The story is about the misuse of the legal system, and it works because of the love story at the centre and the sturdy nature of the courtroom drama. The rest of this review may contain spoilers.
The crux of Ram Jagadeesh’s debut feature, Court – State vs a Nobody, revolves around a young man who’s charged under the act we now know as POCSO (Protection of Children against Sexual Offences). The young man’s name is Chandu (Harsh Roshan). He makes a living with a bunch of odd jobs, with his watchman-father screaming at him for not studying further and aiming higher in life. Chandu falls for Jabili (Sridevi), who comes from a well-off family, lorded over by a powerful uncle named Mangapathi (Sivaji). When Mangapathi finds out about Chandu and Jabili, he wastes no time in getting the young man arrested, because Jabili is (just) under 18. In other words, though we seem to be watching a courtroom drama with all the fiery theatrics of the genre, the story underneath is one that’s very familiar to us: a rich girl falls for a poor boy, and the villain tries to tear them apart.
The film has two narrative threads. First, we get the love story between Chandu and Jabili, with the lawyer-protagonist in the background. (His name is Teja, and he’s played by Priyadarshi.) Then, Teja’s story takes over – that is, his attempts to save Chandu – and the love story slips into the background. Of these two narratives, the love story wins. Harsh Roshan and Sridevi are wonderfully fresh-faced and raw. They don’t have to act. They just have to be. It’s like watching two youngsters come of age in front of a camera. Chandu and Jabili don’t meet for a long time (they flirt over phone conversations), and when he finally realises that he is in her presence, that he knows what she looks like, his happiness spills over the screen and you smile for him. And later, when they finally embrace, the moment is slowly amped up and you know that a song is coming. And when the song (‘Premalo’) comes, it’s lovely – both as a composition, and as a reminder that the rhythms of mainstream cinema are timeless.
On the other hand, we have Teja, who works for a boss who won’t let him take on a case just yet. This is the weaker narrative thread, because everything is voiced via dialogue. We don’t feel Teja’s frustration. We are told about it. We aren’t allowed to gradually realise what a brilliant lawyer Teja’s boss is. We are instantly told about it. When Teja faces the prosecution lawyer played by Harsha Vardhan, we see right away that the man is a snake. He is given lines that express every single emotion, along with reaction shots that just about stop short of him twirling his big mostache. (And that is only because he is clean-shaven.) Melodrama is a legitimate style/genre, but Court hammers away at you so hard (supported by Vijai Bulganin’s thunderous score) that the villains begin to resemble caricatures after a point.
As Mangapathi, Sivaji gives a solid performance in tune with the film’s tonality, but by reducing him to pure evil right from his first scene, the character stands little chance of becoming human. (He shouts at a little girl in the family who’s wearing a sleeveless frock.) For instance, why does this man wield so much power over Jabili’s family after her father’s death? Is his influence over the small town, including the cops, a result of his richness? Or is there something more? A little definition would have helped shape the character. Yes, you could argue that he is “the villain”, and that is all we need to know – but even bad men can have a few shades that go beyond the badness. And so, apart from the love story, everything in the first half of Court is one-note. And very, very loud. This is the kind of film that cuts between Chandu having food in jail with his mother at home, unable to eat because she can’t digest her son’s plight.
The second half, however, is much stronger. I still wished for a few asides – say, a conversation between Chandu’s parents. But the film is saved by the sturdy nature of the courtroom drama: the lying witnesses, the shocking video evidence, the doctor who is bribed, the Big Mystery of what really makes this case stand… All of this is written a tad too conveniently, but the scenes still work. I think the success of Court will depend on whether you buy the Big Mystery that is unpacked for us at the very end. I think one set of viewers will go: “After all that buildup, this is what really happened?” The other set is going to find it super-charming, super-unexpected, super-romantic, and exactly what a certain kind of old-fashioned love is all about. I found myself in the latter category.
Like in the first half, the Chandu-Jabili scenes work very well – and moreso because we are made to wait for them. Because the second half belongs mostly to Teja, and Priyardarshi nails his big moments perfectly. (I also liked the judge, who seems to sense that something fishy is going on.) I loved the fact that the photo Chandu takes with him when he is jailed is not of Jabili but his mother. That is the kind of touch the film needed more of. We get another important mother-figure played by a very effective Rohini. When she learns that her daughter was in a room with a boy, she instantly assumes they had sex. Teja gives a big speech about how acts like POCSO are misused, and his points are well taken – but there’s a bigger message in the Rohini character’s assumptions about sex. It says a lot about our society. And the fact that this point is brought across without explicit dialogues makes it even sweeter. I would have liked the film to have had some more of this restraint, but there’s no denying that – despite its shortcomings – Court is a powerful audience-pleaser.
