Gargi is not a conventional courtroom thriller

In courtroom thrillers, the advocates who defend the accused are generally smart. It doesn’t matter whether the accused is innocent, or guilty, at first since the layers of the crime will only be revealed later. In the Amazon Prime Movie Jai Bhim (2021), Chandru (Suriya) leaves no stone unturned to help a woman – and her community – find justice. His fight is not only against the cops, it’s also against caste discrimination. He uncovers the depths of nonchalant malpractice that keeps the Dalits away from the light of the truth.

And in the Hindi Blockbuster Pink (2016), Deepak Sehgal (Amitabh Bachchan), raises his voice against gender discrimination. In both these films, the advocates spread their arguments widely in order to expose the gaps between the haves and the have-nots. Though the women of Pink have more power compared to the lone woman who challenges the police officers in Jai Bhim, they’re cumulatively smaller fish.

Gargi, directed by Gautham Ramachandran, also picks a similar route. The plot is set up in a way that almost gives no time for the eponymous character (played by Sai Pallavi) to gather her wits when her father, Brahmananda (R. S. Shivaji), gets arrested for sexually abusing a child. Gargi runs from pillar to post to wrap her head around the case. She tells everybody that the cops have made a mistake and walks the extra mile to protect her younger sister and mother – she doesn’t want them to face the heat.

The incarceration of her father naturally turns her world upside down. It pushes her to the edge of a cliff from which she tries to inch back slowly. It becomes hard for her to even find an advocate who would be able to look into the facts with an open mind because the case involves a child. The path to freedom, she realizes, will be too long for her father, for there are too many hurdles to cross. But she, nevertheless, makes up her mind to get him out of the prison.

Gargi is from a lower-middle-class family. She works as a teacher in a school and her father puts on a uniform to work as a security guard. How can she hire hotshot lawyers who demand hefty pay checks? And that’s when Indrans (Kaali Venkat) arrives as her last ray of hope. Indrans is an advocate without any history of having successfully defended his clients. But he’s hungry for success. There’s a fair bit of fame involved in it, as well. If he wins the case, he’ll turn into a sensation. And if he loses it, he’ll become the laughing stock. He’ll also be at the receiving end of mockery and anger for stepping forward to argue in favour of an abuser. In short, he’s a misfit.

And unlike Sehgal and Chandru, however, Indrans bumbles – and stammers – a lot and seems to overlook key points. But he still manages to extract a missing link and poses an important question regarding the dosage of a prescribed drug to the investigating officer, as he believes it would have affected the ability of the child to make decisions. From then on, he gains confidence and turns the tables.

Unlike the other two movies again, the cops aren’t involved in the crime here. They have simply done their job. And that’s what makes Gargi different. It’s not a cut above the rest. Pink, Jai Bhim, and many other thrillers that unfold before the judges have several merits to fall back upon. But Gargi goes beyond the landscape of a conventional thriller by portraying the accused as a kind person from the get-go and then sets the record straight by changing the gears in the final act – Brahmananda is indeed a criminal.

All the geniality that the old man possesses is a façade. He’s just another offender who thought it’d be easy to escape the eyes of the law. When Gargi accepts the veracity of the story, she wholeheartedly extends her support to the child. Through the flashback portions that appear in fragments, you learn that the protagonist isn’t a stranger to the behavioural tendencies of an abuser. Her father is, after all, a man and she knows to what extent men – especially evil men who pretend to be saviours – can go to.

Sai Pallavi’s performance as a woman who initially spends all her energy on bringing her father home, and then refusing to let him off the hook is remarkable. With every film she does, she reaches newer heights and reminds us that she carries a universe of talent. If Gargi works as both a convincing thriller and as a message to the larger society (of standing by the survivors), it’s mostly because of how she pulls you into the vortex of her distressed psyche. Ah, what can she not do? She’s a real star.

Karthik Keramalu is a writer. His works have been published in The Bombay Review, The Quint, Deccan Herald and Film Companion, among others. 

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