of them.

At this point in the post, I went back and watched clips of the movie at home on youtube.  Firstly, some of the scenes moved me to tears accompanied by an acute choking sensation in the throat.  I don’t believe I can pinpoint any bit in the movie that the director could have made better for me.  Secondly, what brings the movie down a few notches is the mortifying experience of watching it in a theatre – the crackle of popcorn plastic, the “what a bore!!” comments from the row behind you, the guffaws where there is no humour etc.  This is a movie to be watched alone in the dead of the night after the hedonists have passed out and one is able to summon the courage to will the surroundings into a state of deafening silence, allowing whatever remains of one’s tattered conscience to surface and then face it squarely.  Tomorrow is another day anyways.