Article 15 is excellent, but nowhere close to Mulk.

Anubhav Sinha’s Article 15 is dark cinema. Literally and metaphorically. Cinematographer Ewan Mulligan paints the film’s frames in a sombre olive, there’s also a prominent use of vignette as an effect, where the background is pitch black. Anubhav has a skill for making us care about even the most alien of topics. He successfully did so in Mulk, which in retrospect is a far better film than Article 15. Which it shouldn’t be, because even though it was overflowing with heart and emotion, the craft on display was hurried and rather shabby.

Perhaps, it’s aged better in my mind because of the show stopping performances of Taapsee Pannu, Rishi Kapoor, Neena Gupta, Manoj Pahwa and to an extent, Prateik Babbar. Luckily, like in Mulk, the source material is electric. The horrific 2014 Badaun rape case brought up concerns of safety of our women and our minorities. It brought caste into the picture, exhuming the thoughts of urban Indians that caste was a thing of the past.

Anubhav again takes a sledge hammer to that patriarchal style of thinking. He’s a smart director who knows his audiences. We live vicariously through Ayan Ranjan (Ayushmann Khurrana), a devoted IPS officer, who arrives in the sleepy town of Lalganj. The hierarchal setup immediately reveals itself when he can’t buy a bottle of water because the seller is of a lower caste. Ayan’s reaction mirrors us. His disbelief furthers when he isn’t allowed to eat from the plate of one of his officers for the same reason.

Anubhav, who’s co-written the screenplay with Gaurav Solanki, has a talent of building up tension. He carefully layers and layers the story, the tension stirs, the background music hits a crescendo and then the world as we know it comes crumbling down. Mulligan’s unforgiving frames don’t spare us the trauma of the rape. We don’t see anything, just two hanging girls from a tree. The camera focuses on them, Anubhav’s distinctive rage shows - he wants us to feel ashamed, to watch in disgust, as urban movie going audiences, while this horrific incident unravels in front of us.

He also has a knack for symbolism. In one scene, we see a manual scavenger continuously go further down into the sewer, cleaning it up. He comes out dirty so we can remain clean - interpret that how you may. But, Anubhav fails to dig deep enough. In his breakthrough, Mulk, he didn’t need to do that because he gave us a homegrown story. This could be our family. The problem is that because Article 15 lacks that core connect, you’re going to have fill that personal void with a scathing commentary.

He can’t quite conjure it up in the way Aniruddha Roy Chaudhary did with a similar film, his stunning courtroom rapist drama, Pink, also starring Taapsee. But luckily, his posse of actors aide him. Ayushmann Khurrana is spectacular. I finally understood why his ‘relatable man’ shtick works so well. Ayan is privileged like us, Anubhav knows his audience. His text messages with his rather irrelevant girlfriend are a sidetrack that add onto the length, but they give us some form of an emotional connect.

Manoj Pahwa is also terrific as the menacing officer who’s two steps ahead of Ayan. His character is evil and gets full space to breathe. Also brilliant are Sayani Gupta’s expressive eyes. She has minimal dialogue as Gaura, a village girl looking for some semblance of justice. But, she doesn’t need it, because her fragile demeanour, her walnut shaped, broken eyes and her terrified body language speaks volumes. I reckon hers is the most evolved performance out of the lot. Article 15 isn’t stunning, but it’s far from last week’s toxic Kabir Singh.

I give it three stars, with an extra half star for Khurrana, Gupta and Pahwa.