Assi Review: The Message Is Very Strong

There are moments in Assi when you will get scared, when you will get angry, when you will feel helpless... when you will realise the enormity of the crime, points out Savera R Someshwar.

Assi's gripping start

Almost every woman has felt it. That slight frisson of fear. A warning that you sense in your gut before it courses through your body.

Your heart beats a little faster. Your hands feel slightly clammy. Late at night, you look at an empty skywalk. Or subway. Or an empty train or bus that you need to catch. An empty road that you need to walk down.

On that road -- it should be safe; the streetlights are on -- a car nears. Comes too close.

A thought flashes through your head, right or wrong: Why did you decide to step out alone this late? (Not that it is really safer if you have a male companion; especially if someone else has decided they want 'to have some fun' that night.)

You start walking faster. Then probably running.

But it's 'too late'.

The car stops. The woman is grabbed. Her beautiful indigo and white printed long skirt is pulled off and flung on the road -- the defence lawyer will later point out that there is not a single tear in it so clearly she could not have resisted -- and the horror that is inflicted on Assi's Parima (Kani Kusruti) that night is reflected in her single eye, the other one has been beaten shut; in the counts to see who can keep it up the most (the loser is to buy the rest of the four perpetrators beer); in the grin of the perpetrator video recording the assault...

It is indeed a powerful beginning, especially in contrast to the happy, loving little family -- mother, father, son and the madness-turns-into-fun and working parents rush to get their day started -- in short; the absolutely everyday, absolutely normal life they lead.

After the rape, Parima is abandoned on a railway track -- she's been used and now she's thrown.

A humanitarian saves her and here comes the film's first flaw -- chillies are flung off a plastic-sheeted cart and she laid on it (it's an old style filmi touch; something you now see in long-running soap dramas) and feels 'off' in a film that has been exceptionally difficult-to-watch-without-your-stomach-churning real until now.

Her husband Vinay (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) reaches the hospital, son Dhruv (Advik Jaiswal) in tow. Is it shock that makes him bring his little son to the hospital especially when he has supportive neighbours? Does he know what has happened to his wife?

Is shock the reason for his deadpan expression when he looks at his beloved battered wife?

She recovers slowly; her eyesight is impaired because 'the arteries in her head have been injured due to her head injury'. But since she has decided to go to court, identifying the aggressors has become vital because their DNA does not match the DNA found on her.

She can't identify them in a line up and you know in that moment that question is going to come up in court: How can you not recognise the faces of the people you claim raped you?

Tossed into the mix is Manoj Pahwa, a desperate father who has used his money to pull his son out of trouble before and is willing to do anything to do so again. A man who cannot see beyond his son. To whom the victim does not exist. To whom the victim is his son.

Where Assi succeeds

In moments.

For me, the most powerful one was the moment between one of the rapists (Abhishek Kaushal) and his sister (Payal Samyani). She makes him confess. For the first time, you see the rapist ashamed; he's in tears and holds her tight, begging for forgiveness.

She can't stand it; can't stand him and struggles, in tears, a scream locked in her throat, to free herself.

The moment when you realise children talk, and understand, more than you, as a parent, think they do. And a little boy comes to know what has happened to his mother.

'Why did they do that to her?' he asks his father.

'Do what?' How does the father even answer such a question. He tries, amid his shock, to buy time.

'Sana (the neighbour's daughter) told me. But it's a secret.'

The moment when Parima tells the judge, 'Madam, I love flowers. There was a bouquet behind my head in the car. Now, I can't stand their fragrance.'

And when one of the rapists is murdered. 'I feel good that he has been murdered,' Parima tells her husband. Almost immediately, there is shock and disgust on her fact that she feels like this as she wonders what kind of person she now is.

In the red screen that flashes every 20 minutes, dragging you out of the movie, reminding you with a punch in the face that a woman has been raped. That's why the film is titled Assi. Eighty. The number of women raped every day.

Assi is also a stark reminder that one rape changes multiple lives forever. The survivor will never see the world though the same eyes again. 'You look at the mirror,' says Parima. 'The face is the same. But the reflection will never be the same.'

Her family's life will never be the same again. Not will the lives of those who love her. Nor will the lives of the rapist's wife. Or daughter. Or sister. Or family.

Where Assi fails

In the script. And the editing.

There are sub-plots -- especially the one involving the Chhatri Man, a vigilante -- that could have been snipped in the scripting stage. It would have given the film a different kind of heft.

And in bring in marital rape. The film tries to give too many messages and, in the process, does not do justice to them.

In the investigation of the rape which seem rudimentary.

In not utilising the talent of formidable actors like Naseeruddin Shah, Supriya Pathak, Seema Pahwa and Kumud Mishra.

Taapsee Pannu, as the lawyer, Ravee, has the meatiest role; unfortunately, maybe playing the lawyer or acting in courtroom dramas is something she has become used to now.

What I found most disturbing was the presence of children in the courtroom. Is a child witness in a rape case not questioned in-camera? Are school children allowed to sit in court as the audience when a rape case is being tried?

Should you watch?

Yes.

Because this is a film, though not perfect, has a strong message. It will make you realise how horrifying a crime rape is.

How it is easily, casually turned into a joke even by children. How children know so much more that adults think they do.

How ma, behen and biwi are only important and should be kept safe if ma, behen and biwi are yours.

How a courtroom process, even if you have a good judge (what a fabulous performance by Revathy!), can easily be manipulated.

There are moments when you will get scared, when you will get angry, when you will feel helpless... when you will realise the enormity of the crime.

For that, do watch this flawed film.

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