Drishyam

Story: A happy family living in a hilly area is confronted with a sudden twist of fate and their decision to take it on results in a struggle that is both painful and engaging.

Mohanlal owes this film to Jeethu Joseph, completely. His portly frame, his drooping shoulders, his flitting glances find a glowing reincarnation in a character named George Kutty. He plays a father and a husband like a man. He struggles and suffers with his rugged endurance. This is a film that switches genres every second.

It opens up as a sweet-coated family drama, gives a fleeting sense of a social chronicle before evolving, almost magically into a game of truth and lies. Joseph picks the most unlikely setting and people to be hurled into this game.

Drishyam is a deeply layered duel between truth and lie. By placing an uneducated, harmless farmer and his family on the one end and cops at the other, Joseph sets the right tone for a riveting conflict. A family comes face to face with a crisis that could rip them apart. The crisis is sudden, unexpected and shattering. What ensues is not a meek submission to fate.

They choose to fight, to resist and to survive and the battle is brave, arresting and empathetic. George Kutty’s brilliance is shaped from the nights he spent in his cable-TV office keenly watching films. His courage is emboldened by his circumstances. His manliness is empowered by the sheer necessity to guard his kids and his wife.

In this trail of human suffering, every lie they utter is prodded on, every hurdle they cross is cheered. It is as if Joseph lets the viewer share the travails. He slowly turns it into a conflict between parents, two different men and women waging a desperate struggle with each other for their kids. One does it to protect and the other to procure.

While playing a character rooted to earth, Lal grows in stature moment by moment. He takes the suffering of George Kutty upon himself with such resilience that his life depends on it. Sometimes he invokes the warmth of a father and the weariness of a bruised soul with nothing but an almost indiscernible movement of his lips.

It seems Joseph had saved his best for the script. It’s a case of adept story-telling and playing to the gallery. Slightest doubts come from the characters themselves and he lets them answer as though each answer was his token of respect for the viewers.

Even the characters played by Meena and Asha Sarath live up to the demands. Asha pulls out a performance that pitches her strongly for character roles. Drishyam is an elegantly crafted piece of film which Lal and Joseph can proudly hold close to their hearts.