Rorschach Malayalam Movie

Feature Film | 2022 | UA | Action, Drama
Critics:
Audience:
Rorschach is an unusual Malayalam thriller. This oddity applies to everything from the title to the visual grammar of the film. Some may call it genre-bending for its subversive twists and turns.
Oct 8, 2022 By Sreejith Mullappilly

Where To Watch:
Streaming:
   Disney+hotstar

Director Nissam Basheer's Rorschach is an unusual Malayalam thriller, and I mean that in a good way. Right from the title to the music by Midhun Mukundan to the visual grammar of the film, Rorschach is unconventional for Malayalam cinema. Some may call it genre-bending cinema for the twists and turns in the plot that subvert cliches.


The protagonist of Rorschach is Luke Antony, played by Mammootty. Luke walks into a police station on a rainy night in a village and files a missing complaint for his wife. However, this is a man shrouded in mystery. The villagers wonder where he is from and whether he even has a wife. It does not take us long to realize that Luke is in the village with some ulterior motive.


Basheer explains how and why Luke is there through a series of flashbacks instead of an info dump, which makes the character that much more intriguing. We learn that Luke has been through white torture and that he is experiencing a deep sense of loss. He is a man on a mission who descends into madness slowly, yet steadily.


Most revenge thrillers focus a lot on the protagonist and the antagonist and include a lot of mano-a-mano moments between them, but some are more complex. Take a movie like Thazhvaram, for instance. In Thazhvaram, Mohanlal's character goes to a hill station to find the man responsible for his wife's death and kill him. The plot seems quite straightforward, but the execution is complex. Rorschach is similar in that it is straightforward in its plotting but complex with regard to its narration.


This means that the supporting characters here have a lot of depth and satisfying arcs. Sameer Abdul's layered script packs in potent themes, such as people with greed and single-mindedness who go to great lengths to achieve what they want. You have to pay careful attention to know why some people survive here while others fall by the wayside after the mayhem that follows the arrival of a stranger in the village.


As suggested earlier in the review, Rorschach has a visual language that is so out-there for Malayalam cinema. Rorschach is sometimes a bit showy in terms of how it is presented visually, but the overall output is fascinating. Take, for instance, the scene where a character puts a cigarette into a dead man's skull. Nimish Ravi's camera splendidly captures the eeriness of the moment and gives us a constant sense of foreboding that permeates the remote house at the heart of the plot. Even the scenes with a man in the mask have a visual grammar that gives an extra dimension to the idiom, "a ghost from the past".



If Rorschach has some holes as a thriller, it is probably because the aim here is to be as unconventional as possible. What makes the film more compelling is the performances. As Luke Antony, Mammootty is flawless in how he portrays a man consumed by obsession who slowly descends into madness. Kottayam Nazeer gets to showcase his acting chops as he aces the role of an elder brother with a sense of conscience. Grace Antony again excels in the role of a strong-willed woman who gets to make a lot of big calls. But the one who walks away with the film is Bindu Panicker, who is terrific as the mother in a family who molds her children into human beings with a similar thought process to hers.

Sreejith Mullappilly

   

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