Assi nabbe poore sau per cent truth! |
What’s it about Anubhav Sinha’s latest, pulsating thriller that must draw you into theatres this Friday?
A still from the drama Assi, starring Taapsee Pannu
To think of it — for a film about rape, the most startling image in it isn’t of the incident itself. But that moment, the survivor suddenly pulls off her facial cover in the courtroom!
The defense lawyer looks away. As if he saw a ghost. So could the audience (they won’t).
This snapshot’s also in the trailer of the absolutely absorbing, Assi (opens in theatres this Friday), by director Anubhav Sinha, who admits to me, he “drifted from norms of legal proceedings” for that scene.
The point gets swiftly made. It’s not the survivor, who should be hiding their head in shame; no?
That face belongs to the aptly cast, Kani Kusruti (All We Imagine As Light), who has such an everywoman quality about her. Yet, it’s impossible look away, when she’s onscreen, whether or not behind a veil.
Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha
She plays a schoolteacher. In the urban jungle of Delhi’s dark alleys, claustrophobic cubbyholes, a bunch of beasts hunting in a Toyota SUV, prey on her, and push her off, like dead meat, once done.
It’s a briefly brutal sequence. The film follows the aftermath of this rape.
What strikes you about Assi is it isn’t a film hiding behind needless subtleties and ironies, or even going extra to look/sound........