Siya Movie Review: Pooja Pandey, Vineet Singh's film is brutal and honest

Debutant director Manish Mundra, with Siya, gives us poetry that is brutal at its core. Watch Siya to experience what honest storytelling of real-life incidents can look like.

"Maati kahe kumhaar se, tu kya ronde mohe? Ek din aisa ayega, main rondungi tohe."

A particularly crushing moment in Manish Mundra's directorial debut, Siya has this doha playing in the background. The scene turns slow-motion, and your heart stops. As you emerge from the numbing, brutal and honest experience that Siya is, that the director very much intended it to be, you find yourself asking if this doha was justified, for justice was never served. And then it hits you. It stands for hope. Ek din...ek din ayega.

Manish Mundra, who has produced gems like Newton and Masaan, dons the director's hat for the first time for Siya, starring an astute Vineet Kumar Singh and the heart and soul of the film, Pooja Pandey. Sans songs or the paraphernalia Hindi cinema got you addicted on, Siya drives on great writing, clear direction and excellent performances alone. Nothing else is even needed, you realise at the end of the film.

Watch the trailer of Siya here:

As the trailer depicted, Siya is the story of a 17-year-old rape survivor who ultimately falls prey to the flawed justice system that's turned into a puppet in the hands of the powerful. Siya borrows from no less than six similar real incidents in the last three or four years, as Mundra himself revealed in an earlier interview. But, the shadows of the Unnao and Hathras Rape Cases will appear more distinctly. Your heart freezes into ice knowing what's waiting for our protagonist Siya Singh (played by Pooja), as she goes about her day collecting genhu and lakdi on her cycle. She is abducted, brutalised for days on end, tied in chains to a bed without food or water as men take turns. Lumps of dried blood on her body attract ants as she lies motionless watching them crawl on the very chain that binds her, just wanting to go home to her mother.

Siya's perpetrators - one of whom is the brother of a local neta - are nabbed, sent to custody, but are eventually left on bail. Siya decides to fight on with the help of Mahendra (played by Vineet), a lawyer and a friend of the family, and after much struggle, a CBI probe is ordered which finds the local neta guilty of raping her too. He is taken into remand, just as Siya's father, Shekhar, is beaten up by local goons and picked up by the cops on false charges of possession of arms. He is killed in police custody and cremated right before the family's eyes in a show of power. Back down or this could be you next.

Blatant abuse of power - money, political and class - runs through the veins of the film. At every given point, Siya is reminded she is weak. And at the mercy of the influential. If she dares shoot down one of their proposals of 'love', she will be shown her place by force. Nothing we haven't read in newspaper headlines before. In fact, something we've read far too often. And that's what makes it all so chilling.