By Shyam VS
Gargi is cinematic craft at its best. But that’s not all.
For starters, Gargi is a creative crafting. Everything in the movie, from acting, music to sound design was realistic, thanks to the live-recorded sound of the film, which plays a huge role in passing on the movie’s emotions to the audience. There were tons of story details conveyed through shot angles, colours, and set pieces. Even the colour of the title has an eerie relation with Gargi’s childhood. The hard-hitting dialogues were continuously gaining applause. What escalates this movie is the attachment audience feel towards Gargi’s personality. We feel the exact same emotions that the people in the movie feel. The intelligent use of silence, songs with spoken lyrics, the heartbeat sounds in the climax were icings on the cake. But that’s not all. The movie has deeper meanings and perspectives to be explored.
Let me compare Gargi with another strong and recent courtroom drama, Jana Gana Mana. Both speak about victims, attackers and the role of media in twisting the truth. Even the crux of the two cases remain the same, i.e, sexual assault. Both the movies show the real culprit initially in a good light, dropping little clues all through the movie before revealing the twist at the end. The latter would have shown how media tries to bloat sensational, instead of true news, and how the advocate uncovers the truth at the end. This movie left us a message that just because public opinion is biased towards a side, it doesn’t mean that justice lies towards that side. But in Gargi, the director goes one step ahead and argues that maybe instincts are not always wrong, and how the truth can be twisted, and how much difficult it gets to uncover it when we let our emotions to play in.

The director provides us two lenses to look through the case: one which applies logic and law, and another which applies emotion and history. Gargi has had a bit of a dark past, and that leads us to naturally believe that she’ll be right in her decisions and instinct when she encounters the same problem again but this time in a different situation. Her father shown to save her from the trauma also adds to the reinforcement. As they say multiple times in the movie, it is what any father would have done, and the same applies here also. The lens which finally leads us to the tragic truth is that of logic and law, now with an absence of emotion. Gargi could have saved her father if she wished to. But now her tragic past helps her in a more rational and good way, in the sense that she has felt how it is to be assaulted. She still remembers the ugliness and we can sense it from her hatred towards her sister wearing yellow dresses. The larger public(including even the journalist, and obviously the audience) view the case through the first lens, while unfortunately Gargi gets deceived by it. It cannot be concluded here that Gargi’s investigation and struggle went in vain. She feels the same pain at the end as she felt in the beginning. What has changed in her is the real knowledge that she has gained about her surroundings, and not just information. Here’s another beautiful detail when we talk about knowledge, both the names Gargi and Akshara (her sister) signify knowledge.
A man is not always shown as a man. In the sense that except Indhrans and Palani, almost all men don two roles, a male and a father. Trailing the judge’s words, a man’s arrogance is seen when’s he’s a male. But when daughters appear before them or in their minds, they seem to completely reverse their roles. And the love towards them is not fake either. Sometimes the love is shown by daughters, and many a times by fathers. Irrespective of the source, the power of affection to change one’s self is shown to be all-powerful.
I felt that the mathematical dialogue “It’s not what you know, but what you can prove” was not only applicable to court proceedings, but also to the movie audience. The movie keeps providing instances of knowledge, such as Gargi’s past, the relationship with her father, the journalist’s instincts, the other security’s relationship with her daughter, etc. But none of them is evidently conclusive towards the assailant. There’s an occasional dialogue bit that claims how seemingly obvious facts against the conviction of Gargi’s father cannot be taken as substitutes for proofs. I very well remember the dismay I had when these facts failed to turn into proofs. The audience, mostly only after the movie would have been thankful for their wishes not turning true. The most interesting and distinct aspect about the movie is that unlike most of the courtroom dramas, there’s no person who emerges victorious in the end. Gargi’s father is acquitted, Gargi learns her lessons, and Indhrans loses his case! Yet there is a feeling of totality primarily because it’s the law which has eventually triumphed, and we know that we have been rooting for justice though along with Gargi’s victory since the start.
