Siya Movie Review: See ya!

SiyaA DramaDir Manish MundraCast Pooja Pandey Vineet Kumar SinghRating In a film like this first frame onwards you sit in anticipation of a tragedy foretold Meaning as it opens to the shot of the female lead on whom the film is titled mdash peeing in the open field before dawn as is quite common in Indiarsquos villages mdash you feel as if the inciting incident might just take place right then It doesnrsquot And not for a few minutes anywaySiya is centred on the rape further gangrape over multiple days of the eponymous lead character Pooja Pandey based in a village in Uttar Pradesh More than that itrsquos the story of power equations and atrocities that follow for the survivor and her family once a gruesome crime is committed already The options before the oppressed are either to remain silent or push back The latter appears even worseSo you can begin to check the usual boxes when it comes to the underprivileged in a feudal land wherein itrsquos nearly impossible to even register a missing girlrsquos complaint for a police report FIR Because this implies the cops in the local station are ordained by law to crack that case It shows up in their records They hope instead the issue gets settled on its ownAlso Read Makers of Masaan and Newton bring yet another human story SiyaLeft to themselves itrsquos not like the police arenrsquot empowered enough What could get them to act As in turns out a minor story in page eight of a local newspaper The cops get into action alrightThe survivor is found remaining thoroughly muted almost throughout The script at least perfunctorily goes into the collusion between local politics judiciary and the policeIn a sense reminding you right away of Govind Nihalanirsquos directorial debut Akrosh 1980 similarly set in the boondocks inspired by a true incident scripted by the stalwart Vijay Tendulkar Not to be confused with Priyadarshanrsquos Aakrosh 2010 an overblown thriller also set in a villageThis is in fact Manish Mundrarsquos directorial debut Hersquos a producer originally employed with the petrochemical industry in Nigeria We first heard of him on Twitter where he responded to director Rajat Kapoor seeking finance for Ankhon Dekhi 2013 Mundra instantlypublicly got onboardEver since hersquos produced over a dozen films including Masaan 2015 Newton 2017 that Bollywood studios presumably didnrsquot show much interest in Heralding Mundra as quite the unlikely backer of independent cinema in Mumbai Even if the cinema hersquos commendably championed including his first film as director may have found permanent residence in OTT platforms at presentBut this also explains why Siya doesnrsquot feel at all like a debut work The shottaking is pretty much spoton The camera is placed at subtly smart angles The key scenes seem executed with finesse The story sincerely told more or less flows at a natural pace The cast with mostly new faces looks sorted none of them devolving into caricatureMundra has clearly learnt it on the job Only in the reverse direction as in from the top actually producing pictures mdash rather than the usual bottom like an assistantintern moving up on a movie set Hersquos evidently surrounded himself with some fine talents notably the male lead here Vineet Kumar SinghWhatrsquos the task at hand though Besides shining a light on a lsquokakistocracyrsquo rule of the least scrupuloussincere that surrounds us It is of course to humanise whatrsquos otherwise a news story for most mdash a rape case of which there are apparently a score of them on an average recorded in India every dayHow does one humanise such a story By getting more and more specific rather than staying generic Also going deeper and deeper into the parts as in their pastbackground to start with and what takes place thereafter down to the minutest detail Basically to give the case a complete unique faceOn those fronts though it feels like there isnrsquot enough plot in this picture after a point mdash to either hold your attention as a clever policeprocedural or engage with a vast array of characters and their shifting motivations to serve the purpose of a phenomenally engaging thrillerThe picture remains laudably subtle hence suitably visual The heinous crime in this film set in a fictional town called Devganj first gets highlighted because of a post on social media Which has really been the harbinger of hope for crimes of such nature especially from the darkest parts of India thatrsquos fallen off the mapPublic outcry has hence followed Those places mdash whether Badaun Unnao Hathras or more recently Lakhimpur Kheri mdash that you wouldnrsquot have heard of otherwise have been pushed up in collective imagination for that particular eyeopening incident it got associated with Itrsquos a great thing So is a film like Siya where you can rightly sense reminiscences of all of the aboveYUCK WHATEVER GOOD SUPER AWESOMEPlay Quiz This viral video of Vineet Kumar Singh helping a Patna vendor is winning hearts