Justice and the administering of it has a similar subjective relationship as the art and the artist, in that, the implementation of the former is too dependent on the interpretation of the latter, the definition of the former rests on the delivery of the latter. The term justice itself is so open ended that probably even after six thousand years of functional societies, with norms, rules, regulations and punishments, human civilization hasn't entirely settled on a firm idea of what "proportional justice" tantamounts to. And consequently each law, open to its own reading and understanding by a judge and jury, delivers a different kind of justice for similar situations, precedences be damned. And all this when every aspect of the justice delivery system is considered fair, impartial and balanced. Now throw in bias, prejudice, pressure, unfairness and intolerance into the mix, and the definition of justice becomes even more muddled. A young girl gets brutally violated and thrown off the bus in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere and the girl hangs on her dear life in the dead cold, only to be rescued and resuscitated a few hours later. The doctors are later reported to be praying for her quick death than having to endure the excruciating pain that she braved in her final few days. The nation rises up. Calls for eye for an eye, entrails for entrails, disembowelment for disembowelment rise in fever pitch - Justice of a different kind - mob justice. Under such circumstances, it becomes extremely hard to act civilized and allow law to proceed in an orderly fashion and hope for justice to deliver a response that is commensurate to the crime. What is even a proportional response in the face of such a savage barbarism - reformation of the criminals? repentance of their crimes? paying dues to the society? To raise the temperatures even further, add class, caste, region, and religion to watch even grotesque contortions of justice, which goes on to prove that justice, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. What seems just to one in one set of conditions, necessary even in another set of conditions, seems egregious in a different set. And hopping one legged is justice, from one extreme position to the next, holding steadfast to the one immutable law in jurisprudence that Justice is indeed blind, more times for all the wrong reasons.
What a balanced writing "Court" is! "Court" is not a lot of things - it is never in excess, never overtly anything - sentimental, emotional or sympathetic, and never manipulative, including the love scenes written for the young pair where there is a latitude for permissiveness and yet never crosses into crassness or strays beyond the levels of decency, staying true to the age, maturity and innocence. The case is a run of the mill POCSO, slapped against a love affair between an adolescent couple caught in the divide of major-minor age distinctions, in the cross hairs of rich-poor class hegemony, with the important distinction that the accused is a boy who barely tided over the arbitary age limit and a girl who is unlucky by a few more paces from the legal boundary. The girl's family objects, slaps a POCSO on the boy and the movie is all about the legal entangle that the draconian law unleashes on the unwitting victim and his family. "Court" should above all be commended for staying commitedly on course to the legal side of things without veering into the unnecessary sidelanes. Politics and Legalities are two aspects of Indian soceity that the public is already quite wary and weary about. Rub the wrong side of either, run afoul against any, the consequences are limitless. When the true tyranny of power - administrative, enforecement or legal - presses itself against the meek and the weak, the results are an endless spiral into a bottomless abyss (as an old Ajith joke goes "Robert! drown him in a vat of liquid oxygen, the liquid does not let him live, the oxygen does not let him die"). "Court" makes a fine case for the wooden wheels of justice that creaks and squeaks along in the general direction of end result, littering its path with stays, appeals, vacations, deferrments and postponements, much to the delight of the litigators and the chagrin of the litigants. The climax speech delivered by the defense lawyer is as measured as any, arguing both for the need for such tough laws (POCSO, Nirbaya, POTA, Dowry prohibition and such) to protect the society against its worst tendencies and also the abuse of those same by a different set of worst tendencies, who want its enemies to crash, burn and suffer in the fire pit of unforgiving furies. Allegations of cow slaughter, lynching by the mob first, following by home demolitions by the legal system. Love jihad, lynching or rioting whichever comes earlier, POSCO, whereever applicable. Love marriage gone wrong, Dowry prohibition act in its finest silks. Whoever said there's two sides to everything certainly had Indian Legal System (er... Bharat Nyay Samhita) in his mind.
While all the actors, seasoned and new entrants alike, deliver fine and nuanced performances, it is Sivaji who truly walks away with the acting honors, with his menacing looks, fiery demanor and a dialogue delivery that has every word dancing on the sharp edge of the finest knife. What an absolute delight it is watching a telugu villain speak the language the way it is written, the way it should be spoken and the way it is intended. The first glimpse of his character explaining why he framed his milkman for his son's foible, switching from empathy to snark to mockery and finally land on pure cruelty is a visual and aural treat, harking back to the days of yesteryear's telugu antagonists, whose villainy was little about the physicality and all about the curious inflections in their speech patterns - Kota, Rao Gopal Rao, Satyanarayana et al. Bucking the trend of second rung heroes settling into negative characters purely for shock value (like the aged heroines turning into glamorous mommies and aunties to their younger replacements), Sivaji makes a strong case for what an actor, with an amazing faculty of the native tongue, can deliver.
On the shoulders of strong technical and theatrical performances, "Court" indeed delivers! Kudos!
checkout http://kanchib.blogspot.com for Srinivas's Blog.
