A film from India written and directed By Chaitanya Tamhane, “Court” in one respect reminds me of the Israeli film “Gett,” in that the action also takes place primarily in a courtroom over an extended period of time. In India, with a mixed cast of professional and non-professional actors, Tamhane’s vision lays bare the injustice done in a system that favors the entrenched upper class against those in a lower economic class.

Although we also catch glimpses of others brought before a the court, the focus is on a folk singer whose lyrics express the hopes of those who resist the system. He persists in performing his songs as free speech at rallies, and is stubborn in his refusal to knuckle under no matter how many times he is arrested and brought to court. We watch him facing a trumped up charge of causing a sewage worker to commit suicide as a result of being influenced by the lyrics.

We see the judge running his courtroom with only the outer appearance of justice, and a tough woman prosecutor with disdain for the defendant as she tries to convict him with phony evidence. The defendant’s lawyer tries hard to shatter the prosecution’s case, and if the prosecutor can’t get the singer on one charge, she’ll come up with another.

In a kicker to the film we see the judge and his extended family going on vacation, and the judge stupidly advising the father of a boy with serious problems to try a superstitious home remedy, which suggests that if the judge has such backward thinking out of court, how can his intellect be relied upon in court?