Film: Lakeerein
Starring: Ashutosh Rana, Bidita Bag, Tia Bajpai, Gaurav Chopra, Aman Verma, Saharsh Shukla, Mukesh Bhatt, Rajesh Jais, Anil Rastrogi
Genre: Courtroom-Drama
Director: Durgesh Pathak
Release Date: 03.11.2023
Rating: 3/5
By Yogesh Mishra
Director Durgesh Pathak’s Lakeerein is one of the finest courtroom dramas of the year. The film strongly deals with the pros and cons of the martial rape issue in Indian perspective.
The story revolves around a Lucknow girl, Kavya (Tia Bajpai), who gets married to a renowned professor, Vivek Agnihotri (Gaurav Chopra). It was an arranged marriage, and everything went well in their lives, but within a year, Kavya started facing problems with Vivek. Gradually, she started feeling that Vivek overpowers and makes physical relations without her consent. She feels tortured and goes to court, blaming herself for being raped by her husband. She appoints a renowned lady lawyer, Geeta Biswas (Bidita Bag), of the city; on the other side, even Vivek had no choice but to respond to this legal battle and hire the biggest lawyer of the city, Dudhari Singh (Ashutosh Rana). The climax is the real crux of the story. To know what happens at the end, one must watch the film.
Actor Ashutosh Rana is the centre of attraction in the film. He has done full justice to his part in the role of a lawyer. On the other side, Bidita Bag has also impressed the audience with her dashing screen appearance and shuttle dialogues. The lead pair, Gaurav Chopra and Tia Bajpai, have done a good job, but being a powerful courtroom drama, the actors playing the lawer’s role have diverted the audience’s attention from them. Other artists like Aman Verma, Saharsh Shukla, Mukesh Bhatt, Rajesh Jais, Anil Rastrogi, etc. have also made their appearance felt.
The story is quite interesting, talking about the rarest case of marital rape. Although there is no proper law in our country to resolve such complicated issues, the writers Durgesh Pathak and Surya Saxena have written it in a very shuttle way. Dilip Shukla’s screenplay is also quite impressive.
A few problems that are seen are: 1.) The pain of the victim, Kavya, could not be felt by the audience while watching. The kind of trauma she was going through was not properly showcased to make the audience feel the pain; rather, she has been given only a few dialogues where she just expresses her pain in a very normal way.
2.) The husband Vivek, who is blamed for raping his wife, is mostly shown as an innocent type of husband, again mismatching his real-life behaviour with the act he did with his wife.
3.) A much more cruel person, Dudhari Singh (Ashutosh Rana), who kills his wife and buries her body inside the home, has not been given any such punches or powerful dialogues in the courtroom that could have given some sense of who he is in real life.
Barring these few points, almost everything is quite good in the movie and has much for the audience to learn from. Despite a few ifs and buts, the direction of Durgesh Pathak is nice. Although it’s a good storyline, somewhere it seems that the power in dialogues used inside the courtroom, especially towards the climax, was less powerful. Also, we can say that it is the underutilization of talents like Ashutosh Rana.
Overall, this is one of the finest movies. This high-voltage courtroom drama is quite powerful and interesting. So, why wait? Go and watch it in your nearest cinema hall.
