Siya movie review: Piling on the misery morbidly

When producer Manish Mundra decided to turn director he must have zeroed in on a subject that is as dark as it is disturbing for viewers to watch. In Siya , while taking us through the darkest tunnel of wretched injustice, Mundra forgot to construct the light at the end of the tunnel. Resultantly, all we see is the darkness that shrouds the lives of the have-noughts, the nothings, the invisible faceless nameless worthless multitudes, of our social system where the privileged can get away with murder. Literally. And yes, rape too. Mundra’s directorial debut has nothing new to offer. The rape of a minor by over-privileged arrogant sociopaths was the theme of Faruk Kabir ’s recent _Khuda Haafiz 2: Agni Pariksha_ as well. The difference, of course, and a radical one at that, is in the tone. Mundra’s futile fight for justice for the rape victim is bereft of that one quality that separates documentaries from cinema: hope. There is no redemptive trajectory in 17-year-old Sita Singh’s fight for justice. Towards the end of this morbidly pessimistic drama of the doomed and the damned the rape survivor tells her faithful lawyer-companion, “What is the point of getting justice when there is no one left alive to give justice to?” This is a question Mundra should have asked himself while constructing the most pessimistic view of justice I’ve seen since in a very long time in cinema. This is not to say that there is no merit in the storytelling. Set in what seems to be rural Bihar where the gun and the goon preside, Siya opens with a teenage girl emerging from her hutment for a pee in the open in the dead of the night. The very act of being in such a vulnerable situation, with the sound design underlining the dangers, is terrifying for the audience to watch. Regrettably, Mundra chooses to probe Siya’s vulnerability to the point where she becomes the hunted prey in a thick forest of dangerous animals. The setting and the mood are pitch-perfect. Following the style of neo-noir European cinema, Mundra makes meagre use of storytelling props such as a background score and songs which make an appearance only towards the end to remind us that all art applied to cinema about injustice, has finally failed the protagonist. She stands in the open, a sitting duck with no hope for justice. Subhransu’s camera is a mute witness to the savage rape of the law by its most notorious transgressors. Semi-newcomer Pooja Pandey is comfortable with silences. She barely speaks a few lines. But her raging anguish comes across loud and clear when the police procedural shamelessly favours the culprits. Siya is powerless but she is not ready to accept this. The recreation of her gangrape at the scene of the crime is chilling in its authenticity. But then where is the redemptive flash to tell us, there is hope? Without that hope, the film seems like a tormented torrent of misery, with no hope of escape. Sorry, I don’t buy into Manish Mundra’s litany of doom. The society he describes is not unknown to me. Injustice too is no stranger. But cinema needs to give us some hope for a better tomorrow. Siya is all about just slippery surfaces with nothing to hold on to. A word on actor Vineet Kumar Singh who plays the supportive but finally powerless lawyer Mahendra. Does Vineet ever fail to deliver? There is a moment, a fleeting one, where the bully cop asks the lawyer to take off his slippers before entering the police station. In that one moment of shameless discrimination, Vineet’s expression encompasses all the injustice that the weaker sections of our societies have to withstand. I am not saying Siya doesn’t happen in real life. Manish Mundra is telling us injustice is a way of life for the underprivileged. But he leaves Siya at a dead end. This is heaping more injustice on her. Siya is not a film without virtues. But it’s a film without hope. And that defeats the very purpose of cinema. Siya is releasing on 16 September

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.