At a time when Bollywood is struggling, South Indian regional Cinema is keeping the record of giving classic content-driven cinema continuously. Jana Gana Mana is another name on the list after Jai Bhim, Asuran, Karnan, etc.
Filmmaker Dijo Jose Antony who made his debut with ‘Queen’ in 2018 and screenwriter Sharis Mohammad have remarkably managed to address a lot of current socio-political issues which our country is dealing with, like police brutality, mob lynchings, sexism, casteism, media verdicts, communalism, corrupt system, etc through this intense courtroom thriller.
The movie starts with Aravind Swaminathan played by Prithviraj Sukumaran, getting in the police van with the presence of various journalists reporting on the court premise. Next, we see the accident of a man, at night, who witnesses four men burning a body a few meters away from the road. After this, we see a crime scene where police can be seen collecting evidence near the found burned body of Saba, a professor at Central University, and the officer giving details about the case to his superior.
The first half deals with the protests in the central university where the victim was working as a professor and police brutality against the students. Suraj Venjaramoodu has played the role of ACP Sajjan Kumar who was appointed as the head to investigate the case and later goes on to kill the four accused in a planned encounter.
Dijo has used various symbolism like the statue of Gandhi and different quotes on law, justice, and politics throughout the movie. The first half of the movie is a little bit dramatic and slow but when you reach the second half and find the twist, the first half is justified.
The re-arrival of Aravind Swaminathan as a defence advocate in the second half is the soul of the movie and the twists change everything about the movie. As he solves the case, layer by layer the truth of ugly politics gets revealed.
The questions put up by Aravind in the courtroom are tough to answer by a common citizen and make one get deja vu and force one to do self-analysis. The first half is good but the hard-hitting dialogues by Prithviraj and his exemplary performance give you goosebumps at various times and make the second half mind-blowing.
The Ugly Game Of Politics
Last year, I watched House of Cards, an American thriller series that exposes ugly politics being played by the White House to fool its citizens and had never expected something like that from Indian cinema.
Well, Malayalam Cinema has brought a better piece of art that unravels ugly games of politics, media Verdicts, PR Campaigns, and pre-planned social media outrages and talks about in-built patriarchy, casteism, racism, etc. Nobody could have thought about covering such vast socio-political issues ranging from institutional murder to extrajudicial killings within such a small time frame. Dijo and the whole team should be praised for making it possible and giving yet another classic with high expectations for the sequel.
Instant Coffee, Instant Tea, Instant Justice?
In the movie Damini, also a courtroom drama, Sunny Deol played the role of an advocate and there was some hard-hitting dialogue delivered by him. The motive of the film was to show the corruption in the judiciary.
Jana Gana Mana criticizes mob justice, inbuilt prejudices, and attempts to restore the lost faith of people in the due process of law.
A scene from the movie in which Arawind tries to show how racism is injected in the mind of a sixth class student as a part of education.
Dr Disha, a veterinarian, was brutally raped and killed on 6th December 2019. Before producing them in the court, the 4 accused were encountered by Hyderabad police and there was a nationwide celebration and applauding the police department for bringing justice. Jana Gana Mana focuses on the political face of such encounters. The movie strongly commands us not to celebrate such situations, in a country where extrajudicial killings are one of the major humanitarian issues, due process of the law needs to be followed and we should wait till the details emerge or we might become stooge to a larger ugly game of politics.
This movie is a must-watch and needs to be dubbed in different languages and watched by the Indians irrespective of whatever state they belong to as the current state of the country is accurately depicted in the movie.
I don’t think a movie that covers vast socio-political issues has ever been made in the recent history of Indian Cinema.