Rape in cinema has certain specific functions. One of these is to arouse the male in the audience sexually. Another is to use, to a certain extent, the opportunity of explicit representations of the female anatomy in a physically violent act and forced on that very body. The fragmentation and fabrication of the female body, the play of skin and make-up, nudity and dress, the constant recombination of organs as equivalent terms of a combinatory are but the repetition, inside the erotic scene, of the operations and techniques of the apparatus.

Assi is different. It has a deceptively straightforward storyline where an ordinary schoolteacher Parima (Kani Kusruti) is gang-raped on her way home following a farewell party which ended late. My casual use of the word “straightforward” suggests that I, a woman and a journalist, have not only internalized rape but have also ‘normalised’ it in my mindset. Parima is married to Vinay, a Hariyanvi (Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub) who works in a shopping mall. They have a small son Dhruv (Adwik Jaiswal). Vinay’s parents have disowned Vinay as Parima is a Malayali.

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The rape is shown mainly through passive shots taken from the front seat of the car with the young driver constantly requesting the four involved to ‘let go’ but they don’t and he too, later, joins the party. This is no simple abduction and gang-rape. It is used as a test of the ‘staying power’ and sexual strength of the young men who keep count of how many times they can have a ‘go’ at it while someone captures the act on his mobile. The woman struggles as much as she can but is too hurt to protest and is thrown unconscious and half-naked alongside the railway tracks till a young man takes her to a hospital.

Sinha takes care not to capitalize on the actual rape except through sounds and suggestively captured hazy visuals which focuses on the deep pain in the victim and the brutality of the rapists almost solely through sound effects. In the FIR, the five rapists are reduced to four, the medical examination reveals little and at least one parent (Manoj Pehwa) begins to bribe the top brass in the police force to save his son, the youngest among the five. One police officer is very fond of poetry but admits to having been corrupt to build his two-storey house and to remain silent because his boss is married to his cousin!

Parima loses her teaching job. The principal (Seema Pahwa) regretfully explains that the students are creating memes at least one of which states that the boy regrets having lost the chance to ‘lay’ her. When you hear this, you understand why Vinay wants his little son Dhruv to be a part of what is going on. There is one disturbing scene where father (Manoj Pehwa) and son (the youngest rapist) are having a conversation at a roadside dhaba with the father explaining, how it was okay to sow one’s wild oats when one is young with strong innuendo through the snack they are sharing. The young girl serving at the dhaba, understands their language and moves away, disgusted. It is an acidic comment on why the young boy turned out to become a rapist!

What dilutes and disturbs the wonderful narrative of Assi is a weak sub-track which introduces a self-appointed vigilante who begins to shoot down the rapists and manages to kill at least two. He becomes an overnight hero in the social media and masses as “the umbrella man” and the film begins to lose much of its intensity and power. Raavi is not happy with the vigilante killings because she believes that ‘an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind’ and what is really needed is an awareness in society about these rapes through a mindset that sees that these rapes do not happen at all. This is poor consolation against the statistics and the reports Raavi keeps on quoting in her court hearings.

On the penultimate day of the judgment, Parimani finally gathers the courage to remove the veil from her face in court and even the judge is shocked with the scars on her face. But the scene is spoilt by the presence of a crowd of uniformed school kids who trip into the court to listen to the hearings despite rules against it.

Kartik, Raavi’s brother (Kumud MIshra) turns out to be the ‘umbrella man’ shot down by the youngest boy’s father. His ‘vigilantism’ sounds hollow against the back story of his wife killed in a car crash where the car was without a license plate and the driver went scot-free. Was he cleansing himself of the guilt of not being present at his wife’s death? Raavi wonders and so does Kartik’s mentor (Naseeruddin Shah.)

The title has been inspired by the statistics of 80 women being raped every 20 minutes in this country. In a radical move, Anubhav Sinha stops the film to turn the screen bright red to inform us that one girl has just been raped somewhere. Rape in cinema, has the powerful potential of constructing the body of a woman as spectacle. The aim is to cater to visual voyeurism. Props are cliché: a lamp falls across the floor during a struggle, the woman desperately tries to cover herself with her outspread palms/clothes/accessories, a cloud covers the moon in the sky on a dark, sinister night. Sinha, thankfully, steers away completely from these brazenly commercial strategies and keeps the actual rape as the solid back story enacted by the lawyer and the rape victim who create a warm bonding over the film.

Raavi (Tapsi Pannu), an angry and crusading lawyer with a sad story of her own steps in to take up the victim’s case. But since Parima’s eyes have been severely damaged during the struggle, she cannot identify her rapists in an identification parade, does not recall what exactly happened except that there were five young men and not four as mentioned in the FIR. So, there is no evidence that can substantiate her case.

From this point, the film begins to lose the electrically charged mood that kept our pulses racing. Little Dhruv walking freely with a confused expression along the corridors of the court and then attending the hearings appears a bit too much explained away by his tolerant father as “but he is a grown man” to others. The judge (Revathy) reluctantly allows his presence in the court against normal rules. Another melodramatic scene that could have been avoided is the main rapist’s teenage daughter confessing about her mother having been raped and then forced to marry her father.

The cinematography sticks to bluish grays shades a brilliantly designed sound-track from inside the car, from the trains running along the tracks like a disturbing memory card, the soft but ominous sounds within the hospital juxtaposed against the strongly supportive silence of the husband, the visuals dotted with one rapist burning down the clothes he wore inside the car, the car disposed of, washed and cleaned to remove all traces of what happened that night and the heightened melodrama of the father (Manoj Pehwa) of the young boy trying to shoot himself down at the engagement of his daughter. The background score sticks to a single track of music enhancing the aesthetics of the framework.

The film triumphs because of the brilliant performances of the acting cast beginning with Kani Kusruti who oozes confidence without a pinch of make-up, with her Malayali-accented Hindi, her scarred face and her confession to her husband that now, the news of a death makes her happy but she is not happy about it. Tapsee Pannu as Raavi shows how she can hold it entirely on her own without a romantic track to carry a film almost entirely on her slender shoulders. Her growing friendship with Parima mainly in the scene where Parima touches her face to know her better is one of the most touching moments in the film. Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub is brilliant in a role which needs him to speak mainly with his eyes. Kumud Mishra as Kartik and Manoj Pehwa as the father of the youngest rapist are as natural as they always are. Seema Pehwa stands out in a brief cameo. Revathy is wonderful as the sometimes confused, sometimes balanced but straight-talking judge.

At times, a film that is truly designed to highlight the misery of rape in a patriarchal society (Nishant, Aakrosh, Ankur) finds itself turned into a titillating film merely through marketing tactics adopted by the distribution and financial network of the film. Posters and billboards with titillating pictures and copy to match draw the masses to the theatres. In other words, a filmic text gets easily transformed from a serious film to a titillating one by a set of institutional procedures.

In all rulings on cases of eve-teasing, stalking, groping, molesting and raping, people conveniently forget that these acts bear a direct relation to all power structures in a given society. This relationship is not a simple, mechanical, one but involves complex structures reflecting the interconnectedness of gender, caste and class oppression that characterize society.

If we are to make real changes in our lives and in our films, we must offer not only new cinematic structures but serious solutions to existing social problems. Films that offer cheap answers, films that fall within the range of acceptable responses defined by a patriarchal, bourgeoisie culture can never illustrate the extent of female oppression and the tenacity of patriarchy with honesty and integrity. Nor can they offer real solutions to complex social, historical and political problems arising out of the very gender-bias patriarchy thrives on. Assi is a film that promises a rape-free society. But how, if people do not care to watch it?

© Mathrubhumi English