I've seen two impressive debut features so far this year. "Gueros", which introduces director Alonso Ruizpalacios, and "Court". "Gueros" is a post-French New Wave exercise, derivative of the listless youth cinema of early Goddard and Truffaut while still showing great promise and a bold aesthetic. "Court", on the other hand, heralds the arrival of a fully-formed artist in director Chaitanya Tamhane.
"Court" is an anti-courtroom drama about India's legal system, and by extension, class, education and post-colonial malaise, yet it comes off entirely rhetoric free, relying on its naturalism and humanism to deliver its thesis. Its structure achieves a great deal with real narrative economy as it veers from courtroom tedium to the personal lives of those involved in the case (save for the actual folk-singer indicted under arcane censorship laws and worse. Intentionally, he is the least explored).
*Spoilers*
Instead we observe the lives of a pedantic, lowly-educated, anti-rational prosecutor and tool- of-the-State; a well-educated pro-bono, social-activist defense lawyer taking on a moribund system of meaningless old-world laws; And the judge who presides over it all.
But the Tool-of-the-State lives a simple and not un-happy life, the Social Activist Lawyer turns out to be a spoiled infant whenever he gets around his well-to-do-parents, and the judge is a superstitious numerologist so entrenched in his entitlement and power that slapping his slow-witted grandson for disturbing his nap comes as knee-jerk second nature.
*End Spoilers*
There's an endearing comedy and observational joy in it all. Using many non-actors, some fantastic location work, and an austere filmic style, the movie abhors artifice. The Kafkaesque quality of the situation is submerged under its realism. There are no grand orations in court, no twists in the case or surprise witnesses, no winking performances or scene munching moments for vain actors, just a perfectly pitched indictment, made more powerfully precise for choosing quiet observation over shrill, lazy, dramatization.
I'm very interested in the future of both directors, but Tamhane has done something truly unique and extraordinary here.
"Court" is an anti-courtroom drama about India's legal system, and by extension, class, education and post-colonial malaise, yet it comes off entirely rhetoric free, relying on its naturalism and humanism to deliver its thesis. Its structure achieves a great deal with real narrative economy as it veers from courtroom tedium to the personal lives of those involved in the case (save for the actual folk-singer indicted under arcane censorship laws and worse. Intentionally, he is the least explored).
*Spoilers*
Instead we observe the lives of a pedantic, lowly-educated, anti-rational prosecutor and tool- of-the-State; a well-educated pro-bono, social-activist defense lawyer taking on a moribund system of meaningless old-world laws; And the judge who presides over it all.
But the Tool-of-the-State lives a simple and not un-happy life, the Social Activist Lawyer turns out to be a spoiled infant whenever he gets around his well-to-do-parents, and the judge is a superstitious numerologist so entrenched in his entitlement and power that slapping his slow-witted grandson for disturbing his nap comes as knee-jerk second nature.
*End Spoilers*
There's an endearing comedy and observational joy in it all. Using many non-actors, some fantastic location work, and an austere filmic style, the movie abhors artifice. The Kafkaesque quality of the situation is submerged under its realism. There are no grand orations in court, no twists in the case or surprise witnesses, no winking performances or scene munching moments for vain actors, just a perfectly pitched indictment, made more powerfully precise for choosing quiet observation over shrill, lazy, dramatization.
I'm very interested in the future of both directors, but Tamhane has done something truly unique and extraordinary here.