A searing courtroom drama on rape culture and failure of justice system, Assi is lifted by Taapsee Pannu’s magisterial performance, Kani Kusruti’s gravitas, and sharp writing from Gaurav Solanki
Whether they work for you or not, this much is clear: Anubhav Sinha’s films are not for the faint-hearted. By the time the Delhi premiere of his latest film Assi ended, I could see dazed and teary-eyed audience members in my immediate vicinity, looking as though they were re-examining everything they knew or believed in.
Across the last 7-8 years, Sinha has made a series of message-driven films that put the spotlight on several different fault lines in contemporary India — Islamophobia (Mulk), caste-based oppression (Article 15), misogyny (Thappad) and so on. And while these films have been positively received on the whole, there have been certain recurring criticisms as well — too much exposition (Ayushmann in Article 15), too little visual flair (Thappad looked like a mid-budget TV show, basically), and a tendency to descend into shrill preachiness.
Against this backdrop Assi arrives like a mighty thunderclap, a direct riposte to those critiques. Urgent, well-shot, beautifully written and backed up by a uniformly excellent cast, Assi is easily Sinha’s best work. Taapsee Pannu plays Raavi, an advocate representing a gang-rape survivor Parima (Kani Kusruti), a Delhi schoolteacher brutally assaulted inside a moving SUV and dumped on the railway tracks right after. These are the two towering performances of the film, but Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub is quietly brilliant as well, playing Parima’s loving and supportive husband Vinay.
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As is the ever-reliable Kumud Mishra who plays Kartik, a bereaved man who turns to vigilante violence in the wake of the apathy he receives from the legal system. The screenplay, co-written by Sinha and his frequent collaborator Gaurav Solanki, makes sure that each of their individual stories feeds into the larger point being made about rape culture in India — not to mention, the laissez-faire, ‘boys will be boys’ manner in which we raise our young men.
A rigged system
The film’s name is derived from a line delivered by Raavi in the courtroom, before the judge (Revathy, in an impactful cameo): “Apraadh waale din desh mein assi (80) rape complaints hue thay, jismein se 76 ka toh trial bhi start nahi hua hai” (On the day Parima was raped, there were a total of 80 rape complaints across the country, and trials had not yet begun for 76 of those cases). This sets the tone for the courtroom-thriller part of the film, where Raavi and Parima go up against a deeply misogynist system rigged against women. Phrases like “burden of proof” begin to ring hollow after a while. “Kabhi DNA nahi match hotaa, toh kabhi number plate nahi miltay”, says Kartik (Kumud Mishra) at one point.
Corrupt police officers and apathetic judges ensure that justice, even in those cases where everybody knows from day one who the culprit is, moves at a glacial pace. When the defence lawyer asks Parima why she couldn’t remember the faces of the accused very well, there is an unspoken rhetorical flourish in his voice. The insinuation being, you are lying in order to convict someone, anyone.
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Among the crew, I thought writer Gaurav Solanki and cinematographer Ewan Mulligan had their career-best outings in Assi. Both are recurring Anubhav Sinha collaborators. Mulligan’s nighttime photography of Delhi portrays it as a war zone, almost, for women. An unforgettable frame happens when the police first discover an unconscious Parima on the railway tracks at night. The cascading tracks themselves unfurl towards the centre of the frame, thereby placing the audience at ground level, in the belly of the beast. Meanwhile the overhead foot-bridge looms large like an old-school watchtower, making the whole picture look like we have stumbled onto a medieval, militarised, barbaric kingdom — which is exactly what Delhi is, of course, especially from the point of view of women.
In a shocking moment, there is black ink flung across Taapsee Pannu’s face outside the court premises. She absolutely nails that scene: the shock, the hurt, the anger all intermingling expertly on her face.
Writer Gaurav Solanki takes us to places that 9 out of 10 writers would steer clear from — for example, a schoolboy WhatsApp group where teenaged boys are cravenly making fun of their own teacher’s rape, and even expressing regret that they could not “join”. The 39-year-old Solanki is known as one of the firebrands of contemporary Hindi literature. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two of his published Hindi short stories that cover similarly disturbing ground — in his story “Blue Film” a man covertly films his own girlfriend while the two of them are making love, while in “Gyaarahvi ‘A’ Ke Ladke” (The Boys of XI ‘A’), the central character (a teenaged boy) pimps out his own girlfriend into entering the lucrative phone-sex business. It is no surprise, therefore, that Solanki’s writing in Assi shows a keen understanding of young, deeply misogynist Indian men. To that end, a revelatory moment happens when one of the accused tells a male cop, “Aap bhi mard ho. Aap bataao, aurat ki marzi ke bina yeh kaam ho sakta hai?” (You’re a man, you tell me, can this really happen if the women didn’t want it?) implying that women who are raped must have, at some level, invited or provoked the act.
The magisterial Taapsee Pannu
I’ll be honest: I thought Taapsee Pannu was ill-suited to play the crusading lawyer in Mulk, a film that did not work for me at all despite its good intentions. But she has turned it around spectacularly with Assi, especially because she balances the crusading dialogues and rousing speeches with moments of well-chosen, well-performed vulnerability. Advocate Raavi isn’t a comicbook superhero, she is a flawed and sometimes even neurotic human being. And Pannu’s powerful performance brings all of these aspects to life. In a shocking moment, there is black ink flung across her face outside the court premises — I have been a court reporter in the past, and was witness to one such incident in Delhi. And I can tell you that Pannu absolutely nails that scene — the shock, the hurt, the anger all intermingling expertly on her face.
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Through films like Thappad, Pink and now Assi, Pannu has become something of a symbol for the modern, emancipated Indian woman who fights back (hard) against male oppression. It’s by no means an easy assignment but Pannu has so far dodged the stereotypes quite well and brought distinctive, differentiating touches to each one of those characters. Kani Kusruti brings dignity and a certain straight-backed gravitas to the character of Parima — again, not interested in playing the “ideal victim” even if it helps her legal case. Of the numerous cameos, Supriya Pathak Kapur steals the show with a monologue about how Indian women end up stretching their worthless husbands’ lives out of sheer devotion. Naseeruddin Shah does a quick walk-and-talk with Pannu, but it’s a truly wonderful scene and well worth the veteran’s time.
In a film that’s packed to the rafters with bold ideas, I found myself returning to a quiet, almost unobtrusive scene where Parima is teaching in the classroom, and she’s in the middle of a lesson titled “Anita and the Honeybees”. This is actually a primary school CBSE lesson in real life, and moreover it is a first-person account of a young Bihari woman called Anita who raises honeybees to support her family, and later resumes her education and ends up teaching small kids across her village. It is a tale of women’s emancipation, success against all odds, and kindness overcoming old prejudices. By placing this lesson in the film, Anubhav Sinha and Gaurav Solanki are putting the ball firmly in the audience’s court.
How the hell do we get more feel-good stories like Anita’s, while we continue to brutalise the likes of Parima? Assi looks the audience squarely in the eye while asking rhetorical questions like this one. It is a blistering indictment of our society, and a must-watch for every conscientious Indian.
