Directed By: Jeethu Joseph
Written By: JeethuJoseph
Cast:
Mohanlal – Georgekutty
Meena – Rani George
Ansiba Hassan – Anju George
Esther – Anu George
Kalabhavan Shajon – Constable Sahadevan
Siddique – Prabhakar
Asha Sharath – IG Geetha Prabhakar
Language: Malayalam Genre: Drama; Thriller
The film opens with a bus journey and it is when the story progresses that the significance of the event is understood. It then becomes clear that Jeethu Joseph has not wasted even one shot in the film. Everything fits together to form this ‘picture’. In fact, even the word ‘drishyam’ means a picture/visual. The film is then a meta film – a film within a film. Narrative and directorial control is displayed in the film.
Georgekutty (Mohanlal) is someone who spends his life watching movies while waiting for work assignments (he works as a cable TV operator in a small village). But these film-viewing exercises are not only entertainment; he learns a lot from them as demonstrated in a scene early in a movie where he expounds knowledgeably about habeas corpus.
Every scene follows logically and you wonder what jigsaw is it all fitting into. It begins to seem as though the point of no return isn’t happening soon enough or that the setting is taking a while but surprisingly you’re not bored and once the moment comes, the story hurtles forward. The film seems to have created a genre of its own – a how-done-it not a whodunit.
Georgekutty is the second director in this meta film where he directs the action in a masterly fashion and sometimes, like some directors is taken by surprise at the initiative of his ‘performers’. The start of this second film is nicely shown through the closing of his eyelids in the opening sequence, much like a camera and the opening of his eyelids towards the end, stands for the end of his ‘drishyam’.
In essence, it is the story of a family. A family that is slightly dysfunctional with a lackadaisical approach to the duties of family life. It is about how tragedy brings about the realization that they need to reaffirm their bonds as a family and stand together.
Watch it for the well-crafted package it is and the sensitive portrayal of grief, family life – of various kinds of families and what a difference a close-knit family can make in times of adversity. Also, for the well-crafted dialogues that express, yet mask; fail to implicate but do not fail to impress the viewer with its nuances.
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