Gargi

Gargi, the new movie from Gautham Ramachandran, has the outlook of a legal drama. But the interesting thing about this film is that it does not have any of the traits of a typical courtroom drama. Gautham and co-writer Hariharan Raju have taken a subject that looks extremely grey. They explore the idea of dilemma brilliantly to form a movie that connects with you on an emotional level.

Gargi, our heroine, is a school teacher who is about to get married. But one day, her father, who works as a security in the nearby apartments, gets arrested by the police. The charge against him was the rape of a minor girl, and Gargi was convinced that her father didn’t do it. With the public sentiment against her father, the movie shows us Gargi’s legal fight to free her father.

Gargi is not a Jolly LLB variant where an underdog lawyer manages to win a case by risking everything. The major element one can see in this script is the presentation of the dilemma. Gargi, the father of the girl who got raped, and the investigating police officer are all struggling to take a clear stand. There is a self-centered nature in their efforts to provide justice for their loved ones. Gautham Ramachandran was able to present the mindset of those characters very effectively. The best one was the sequence where the young girl’s father comes to Gargi’s home.

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There is a flashback track in the film showing Gargi’s childhood. And at first, it feels like a justification for why she is taking so many risks for her father. But watching how that old-chapter shifts everything at the last minute was refreshing. The decision-making was difficult for Gargi, but how she overcomes that somewhere defines her strength. Even in character placement, it talks about genders and gender-oriented struggles. The film’s cinematography visually communicates its characters’ emotional journey and mental state beautifully. Govind Vasantha’s music, especially the scores with violin, is top-notch.

Sai Pallavi is terrific as Gargi. Her natural charm makes her that likable character instantly. But soon into the film, the challenging phase begins, and she transforms brilliantly. From body language to expressions, she portrayed Gargi’s angst and determination with great conviction. Kaali Venkat as Advocate Indrans was hilarious, and his transitions in courtroom sequences were pretty exciting to watch. Actor Saravanan was another brilliant performance in this film, and the scenes where he breaks down were really heart-touching. Aishwarya Lekshmi, who played an extended cameo role as a journalist, still needs to work on her Tamil diction.

Gargi is an engrossing legal drama soaked in an emotional whirlpool of events. At the interval point, I was curious to know how they would pull off a convincing conclusion to this movie that looks realistic. But what they have achieved eventually moves you emotionally. And that escalation of the script’s emotional graph was pretty cinematic and satisfying.