Anubhav Sinha’s Assi is audacious, heart-wrenching and an urgent watch. Much like Mulk and Thappad, the theme remains the same – reclaiming dignity in a world where the minority is subjected to dishonour, disrespect and violent oppression. Both Thappad and Assi explore women’s agency after violence – one within marriage and the other after sexual assault – and circumnavigate on how a women redefines self-worth after being wronged. Assi, however, is a macro-level deep-dive on the systemic, bureaucratic and maybe even legal negligence in relaying justice.
Is justice delayed indeed justice denied? What makes a criminal? Is violence the only way to avenge violence? The film throws open a host of questions modern India is dealing with. Assi sets the tone right from its very first frame. A woman is found lying by the railway tracks covered in blood, bruises and tattered clothes. A local carries her to a hospital. The action then shifts back a day, which gives us a glimpse into Parima’s life. Parima, a middle-class Malayali woman, lives with her Haryanvi husband Vinay and their son in a humble Delhi locality.
Like every other day, they leave home in the morning. The husband drops off their son to the bus stop and goes to a super market where he works. Parima goes to school where she works as a teacher. After a farewell party that runs late, she takes the metro and on her way home from the station, she gets followed by a car. Five men come out of the car and push her inside, leaving her skirt scattered on the road. Inside the moving car, they take their turns to sexually assault her.
They treat her as an object in a grotesque contest – boasting, laughing, competing and reducing violence to a scoreboard of masculine dominance. The next day, her husband reaches the hospital. And then enters Raavi, a lawyer. She fights for her in a court of law. But evidences get removed, burnt and tampered with as is the case with most cases involving affluent families. There’s also Kartik, the husband’s colleague and Raavi’s confidant, a man dealing with the death of his wife in a hit-and-run case, who becomes a pillar of support for Parima’s family.
