‘Mercury’: Five reasons to watch the Karthik Subbaraj film

After a gap of two years, filmmaker Karthik Subbaraj is back to the silver screen with a silent thriller ‘Mercury’. The film’s trailer, which was released by a host of celebrities like AR Rahman, Dulquer Salmaan, Rakshit Shetty and Nithin has received a good response from the audience. With ‘Mercury’ hitting theatre screens today, we give you five reasons to watch this film.

He’s just three films old in the industry. However, in a short span of time, Karthik Subbaraj has proved his mettle. It’s also safe to say that he is a master filmmaker in the making. All his films are dense, complex and well layered. Apart from his screenplay, Subbaraj’s characters are exciting to watch on the screen, be it Assault Sethu from ‘Jigarthanda’ or Michael from ‘Iraivi’. If you’re a fan of his previous works, then you shouldn’t miss ‘Mercury’.

Silent films are a rarity in world cinema. In fact, the last silent film was a French comedy-drama ‘The Artist’ that came out in 2012. In the context of Indian cinema, veteran actor Kamal Haasan, who’s known for pushing boundaries, acted in Telugu filmmaker Singeetham Srinivasa Rao's ‘Pushpak’ that released in 1987. Nearly 31 years later, Karthik Subbaraj has come up with ‘Mercury’, which is touted to be a no-language thriller. Even before its release, ‘Mercury’ has been selected to premiere at The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA). Will this experimental film impress the audience? Only time will tell.

After many years, actor-choreographer Prabhudheva marked his return to Tamil cinema with ‘Devi’, a horror comedy, that was a profitable venture at the box office. And now, his second innings in Tamil is quite an interesting one. Prabhudheva is playing the lead role in ‘Mercury’. Going by the trailer, the film almost seems like a hangover of the Hollywood film ‘Don’t Breathe’. In fact, it has Prabhudheva playing a character, who has a condition that seems to aggravate with any kind of sounds. Apart from him, it also stars a bunch of promising actors including Sanatha Reddy of ‘Jil Jung Juk’ fame and Indhuja, who made an impressive debut last year with ‘Meyadhaa Maan’.

As the title suggests, ‘Mercury’ is reportedly inspired by the real-life incident that happened in Kodaikanal. For the uninitiated, Kodaikanal is known for its infamous mercury poisoning, which originated from a thermometer factory and claimed the lives of several workers. After protests from activists and the people, the factory shut its operations. The film's trailer gave us a glimpse of what one could expect from this thriller. The creative sketches used in the trailer highlights the issue. Though Karthik has said that the film is based on this topic, it isn’t clear how the issue would transcend on the big screen, considering that ‘Mercury’ is a silent film.

Since it's a silent film, it’s safe to say that the driving force for ‘Mercury’ is the sound. If reports are anything to go by, it looks like sound designer Kunal Rajan has done a brilliant job with this one. Notably, Kunal has worked in over 150 films and is a frequent collaborator with Kamal Haasan. Interestingly, the film has music by Santhosh Narayanan, who is teaming up with Karthik for the fourth consecutive time. The duo has produced some memorable albums like ‘Jigarthanda’ and ‘Iraivi’. More importantly, Santhosh Narayanan’s background score is one of the things to look forward to in ‘Mercury’.