Chaitanya Tamhane’s first feature film Court perfectly explains his political views and the way he chooses to tell a story is quite interesting, slow-paced but quite meaningful in terms of depth of reality. The characters carry a lot of weight each of them defining a particular section of the society and their ideologies at the same time. The film Court gave us a deep insight into the Indian legal system and explained that the workings of Court are much more than ‘Taareekh pe Taareekh’ and is full of chaos too.
The film is quite simple and also vanishes the presence of cameras, the reason why it won many international awards and was appreciated by critics too. The way Tamhane showed two different worlds with the help of the characters he created is quite epic in terms of filmmaking and especially in the Indian Cinema.
The best thing about the film ‘Court’ is that a lot of things are conveyed without any dialogues. One of which is the different lifestyles of the two opposing lawyers, one the lady Public Prosecutor and on the other hand Vinay Vora, lawyer of Narayan Kamble who is our main protagonist. Director Chaitanya Tamhane speaks out a lot in just these 3-4 minute scenes wherein the daily lifestyle of these two opposing lawyers are highlighted without speaking anything.
Vinay Vora, the young lawyer who is fighting to provide justice for Kamble, a social activist has a well-settled life and lives alone with his parents in a lavish apartment of the metro city. He belongs to the upper-middle-class family and indirectly it is being said that there are no hurdles for him fighting against the wrong.
Public Prosecutor, on the other hand, belongs to a middle-class family who lives with her husband and two children in a small society. She travels by local trains and just wants to do her job and earn for her family. She isn’t aware of what she’s fighting against even if it’s wrong. She’s just interested in doing the job assigned to her.
This is beautifully crafted by Chaitanya Tamhane.
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