Assi review: Taapsee Pannu and Kani Kusruti shine in Anubhav Sinha's unflinching, unsettling mirror to rape culture

Anubhav Sinha's latest courtroom drama confronts Indian women's daily horrors head-on!

Anubhav Sinha has a penchant for making socially relevant films that make you feel a specific kind of weight long after the credits roll. His knack of converting a news headline into a deeply human story, minus the noise, holds up a mirror to those aspects of our society that we often overlook, or lack the courage to confront. This week, Sinha, along with Taapsee Pannu, another bold voice in cinema, are offering Assi, their third joint venture that promises to provoke and unsettle in equal measure. 

Assi, referring to the number of rapes taking place everyday in India, explores the plight of victims in and outside the courtroom for justice while reflecting on the deep-rooted rape culture, apathy of institutions, and the human cost such cases bear in society. Sinha throws everything to your face right from the word go as the film opens up with an unsettling visual of a brutally violated Parima, (Kani Kusruti) lying unconsciously on the railway track with scars all over her face. After the prelude, we are taken to the night of the gruesome crime after a brief introduction into her family life in Delhi, featuring her husband Vinay (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) and young son (Advik Jaiswal). Returning home late at night, Parima, a school teacher, is forced into a car and is assaulted by a group of men in another enraging sequence that shows them taking turns in violating her, laughing and cheering for each other while filming the act, leaving her broken and traumatized. What follows next is a template yet grounded quest of Raavi (Tapsee Pannu) to bring justice to Parima’s offenders as her lawyer, grappling with a broken system and societal indifference where evidence vanishes, investigative officials are managed, and strings pulled, to protect the influential.

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Co-written by Sinha and Gaurav Solanki, Assi’s biggest win lies in the dignity and resilience it assigns to Parima. She is a gang rape survivor who uncovers her face during the court proceedings because she understands she has done nothing wrong, and that the shame belongs to her attackers and the society that normalizes their impunity, not to her for surviving! Despite dealing with immense physical and emotional trauma, she is determined to resume her job for swift healing- ‘I’m ready ma’am', she asserts. However, her request is met with an anguished, grief-stricken response from the school principal (Seema Pahwa), who heartbreakingly declares, 'This school isn’t ready for you,' while showing printouts of lewd comments and memes circulated by her own teenage students on WhatsApp groups about the incident. It’s a heartbreaking, restrained scene that showcases the normalization of rape culture and the patriarchal monstrosity ingrained from such a young age that empowers young men to mock the horrors of rape without a second thought! In another sequence depicting the normalisation of the objectification of women in our day to day lives, we see a baraat consisting both men and women grooving to the ‘Tandoori murgi’ bit from the Bollywood song ‘Fevicol Se’ and Manoj Pawha’s character giving his teenage son lessons on how to keep your house ‘clean’ while ‘having fun outside’ through a distasteful food analogy. 

Every 20 minutes, the screen turns red to remind the audience that somewhere, someone might be getting violated in the country- a cinematic choice that is provocative but is intended at conveying the urgency of attention to the matter. The courtroom arguments between the feisty Raavi and the rapists’ lawyer (Satyajit Sharma), presided over by a senior, no-nonsense judge (Revathi), who is considerate and just but also accountable to uphold the legal framework of the country too pack a punch. The proceedings are thought-provoking, scathing and heart-wrenching at the same time. Another important issue that the film raises is that of vigilante justice that comes across as a forced plot in the otherwise fast-paced, emotionally charged courtroom drama. It features Kumud Mishra as Kartik, an undercover agent who is weighed down by personal loss and societal failures. He seeks redemption by killing the guilty and delivering street justice, a character that personifies righteous anger but unlawful violence, however lacking conviction. 

Overall, Assi is a searing, uncomfortable gut-punching watch that refuses to let us look away from the rot we've normalized!

 Assi is playing in cinema halls nears you!