Chaitanya Tamhane
Court, Chaitanya Tamhane (2014)
Chaitanya Tamhane is an Indian screenwriter, producer, editor, and film director. Tamhane's short film Six Strands—an oneiric journey into a Darjeeling tea plantation—premiered at Slamdance, Rotterdam, Pune, Clermont-Ferrand, and Edinburgh. His feature debut, Court, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won Best Film - Orizzonti and the Luigi De Laurentiis Award. Court is a New York Times Critics' Pick and was selected as India's official submission to the 88th Academy Awards.
In an exclusive interview with Filmatique, Chaitanya Tamhane discusses research subjects spanning from human rights activists to Dalit poets, casting ordinary people, authoritarianism in India, and his upcoming second feature, The Disciple.
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FILMTATIQUE: Court traces the story of Narayan Kamble, a folk singer accused of abetting the suicide of a sewage worker who has been found dead several days after Kamble was reported to have performed in his neighborhood. What ensues is a complex portrait of contemporary India's judicial system, capturing the farcical atmosphere of legal procedure, police corruption, and the vestiges of colonial law that continue to inform jurisprudence to this day. When did you decide to make a film orbiting these topics, and to what extent, if any, is Court based on real events?
CHAITANYA TAMHANE: Court is not based on any single real event but I was definitely inspired by several different strands of real life characters and incidents that I came across during my research. My research was pretty open-ended which started with the lower courts in India and then organically branched into the worlds of activists, Dalit poets, folk singers, etc. Eventually it all came together in the script but I guess I had been subconsciously assimilating these various stories and people for a long time before I started writing.
I was inspired by the revolutionary balladeer Sambhaji Bhagat and his work, and that's how the character of Narayan Kamble came about. Then there were the cases of human rights activists like Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Surendra Gadling, and many others who were prosecuted for sedition, terrorism, and other absurd charges by the government. I researched these cases to realize that they were actually being prosecuted for their ideologies, which were not pro-government. A lot of the laws that were being used to silence dissent were draconian, unconstitutional, and were remnants of the Victorian judicial system.
While studying the work of some human rights workers, I had come across an article that documented the inhumane working conditions of sewage workers in India. I didn't really make any special notes about it then but somewhere the article really stayed with me. As I got close to finalizing the plot details for the film, I found myself really stuck with what the actual case should be about. I had everything else figured out except for the case itself. And then I had a brainwave, this article came back to me, and the story of a sewage worker somehow became the missing piece of the puzzle.
FLMTQ: Among the film's most compelling aspects is its labyrinthine structure—progressing from Narayan Kamble to his lawyer, Vinay Vora, to the public prosecutor Nutan, and finally the judge hearing his case. Here the film inhabits the perspective of each character, dwelling in quotidian routines such as riding the bus and buying groceries. These moments are quite intimate, nuancing the web of relations imbricated in Kamble's trial. What inspired you to approach the story through this particular structure?
CT: When I started attending court sessions in a small magistrate court of Mumbai, I was quite amused by the chaos and the theatre that unfolded in those rooms. What surprised me the most was how 'normal' and ordinary the judges and lawyers were. I thought to myself, this could be my uncle or my grandfather. And they were making life and death decisions for others and assumed positions of great authority. This made me wonder who these people are outside of the courtroom, what do they do in their down-time, what must be their politics, and how does that affect their judgment. Because all law is eventually interpreted and that interpretation cannot be free of bias. And from there it became a larger exploration of the cultural and moral fabric of the society I belonged to, because these judges and lawyers came from that very society.
In terms of the structuring the script, I wanted to somehow subvert the genre of the courtroom drama. I wanted to play with archetypes, the audience's expectations, story conventions, not in a gimmicky way, but in the service of compassion, complexity, and nuance.
Court, Chaitanya Tamhane (2014)
FLMTQ: Court was filmed with a cast comprised of both professional and non-professional actors that blends effortlessly into a powerful ensemble performance. Can you discuss your casting process for this film, and how you worked with the actors to bring their characters to life?
CT: Casting for the film was one of the most intensive and time-consuming processes during the pre-production. We auditioned over 1,500 non-actors over a period of 9 months, with each audition lasting about half an hour, where they mostly spoke about themselves. There are actually only 3 or 4 professional actors in the film (well, now some more of them have become professionals since the film came out), but 90% of the cast is comprised of people who had never faced the camera before.
I wanted a certain truth in not just the faces, but also in their behavior and their being. Since the idea was to capture the people and essence of Mumbai, we auditioned ordinary people from the city belonging to different walks of life; teachers, bankers, pilots, nurses, railway workers, etc. I was constantly surprised by how good some of them were considering they were delivering scripted lines and in long, continuous takes. Our entire production was designed around creating a relaxed and safe atmosphere on set for the actors. So we would mostly shoot one scene a day, and do about 25 to 30 takes on average. The idea was to let them really inhabit those spaces, the characters they were playing and not be rushed or threatened by the usual chaos of a shoot.
FLMTQ: Despite its subtlety, Court could be read as quite critical of how institutional incompetence transforms into borderline cruelty, impacting the lives of real people, especially those in the lower echelons of society. To what extent did you seek to make a political film, and what parallels, if any, do you see between the issues explored in Court and the current political situation in India?
CT: Well, of course the film is political, but for me the themes explored in the film run deeper than just a straight up criticism of institutions or the Indian judiciary. That's a very palatable and convenient discourse which I am not interested in.
It's the same with the political situation in India right now. As terrible as the fascists in power are, what's more worrying to me is the support and ideological allegiance they enjoy from the majority in the country. It's definitely changing now but the larger picture is still very scary. Parties and politicians will come and go, the cycles will keep repeating, but I am more interested in understanding the invisible forces of history and conditioning that guide the impulses and politics of ordinary individuals on a daily basis. As for what's different in the film as opposed to what's presently happening in India, I would say the authoritarians in the film were a lot more tactful and a lot less shameless.
Court, Chaitanya Tamhane (2014)