REVIEW: No One Killed Jessica (2)

AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

To make a film about an event that most people in the audience would be familiar with and still evoke shock, outrage, empathy and helplessness is commendable. But then choosing a sensational case such as the Jessica Lall murder made Rajkumar Gupta's job that much easier. Having said that, the blatant subversion of justice abetted by tampering of evidence, buying/coercing witnesses into giving false testimonies and the sheer callousness of a political family to believe their son could get away with murder, is sickening enough to make your stomach churn any day of the year. Only, it happens all the time in this country -- and hence, the rare instance of a fair judgment and conviction, belated as it may have been, becomes a cause celebre.

The lonely battle that Jessica's sister Sabrina (Vidya Balan) fought in the aftermath of her  murder -- she was shot dead at a high profile party which had some 300 guests, by Manu Sharma, the son of a powerful Haryana politician -- and eventually lost, is a heart-wrenching tale. Tehelka magazine then conducted a sting operation to expose the loop holes in the eyewitness testimonies and the media-fuelled public outrage resulted in the case being reopened and Sharma finally being brought to book. 

At a purely cinematic level, No One Killed Jessica is superb. It is wonderfully paced and acted, and shot like a taut thriller. The title sequence set against newspaper headlines and a voice over by ambitious, foul-mouthed, spunky journalist Meera (Rani Mukherji), describes Delhi as a place where "everybody is a somebody; nobody is a nobody". When Jessica, a small-time model, gets shot in the head by Maneesh Bharadwaj (Manu's name has been changed, as have those of all the other characters except the Lall family. But more on that later.) merely for refusing to serve him a drink, Meera dismisses it as an open and shut case. It's anything but. The cop investigating the case (Rajesh Sharma, brilliant) has been paid off for not beating up the accused, but he's still the most honest man in the picture. As he cynically tells a frustrated Sabrina in a later scene when her case starts falling apart, "Har koi khaata hai, sirf kis liye mein farq hai".

It's only when the accused walks away scot free that Meera decides to take the story on, justifies her unethical means to nail the witnesses (rather unconvincingly, one might add) and even chastises Sabrina for not wanting to pursue the matter. The question she leaves unanswered is, why did the media that's so keen to follow this story now, not pursue it with the same rigour in the six years at the case was in court?

Earlier, we've seen Meera reporting from Kargil and covering the IC 814 hijacking in 1999, the same year that Jessica died. The character has obviously been modelled on Barkha Dutt and the channel she represents in the film is NDTV. Gupta's curious decision to make his narrative part-fact part-fiction is disturbing. Sure, a filmmaker has the creative license to fictionalise real events and the choice of subject is entirely at his discretion. But selectively retaining certain names and changing all others and then, even worse, ascribing credit for reopening the case to a television channel that in fact wasn't involved in the actual sting, puts his own motives into question.

If it was Tehelka that did the sting, why does NDTV get the credit? If Gupta wanted, he could have given the channel any fictitious name. But by showing the entire operation being carried out by a real news channel, he has himself distorted the facts and it is quite possible that audiences may in fact believe it was NDTV and Dutt that took the lead in the campaign. 

To make a film about truth and then employ a blatant lie in its telling is highly objectionable. It reeks of using exploitative devices for commercial gains, and while nobody questions a filmmaker's desire to earn money from his work, doing it thus, obfuscates the entire purpose of making a film about a rare case where justice was delivered.

Comments

[Deepa Deosthalee]

Hi Rajeev. I understand your concern. Don't think there's an sense of history in this country. Having said that, history is subject to distortions at all times and even the way it's written and interpreted is bound to be governed by various factors and not necessarily factual accuracy.

For instance, will history look at America as a terrorist state for invading a country without provocation and causing untold loss of life an property?

It bothers me a great deal that for most part of history, women's lives and their work have all but been obliterated. But there were millions of women who lived, and whose lives were worthy. Only they were kept out of spheres and spaces which were the traditional preserve of men, the recorders of history, and hence their stories never got recorded!

D

[Rajeev B. Agarwal]

I could not stop myself from giving you two examples. In JHANSI KI RANI, the title character and others celebrate Ganeshotsav - 48 years before Tilak started it. In another episode, Rani Laxmibai plays cricket and defeats the English team by bowling them out cheaply.
Just some facts. No comments from me.

[Rajeev B. Agarwal]

Films are minor culprits. You should take a look at TV Serials like PRITHVIRAJ CHAUHAN, RANI PADMINI and JHANSI KI RANI to see the horribly distorted depiction of history that all of them indulge in. And the alarming thing is that this is the history that the future generations are going to remember. All of us are witnesses to wholesale corruption of historical facts and unable to do anything about it.

[Deepa Deosthalee]

Thanks Rajeev. Nobody gives much thought to history. But as things stand, I think in times to come, the distortion that the film has so casually employed will actually be taken for fact. At the end of the day, film is a much more powerful tool than news channels and magazines, at least in terms of its impact on the masses.

[Rajeev B. Agarwal]

I fully agree with you, DD. Everybody wants (and needs) to make money but if you are going to distort facts in such a way while pretending to be aware and concerned, how are you different from all those proposal makers pretending to be filmmakers?

[Deepa Deosthalee]

Thanks Bidisha, but I'm not the only one who's noticed. The NDTV review also talks of the fact that the channel didn't do the sting operation. :)

[Bidisha Ghosal]

You've raised a good point that all other critics have neatly ignored. Thank you.