Lawyer’s United:
Most times, good intentions are not enough, but over the last two Jolly LLB films, as well as the third addition to the franchise, writer-director Subash Kapoor, has managed to successfully combine humour with a social conscience.
At a time when the country is in the grip of a construction fever, Jolly LLB 3 raises a very important question: development for whom and at what cost? In the earlier two films, Arshad Warsi and Akshay Kumar had played small-time lawyers who took on the rich and powerful, with the help of eccentric but fair judge, Sunderlal Tripathi (Saurabh Shukla).
Eight years later, the Jagdish Tyagi (Warsi) from Meerut and Jagdishwar Mishra (Kumar), from Kanpur, who evidently have not gained from their earlier triumphs, are still scrabbling for clients in Delhi. Jolly 1 accuses Jolly 2 of stealing his clients— which he does. The first case is the farcical one of the ‘bride’ of an old man turning out to be male. Mishra also gets gypped when a large group of farmers, with the encouragement of an NGO, file petitions and pay him in coins and vegetables.
Tripathi is not at all pleased to encounter the two Jollys again. The stress caused by the first, he recalls, gave him a heart attack, and the second caused the death of his wife. In the scenes that are designed to lighten the otherwise sombre mood, Tripathi woos a cop (Shilpa Shukla), ignoring the sniggers of people around. Ridiculous though this might make him, Tripathi also gets a very significant line about the letter and spirit of the law.
Their lives are about to change. In a Rajasthan village, a farmer dies by suicide, because he loses his land for an industrialist’s ambitious “Bikaner to Boston” project. The man’s widow, Janki (Seema Biswas), holding on to two goats and a lacerating glare, is pushed from one Jolly to the other, because neither can afford to take on a non-paying client. Their wives, (Huma Qureshi, Amrita Rao), however, have more sympathy, and the Jollys end up accepting Janki’s case, pitting themselves against industrialist Haribhai Khaitan (Gajraj Rao).
When he is first seen, Khaitan is addressing an audience to ask, in a reasonable tone, why businessmen are so reviled when without money no society can progress. But, of course, he has the bureaucratic and justice systems on his payroll, and when it comes to his own profit, the human rights of farmers don’t matter, nor does one family’s dignity.
Kapoor makes it clear that in today’s times, nobody can stand up against development, Khaitan’s lawyer Vikram (Ram Kapoor)– returning in a private plane from London after sorting the “VM” matter– demands to know why India should lag behind the world, or why a race track in Bikaner should be interrupted by camel carts (the two Jollys do that). The question is why gains for a few, should mean the ruination of many. A cartoonish economist, obviously in the pay of big business houses, actually states in court that farmers should give up farming for more lucrative ways of earning.
The film does not have the scope to actually delve deeply into the economical fall out of unchecked development, question the inherent inequalities in the system, the endemic corruption or the lack of political will that allows the poorest of the poor to fall through the cracks; but it does shift gears from humour to violence to courtroom rhetoric, so the right questions are highlighted.
The three lead actors – Akshay Kumar, Arshad Warsi, Saurabh Shukla—are in top form. Gajraj Rao, given an ordinary get-up, conveys arrogance and menace, dropping that avuncular look when provoked. Without speaking much, Seema Biswas, expresses the rage and tragedy of the character— her wails at the end of the film echo in the mind long after it is over.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)
