Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Visaranai: Saga of police brutality!

Visaranai, a Tamil film that was released in the beginning of this year, is the official entry from India for the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Whether the film will eventually be shortlisted for the award is anyone’s guess. However, one cannot discredit the effect the film will have on the audience in depicting the state of affairs in our police system. It is interesting that despite the film being a statement against the State machinery, it went on to win the national award last year. This suggests that the State is open to critique itself which is a positive sign.  







Director: Vetrimaaran

Video Clip
The film is based on the novel Lock Up by M. Chandrakumar. It narrates how four labourers are wrongly implicated by the police in a high profile robbery case in which they are under immense pressure to find the culprits. However, things dramatically change when the four labourers are saved by a Good Samaritan. But, as fate would have it, the Samaritan himself eventually traps them into committing more crimes and thus leads them into doom in the quagmire of corrupt nexus among the police the bureaucracy, and the political establishment.
The film is made in utmost simplicity sans any superfluous embellishments. However, the precise narration and editing help in putting across the narrative quite matter-of-factly. The entrails of the police system are exposed in such a way that no one will argue that our police system works any better than that. The betrayal and the violence that emerge at tandem make the film gory in parts, but when one considers the overall objective of the film, one cannot see the film otherwise. The police system in India has its own complexities and pressures. The long desired police reforms are yet to see the light of day. Till then films like Visaranai will have a field day in exposing it threadbare. 
- Melwyn Pinto SJ

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