Court

 Court is Chaitanya Tamhane's impressive debut picture, released in 2014.  (Tamhane's equally imposing The Disciple was dropped with little fanfare on Netflix a month ago -- it is now one of the best pictures on that streaming service.)  Court, although restrained to the point of austerity, is a savage indictment of the Indian legal system, particularly with respect to its treatment of political dissidents.  However, it bears noting that the court proceedings shown in the film would not seem irregular to most American lawyers.  The judicial machinery so scrupulously displayed in the movie is, more or less, identical with what someone would observe in a criminal trial court in the United States or, I suspect, pretty much anywhere in the world.  The law and its procedures are generally invariable and the broad outlines of legal process, intrinsic to the adversary system, are the same from Mumbai (where this film was made) to Teheran and the Mower County District Court, the venue with which I am most familiar.  Simply stated, the law is inefficient, often cruel and blundering in its effects, and has nothing to do with the metaphysics of justice.  But, as lawyers understand, justice in the abstract is unattainable and law is all we have.  

On the evidence of Court, criminal defendants in India are not granted a privilege against self-incrimination -- that is, they can be compelled to testify.  Criminal trials are squeezed into a crowded docket and, apparently, conducted piece-meal -- that is, a Judge will hear the testimony of a witness or two and, then, adjourn until more witnesses can be summoned to the proceedings.  As in most countries, India tries cases to the Bench -- there is no  jury, a procedural factor that conduces to the Court hearing the trial in small increments.  Apparently, in India, a criminal defendant who is doing well in the course of his or her trial -- that is, who seems proceeding toward an acquittal -- may be granted bail previously denied at the preliminary arraignment.  Interestingly, the trial judge will make a verbal "note" of factors that he or she think important -- in this way, counsel is guided to a better understanding as to how the Judge views the case as it progresses.  Although Court doesn't portray the Appellate system, of course, there are appeals judges supervising the activities in the trial court -- it seems that interlocutory appeals may be granted:  at one point, when a lawyer protests a recess over the holidays (during which time his client will be incarcerated), the Judge coldly notes that the High Court is always in session.  Clearly, there are some idiosyncrasies in Indian practice that are different from the American criminal system, but trial courts in Mumbai operate according to the paradigms of Anglo-American jurisprudence and the general sense of baffled paralysis that afflicts courts all around the world is evident in Tamhane's film.

The story, really just a sequence of documentary-like extended shots, is simple.  Tamhane operates in a classical mode -- his shots are usually symmetrical; there is no quick cutting of any kind and he never moves the camera (at least as far as I noticed).  The narrative material is schematically presented.  The film is divided between three protagonists:  a public defender, Vinay Vora, the public prosecutor as she is called -- I'm not sure that she is named in the picture; and the Judge.  Noteworthy is the lack of emphasis placed on the criminal defendant whose trial is portrayed in the film, a "folk singer" named Narayan Kamble charged with "abetment of suicide".  The victim of Kamble's abetment, a gruesomely poor sewer worker called Vasudev, is also merely incidental to the action -- there are no flashbacks and the truth about his horrible death is never really established.  The film's thesis is that the defendant and his alleged victim are just grist for the judicial mill and have no real significance in the proceedings.  This is characteristic of criminal justice:  defendants come and go, but the Court personnel involved with them persist and are the real protagonists of the system.  Each of the three principals in the film  is shown at home (or with their families) and, also, portrayed in some form of recreation.  The defense lawyer has a bad relationship with his father; his mother takes both sides at the dinner table, sometimes supporting her husband and, sometimes, her son -- from the way she speaks, I presumed that she was a lawyer herself although probably retired.  Vijay Vora lives alone.  His mother harasses him about not getting married.  In one scene, we see him on a date with an attractive woman -- they go to a bar where a folk singer performs a Portuguese fado.  The lady prosecutor is a humble public servant -- she rides the bus to and from Court and, when she gets home, has to prepare supper for her two children and her husband (who has diabetes and has to eat a special diet).  We see her entertaining herself by attending with her husband some kind of theater that features grossly racist comedy -- Mumbai seems to be riven between "northern Indians" who are regarded as predatory buffoons (lazy, shiftless, and after "our women") and the Marathi-speaking majority.  There is some kind of subtext involving language -- at one point, Vijay Vora asks the Judge to require witnesses and counsel to speak either Hindi or English; he's ignored.  Vora has a much darker-skinned paralegal or investigator who seems to be a native-speaker of Marathi.  The paralegal translates or acts as an intermediary for the lawyer with the people in the slum and, also, Vora's client, Mr. Kamble.  Finally, we see the Judge and his extended family enjoying a resort during the Holiday while Kamble, who is ailing, languishes in jail.  Kamble is charged with operating some sort of festival in which young people are indoctrinated to become "terrorists" -- this charge is in addition to his indictment for "abetment of suicide."  The Judge and his family seem to be attending a "Capitalist" Camp where everyone talks about investment strategies, their MBAs, and the salaries earned by entrepreneurs in Bangalore.  But, like the other characters, all is not well in Judge's family -- his grandson is, apparently, autistic and doesn't speak (the Judge proposes consulting a "numerologist" and making the boy wear a certain kind of gemstone on a ring on his middle finger.)  In the final scene, the Judge has fallen asleep in a lawn chair  at the posh resort-- the little kids, apparently his grandchildren, rudely arouse him; the judge slaps one of the kids who cries loudly and, then, he seems to fall asleep again -- I assume that this sequence is intended to be allegorical in some way:  Justice slumbers until it slaps a helpless victim.  

