Assi review: Shocking, Hard Hitting and Relevant

Assi review: Shocking, Hard Hitting and Relevant

‘Assi’ – writer director Anubhav Sinha’s latest comes with the tagline – ‘eighty per day every day’ and the filmmaker’s sincere cry for the protection of the girl child, the male machismo mindset laced with the pain, trauma and suffering of a rape victim is deeper than the usual pop/pseudo feminism and empowerment cinema we see often.

Assi movie review

‘Assi’ – is an intense, shocking, disturbing, investigative courtroom drama that highlights the grim reality of sexual assault in India based on NCRB data.

Life of Parima (Kani Kusruti) becomes a daily nightmare after she gets brutally raped and assaulted by a group of five men in Delhi. Parima’s happy family that consist of a cute ten-year-old son Dhruv (Advik Jaiswal) and a loving husband Vinay (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) had no idea that Parima’s decision to come back to home alone on that cursed night will lead to such a trauma for her and her family inside and outside of her house.

A fearless lawyer, Raavi (Taapsee Pannu), fights for the justice of the gang-rape survivor Parima against a corrupt system, political pressure, and evidence tampering.

After having his burst at commercial entertainers in all genre that includes super hero sci fi like ‘Ra.One’ and other duds, good sense prevailed and since 2018 Anubhav Sinha has been picking socially relevant issues like ‘Mulk’, ‘Article 15’ ‘Thappad, ‘Anek’ ‘Bheed’ and from terrorism, casteisim, language/regional barriers to pandemic, this time Anubhav Sinha along with his co-writer Gaurav Solanki takes on the never ending dark truth of increasing rapes and molestation against woman.

The stats ‘eighty per day every day’ is a horrific reminder which comes as a stark reality and the screen goes red, while high school lads and others create whatts up status and a meme fest featuring the victim Parima gets circulated. It gets more horrifying when Parima finds his own student making lewd comments on one of those whatts up groups. Here Anubhav starkly highlights the loss of sensitivity and sensibility amongst us.

Seema Pahwa who plays the principal of the school where Parima is teaching is clueless when she says, “ hum kaha jaa rahein hai, kya hoga, kuch samaj nahi aa raha hai, hamne sab kar liya, it, technology sab hai, school ka result bahut aacha hai, par….“

Clearly showing how weak, insensitive and disrespectful the world is becoming regarding women.

 

However, in all the striking, layered, cry for the girl child, Anubhav Sinha introduces a character Kartik (Kumud Mishra) who remains a mystery and doesn’t fit in in the narrative. Kartik almost threatens to shoot the theme, message of ‘Assi’ in point blank rage.

Anyhow the movie survives and, in the end, gives hope and that’s what we desperately need today – Hope.

Performances

Taapsee Pannu is excellent

Kani Kusruti is class apart

Revathy is fantastic

Manoj Pahwa is good

Kumud Mishra – for the first time this finely talented actor seemed to be not fitted for the role and has disappointed me.

Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub - is okay and strangely he got very less to do.

Naseeruddin Shah – why was he here and what for

Supriya Pathak – for just one scene – kyu?

Seema Pahwa - she was also for a single scene but that scene is the major highlight for me.

Advik Jaiswal – very cute and that zip scene (while wearing his school uniform, the zip of his school pant gets stuck. We can’t even imagine what a rape victim goes through when her private part gets repeatedly tortured)

Manoj Pahwa is good.

Good support comes from Vipul Gupta, Sahil Sethi, Abhishek Kaushal, Tejender Singh (Teji Singh) and Abhishant Rana

 

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