The problem I faced with the movie was a dilemma of whether to treat it as a pure fiction or as a message-oriented movie. I felt the last stretch of dialogue could have been avoided and the ending left to audience’s interpretations. The reason is that when a movie remains a pure fiction, different interpretations are possible and none of them can be compared or judged against one another. The moment a message is flashed or spoken, the final goal of the movie becomes unidimensional. I accept that there were many good messages like “the power of a small yet bold decision in changing the world”, “the riskiness of finding one’s own way through womanhood” that were spoken at the end. But what if some people take away the message of suspecting one’s own parents and believing less in people? They have chances of creating familial tensions and social anxiety. For an already dense movie, I felt the messaging could have well been avoided, and left to multiple viewpoints, so that it becomes a floodgate for more discussions and debates. Nevertheless, with its excellent craft and social commentary, I’m sure it’ll inspire many more to come, including me.
VS Shyam
August 9, 2022
Reblogged this on Old Skool Thoughts.
LikeLike
karzzexped
August 9, 2022
VS Shyam: Haven’t caught the movie yet. But this piece has made me want to. I think it’s in SonyLiv right now. So I’ll give it a try this week. Thanks for writing this 🙂
Also on a side note, how does one feature their work in Reader’s Write? Is it through an email?
LikeLiked by 1 person
brangan
August 9, 2022
karzzexped: Actually, the best way is to tie a scroll to the foot of a milk-white dove and send it across.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Rahini David
August 9, 2022
Mark is as Readers Write In, BR
(in Title)
LikeLiked by 3 people
sanjana
August 9, 2022
Gargi is now all set to release on OTT. After a month of a good run, the movie is to stream on Sony Liv rom August 15th, India’s Independence Day. Sai Pallavi herself took to her Instagram to share the news. “The last few weeks have been nothing short of magical and now #Gargi reaches a bigger audience on the “15th of August on @Sonyliv “ I thank this talented and dedicated team, who’ve made this memorable for us all!,” she said sharing a few photos of her Gargi team.
LikeLiked by 2 people
karzzexped
August 9, 2022
BR: Haha 😂 It was a stupid question I know. But I genuinely believed this was something being sent in on Twitter or FB and being posted here subsequently!
Rahini: Thanks for the little pointer.
LikeLike
brangan
August 9, 2022
Yeah, just email it across to the ID in the Contact link.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aravindan R
August 9, 2022
@Shyam,
Very well written!
Gargi is my most favourite Tamil movie this year.
About the risk of audience’ takeaway being hopelessness or suspicion, it didn’t bother me at all.
The bigger point, I think, is that Gargi stands with the victim / righteousness than her own father. Because her childhood trauma is more powerful than her love for father.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yajiv
August 10, 2022
What a powerful well-made film. Glad I caught this in the theatres in India while I was back visiting. Highly recommend everyone who has the OTT service to check this flick out.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Gargi Mehra
August 10, 2022
I did a double-take when I saw the title of this post, and now I absolutely have to see this movie!
LikeLiked by 3 people
ravenus1
August 13, 2022
I didn’t realize while reading the review that it wasn’t one of BR’s own. Kudos for the lucid and articulate writing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
brangan
August 13, 2022
Yeah, I don’t know why the “Readers Write In” tag did not appear! Fixed.
LikeLike
Spandana Vaidyula
August 16, 2022
I was disappointed that Gargi’s sister wasn’t called Maitreyi, but this FC interview clarifies it.
https://www.filmcompanion.in/interviews/tamil-interview/filmmaker-gautham-ramachandran-breaks-down-5-poignant-scenes-from-gargi/
It is better that Maitreyi is the name of the young survivor. It adds an extra layer to the heinousness of Brahmanandam’s actions and makes it more personal to Gargi than it already is. The makers knew what they were doing, I only wish the voices wasn’t muted so we hear her name.
LikeLiked by 1 person