The film is scrupulous and doesn't really take sides.  Mr. Kamble is a pain-in-the-ass, self-righteous and ungrateful.  He can't get reasonable bail since he has "jumped bail" in the past.  He has a long criminal history of politically motivated charges.  He's unwilling (or unable) to temper his behavior.  When he's finally released on bail, he immediately appears at another rally, performs a "flame-throwing" song full of all sorts of extremist imagery and, then, publishes a book on his humiliation in Court, resulting, of course, in being arrested on new charges.  The man, although perhaps virtuous, seems to be a professional martyr.  The trial arises from the death of a sewer worker.  This man was pulled out of a noisome "black hole", apparently raw sewage, dead and so covered in rotting filth that no one could abide to be in the presence of the corpse.  Although the public prosecutor, a self-righteous and irritating advocate, claims that the man committed suicide by discarding his masks and protective equipment and diving into the sewer unprotected -- allegedly under the influence of Kamble's inflammatory song --- in fact, it's pretty apparent that the worker had no protective gear at all.  We learn that he was an alcoholic who regularly beat his wife and children.  However, the sewer worker drank before going to work to numb his senses against the stench.  He had lost an eye to infection and his way of determining whether a sewer was safe to enter was pitching a stone into the cloaca to see if cockroaches fled -- if the cockroaches were sufficiently sentient to escape the sewer than the worker assumed it was safe to enter.  The scene in which the man's widow testifies is disturbing as is a sequence in which the woman returns to the slum where she lived before fleeing Mumbai for her village -- the slum is awful beyond belief.  Near the end of the movie, the Judge notes that the prosecutor's case is falling apart -- there's no proof other than a cop willing to perjure himself (well-known because of appearances in other political cases) that the sewer worker even heard the inflammatory protest song on which the case is based.  In fact, there probably isn't even a protest song on the subject of committing suicide by diving into a sewer.  "Have you written a song on that subject?" the lady prosecutor asks.  "Not yet," the protest singer replies.  "But I might."  "Note that!" the Judge says to his Court Reporter.  

Tamhane casts the film with a large non-professional staff although the Judge, Kamble, and the lawyers are all trained actors.  Almost every shot begins with none of the principal players visible -- the character, then, appears in the shot, interacts with others, and leaves the frame.  Both before and after the main character appears the camera lingers on the image.  For instance, in the last court sequence, filmed from the back of the courtroom, everyone leaves and the bailiff putters around putting items back in place and shutting off lights.  He shuts the door to the Court and the shot continues showing the dim, empty courtroom for another fifteen seconds.  There are almost no close-ups.  Tamhane frames the images from a distance.  The approach is non-hierarchical -- the viewer isn't guided as to what he or she should look at; instead, you get to choose what interests you in the shot.  There is no music other than songs that are part of the evidence as it were -- Mr. Kamble performs something that seems akin to rap music, but it's bouncier and more melodic, with a back-up chorus like a Mo-Town record repeating back key-phrases in his lyrics.  There are racial and ethnic aspects of the film that I don't understand.  In one scene, the defense lawyer mentions the Goymari sect, a religious group that was once persecuted but now seems to have some kind of protected status.  The prosecutor denounces her adversary for making "injurious comments" about the Goymari's.  Later, they attack the defense lawyer and say that they are going "to blacken his face."  Exactly what they do is unclear to me.  But we see the defense lawyer sobbing in his bed, his face turned away from us.  (Tamhane is nothing if not discrete and de-dramatizes many of his scenes.)  Later, the defense lawyer is shown in what looks like a spa with some kind of steam treatment blowing mist onto his face.  Tamhane's camera placement and mise-en-scene is ingenious.  In one early scene, we see the defense advocate delivering an address to a group like the Civil Liberties Union.  Suddenly, an official-looking fellow appears and we immediately think (based on earlier scenes) that the authorities are breaking up the meeting -- but the man is only on-stage to place a fan to blow air on a panel on the dais.  (It's the sort of thing you might see at any Continuing Legal Education session.)  The film is brilliant, very funny, and disturbing. '

(Since writing this note, I have now learned a few things that have a bearing on this film.  The defense lawyer speaks a fourth language, Gujarti.  This is the tongue spoken by his parents.  The Judge, prosecutor, and accused all speak Marathi which is the prevalent language in the part of India shown in the movie.  Tamhane has acknowledged that the scene where the defendant is interrogated by the prosecutor is fiction -- in India, the accused is accorded a privilege against self-incrimination as here.)