Yuddhakaanda: Chapter 2 in Kannada, directed by debutant Pavan Bhat, is a bit of an oddity. It means well. Oh yes, the plea for justice for the disempowered when confronted by the privileged class is loud and clear.
But much of what transpires in the film seems formulistic, stagey and stilted. A concentrated effort has gone into ensuring that the tone doesn’t too heavy-handed. There is no attempt to portray the brutality with the hurling momento of the Tamil Vijay Sethupathi film Maharaja on child abuse.
More fatally, the plot and the characters seem too close to the recent Telugu courtroom drama, Telugu director Ram Jagadeesh’s State Vs A Nobody, which too showed tremendous empathy for the legally challenged victim. In that far more mature film, also helmed by a debutant director, the fledgling lawyer, just like the lawyer in this film, takes on a POCSO case.
Many of the plotting propulsions seem similar, although Yuddhakaanda: Chapter 2 seems too eager to get it right, like a schoolboy given to write an essay on the law and the underprivileged. The callow attorney here is Bharath (Ajai Rao, barely okay), who takes on himself the responsibility to get justice for the mother (Archana Jois, doing the distraught mother act with all the discreteness of a Doordarshan short) of a molested minor child.
While the tone of narration is never patronising or salacious, subtlety is not exactly a virtue in this lumbering melodrama. The courtroom sequences play out like episodes of a streetside play staged by troupers from an amateur theatre company. In the climactic monologue, the hero strides across the screen like a mythological figure while the honourable judge tries hard not to look impressed.
That said, Yuddhakaanda: Chapter 2 has a certain sincerity at its heart that sees it through many choppy interludes which include a halfbaked romantic track (done in a don’t-take-it-seriously tone) and a super-lawyer Robert D’Souza (Prakash Belawadi) who defends the indefensible (the powerful paedophile) in the court and listens to opera music in his spare time.
“Could you please switch it off,” the accused murdered paedophile’s brother requests the super-lawyer.
D’Souza is a sneering portrayal of the privileged who, while counting the zeros on his cheque, has annulled his conscience. The rich are always unscrupulous and elitist in a film of this sort.
This is a big, broad morality tale telling us nothing that we don’t know about the judiciary.
