Dhananjoy Is  A Must-See Masterpiece On Miscarriage Of Justice

Dhananjoy (Bengali)

Starring: Aniraban Bhattacharya,Mimi Chakraborty, Kaushik Sen, ArjaBannerjee

Directed by: Arindam Sil

Rating: **** ½ (4 and a half stars)

Don’t the poor have the right to live? This question haunted me as I sat riveted to the screen watching Arindam Sil’s Dhananjoy.The film, a masterly courtroom drama , probably the best depiction of court proceedings since  B R Chopra’s Kanoon, that opens up old wounds which  never healed,deftly recreates the mass hysteria in Kolkata  after a watchman allegedly raped and murdered a school  girl from a Gujarati businss family in 1990.

In 2004 after 14 years  of trying to prove  his innocence Dhananjoyfinally went to his death, leaving innumerable unanswered questions about his guilt.

Now this film with a brilliantly probing screenplay, far more unambiguous in its faith in the innocence of the convicted than Meghna Gulzar’s Talwar,  takes on  the mission of  Dhananjoy’s defence headlong,and revisits the mass hysteria that eventuated  in the accused’s execution.We may or may not agree with the arguments that the persuasive screenplay offers in Dhananjoy’s defence. The scrupulously-narrated plot leaves us in no doubt that  the circumstantial evidence that was put forward in the courts to put Dhananjoy to sleep, was far from conclusive.

Arindam Sil’s passion  to prove Dhanonjoy’s innocence is  admirable. He  mocks at the harbingers  of the legal system who effectively  contribute to the miscarriage of justice. But the singlemindedattempts to see Dhanonjoy’s case to a defensive conclusion gets to be  a little like trial-by-cinema (as opposed to the trial by  media) where  those who hastily declared Dhananjoy guilty seem  to be on trial
Arindam Sil’s relentless pursuit  of what he considers to be the truth sweeps us into its arc, creating a kind  of compelling history-in-reverse to a case that serves as an illustration of legal  arrogance.

The films looks fearsomely authentic, specially the scenes where  the cornered cowering Dhananjoy is hosed out of his hiding hole  by cops eager to win brownie points in the public eye. In the trial that follows we see Dhananjoy restless in a cage like Om Puri in Aakrosh.

Dhananjoy’s village life is etched in  sharp vivid sometimes exaggerated tones. But the saturated colours of abject poverty work well in a film where mass hysteria is the deciding factor.SoumikHaldar’s cinematography is cautiously reckless, as  though to communicate the hysteria of the moment without loses a grip over the conscience.

The actors playing Dhananjoy’s rustic family rip our heart open with their anguish and anxiety.Veteran Paran Bandhopadhyay as Dhananjoy’s father and Satyam Bhattacharya as his brother suffuse the frames with a  desperate energy. It’s the fidget we see in animals when they are about to be slaughtered. But it’s  the haunted eyes  of Arjaa Banerjee as Dhanonjoy’s wife that pierce  our conscience with their probing  poignancy.

Arjaa could have taken care of  those plucked eyebrows and chiclystitched blouses before playing the desperate rural wife who has no choice but to  believe in her husband’s  innocence. Nonetheless she is very effective in showing the hunger and poverty….and not just related to food, though she does a fine job of showing that hunger as well in her scenes of socializing with the lawyers Kavya Sinha (Mimi Chakraborty) and mentor Shivraj Choudhary(Kaushik Sen). Both  Mimi and Kaushik play against each other with superb intuitiveness and remarkable restrain in the face of  a mass hysteria.I’d like to see where the protégée-mentor relationship goes after Dhananjoy’s re-opened trial is  over.

Director Arindam Sil constructs two  different worlds.  Kavya’s world of sleek surfaces and azure swimmingpools, jogs in the park and drinks on the house,  and Dhanonjoy’s world of bleak hopelessness where the poor pay for sins that never knew they committed.

In spite  of crude edges(the murdered girl’s mother is played by Sudipta Chakraborty like a shrieking banshee from an Ekta  Kapoorserial)  the dramatic tension  is maintained with a tight-fistedequanimity. There is room for hysteria,yes. But no room for  tears  of regret to be shed as the bustle of legalese sweeps the characters ahead. There is  work to be done. Justice needs to be served piping-hot. The film does an admirable  job of instilling a sense of guilt and dread in us at a time when mob lynchings and media trials are prevalent in our country.

What  stays with us long after the film is Anirban Bhattacharya’s performance as  Dhananjoy. He  plays the doomed character like  a trapped animal with eyes that bleed their plea for compassion. On the morning when Dhanonjoy is to be executed he requests his sympathetic doctor to sing a Manna Dey song .

As the doctor sings on  a harmonium Dhanonjoy’s eyes convey a far-away look . This man has given up on the world. But the world must never give up on seeking justice for the wronged.This film serves up a warning for all those who believe a woman can never be wrong in a sex crime.

Sometimes, rape happens in ways that do not involve the sexual organs.