The film begins with the discovery of a skeleton, but finds its footing once the focus shifts from who the victim is to what their life and dreams were like. Asif Ali and Anaswara Rajan give beautiful performances in this thriller that transcends its genre. The rest of this review contains spoilers.
When we first meet the protagonist – a policeman named Vivek (Asif Ali) – he has been punished for gambling online. But even before we meet him, we see two boys talking about a body being taken out of a house on a rainy night. One of them thinks that this is part of a movie. With the introduction of Vivek and these boys, the themes and visual elements of Rekhachithram are set. This is a film about rains, about the movies, and about a police investigation. Soon enough, Vivek gets involved in a case that arises from a confession. The confessor has skeletons in his closet, and his confession leads to the discovery of an actual skeleton. This is the first of several scenes set in the rains, and this mirrors the rains during the night the body was taken out of the house. Nature, apparently, has decided on a re-enactment of her state. Or maybe we should say “retake”.
For a while, director Jofin T Chacko seems to be telling a conventional (and unremarkable) story. Vivek gets several leads. He talks to several people who could know whose skeleton this is. In short, we seem to be in a competent investigative thriller, nothing more, nothing less. But there’s a beautiful emotional thread running through: the fact that the family of the person who is now a skeleton does not know about his or her fate. As one family member says, it would almost be a relief if they knew that the person who went missing is confirmed dead. Because death is a certainty. It’s the waiting, the not-knowing, that hurts more. And then, Vivek runs into the character played by Indrans, a man who supplied junior artists for the movies. And Rekhachithram slowly turns into a shrine: a memorial for the dead person whose story is resurrected, and a memorial for movie-love. By the end credits, which show snapshots from a mid-198os shoot, some of us will be misting up.
This shoot is for Bharathan’s Kathodu Kathoram, which starred Mammootty and Saritha. What has that younger Mammootty got to do with a case in the present day? But then, does the camera care about age? Once you are captured on film, you stay that age forever, even after you die. This truth about cinema becomes a crucial investigative tool in this film’s case. And it allows us to go on a nostalgic journey, to a time before actors used to lock themselves up in caravans. In the shoot of Kathodu Kathoram, we see Mammootty sitting down casually amidst a crowd that’s beyond excited to see him. Through the movie named Rekhachithram, we enter the world of the movie named Kathodu Kathoram. It is a brilliant device by writers John Manthrickal and Ramu Sunil, a masterclass on how to deepen the themes of a movie. We think we are watching an investigation. We are then taken into a movie about movies.
We are introduced to a movie-crazy young girl (Anaswara Rajan), who wants to become Mammootty’s heroine. We meet a nun whose affiliation to Jesus does not stop her affection for movie stars. We discover that evil lurks in the hearts of not just men but also the unlikeliest of women. We discover, through the actor Jagadeesh, how much fan letters mean and how special such a correspondence can make a newcomer-actor feel. The genius of this well-knitted film is not just in identifying whose skeleton it is, but also in digging beyond into who this person is and what dreams they had. Rekhachithram may be one of the most emotional investigative thrillers ever, as opposed to just a thrilling thriller. Asif Ali and Anaswara Rajan are terrific, but the person towering over them is Mammootty, who becomes a symbol for movie-love. That the great actor is still around, preserving his face in frames, is a little postscript in this moving love letter to cinema.
