Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum Malayalam Movie
Every once in a while, there comes a Malayalam film that makes waves like nobody's business. If Maheshinte Prathikaram and Kammattipaadam, according to many, shared that honour last year, Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum could very well stand a chance this time around. And guess what? It also marks the angelic collaboration between the directors of the aforementioned films, Dileesh Pothan and Rajeev Ravi, as director and cinematographer, respectively.
Dileesh's organic direction teams up with Rajeev's unembellished camerawork, resulting in a quietly profound cinematic experience. By patiently establishing the landscape, the culture and the people, the brains behind the scenes pull us into their fictitious narrative like pros. Editor Kiran Das also joins this creative process with a knack for holding important shots and regulating the pace scene by scene. Add Bijibal Maniyil's score littered with retro tunes and we get a film that layers itself with disparate moods and tones.
Fahadh Faasil and Suraj Venjaramoodu pit against each other as two financially disturbed individuals with apparently the same name- Prasad. They choose to go in opposite paths to change their fortunes. Of course, their paths are crossed very early in the film as Fahadh's Prasad steals the other Prasad's wedding necklace from his wife, Sreeja(Nimisha Sajayan). What follows is a procedural comedy of sorts, often making fun of the 'powerful versus powerless' phenomenon. Here, both Prasads (and Sreeja) sit at the receiving end of power, as the police force takes them for pawns many a time.
The satire grows from the characters' authentic reactions to their predicaments. Dileesh's compulsion for naturalism seeps through the conversations, the look and feel of each character and setting and the events that unfold, which are as grounded as they get. Rajeev's camera reciprocates the same with a fly-on-the-wall vantage point for most of the images, to keep the viewers at ease amid all the hullabaloo.
Fahadh and Suraj have minimal verbal communication between themselves and yet maintain astonishing chemistry. The same goes for Suraj and his on-screen wife, Nimisha. Her debut is as good as any from a seasoned performer and flaunts her natural flair as a screen actor. Meanwhile, Suraj's dramatic turns of late, including the one here, are hinting at a renaissance for the immensely skilled comedic actor's career.
Alencier Ley Lopez is another instrumental part of Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, playing a veteran policeman, Chandran. He single-handedly represents the duality of cops to be broad-hearted civil servants while regularly dealing with crime and its ramifications. This is where Dileesh's clever direction comes into play. He is not gratuitously mocking the police force but humanizing them so they remain where they belong- in the grey area. The actors who play the cops read the director's imagination well enough to realize such a dichotomy.
The burlesque plot is not flawless. It sometimes meanders a little too much to drag the film. However, an unaltered reflection of things we see and not view, hear and not listen to, read and not register, makes Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum an intensely engaging watch from a modern auteur in the making.
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Kiran Allan