Naslen K Gafoor plays an underdog whose superpower is that he is a hacker, and his funny and serious journey through revenge and repentance makes for another small win from this director. The rest of this review may contain spoilers, so do read/watch at your discretion.
I Am Kathalan is written by Sajin Cherukayil, but you can sense director Girish AD’s signature all over. Like Thanneer Mathan Dinangal and Premalu, the film centres on a likeable loser: his name is Vishnu, and he’s played by Naslen K Gafoor. One day, Vishnu brings a friend home for the first time. This friend is another loser, and we get a small scene where he is introduced to Vishnu’s sister and chats with her. Her name is Ammu, and when the protective mother stands in the doorway, pointedly listening to this conversation, you wait for a joke to erupt. You think the joke will be built on Vishnu’s friend. But the joke, based on Ammu’s name, occurs a little later, when you least expect it. And while staging it, Girish doesn’t treat it like a “joke”. There are no exaggerated reaction shots, no funny lines. There’s just a small acknowledgement by Vishnu, and the movie rolls on. If you think that Ammu bit was funny and if you laugh, then good. Otherwise, let’s get on with the story. That’s the Girish AD signature.
Nothing is exaggerated. Vishnu has a backlog of engineering papers to clear, but this is not treated like a goal. His girlfriend Shilpa (Anshima Anilkumar) scolds him because he can’t land a job even with the dumbest of companies, but there’s no major anger in her tone: there’s just resignation. For that matter, when we get a flashback to their first “I love you” moment (Vishnu uttered the words), there is no reaction from her side. There’s no shy smile, nothing. This looks like a relationship where Shilpa became the girlfriend simply because Vishnu said “I love you” before anyone else, and she decided to go along with it. At no point does Girish exaggerate this love angle. Even the way we are introduced to Vishnu is low-key. He gets a sinister message on his phone, but he isn’t taken aback. Looking at his face, it could be a “good morning” note from his father.
If someone wrote a thesis on Girish’s cinema, this could be the title: “The Gentle Dramatisation of the Utterly Ordinary”. I Am Kathalan begins with the New Yorker cartoon quote that eventually became a meme: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” You could add, “Nobody knows you are an underdog, either.” Vishnu’s superpower is hacking, and when an ethical hacker (Simi, beautifully played by Lijomol Jose) studies his work, she concludes that the person doing all this damage must be a hotshot working in an MNC. And why does Vishnu unleash his destructive tendencies to harm a finance company? Because he was humiliated by the owner. It’s a Maheshinte Prathikaram kind of situation (and Dileesh Pothan has a lovely role here). Vishnu has had enough being treated like a punching bag. Now, for the first time, he wants to retaliate.
And slowly, we slip into a techno-thriller that is also a coming-of-age drama. On the one hand, we wonder if Simi will stop Vishnu, who has adopted his online name from the Shankar hit that gives this film its title. The image Vishnu chooses is so appropriate: it’s that visual from the Muqabla song where Prabhu Deva’s face has vanished. On the internet, Vishnu, too, is a faceless man. On the other hand, in the other story track, we wait for Vishnu to grow up. We wait for him to realise that hacking is wrong. We wait for him to realise that life is not about the temporary satisfaction of revenge but about making something of yourself using your skills. Taken individually, these two tracks don’t quite deliver. The techno-thriller part is not exactly nail-biting, and the coming-of-age story is not emotional enough. But taken together, these two narrative strands result in a very satisfying story, which runs less than two hours.
The writing throws you sudden belly-laughs, like a plea to Mother Mary, or the typical image of what a hacker looks like, or the brilliant device Vishnu has invented. (This device gets a great narrative arc.) The screenplay is so detailed that, before the hacking happens, we are told that the finance company’s IT department is not strong. Even without this bit of information, we would have bought the hacking. But the IT department, eventually, strengthens its defences, and this transformation makes Vishnu up his game. (In other words, the IT department gets an “arc”, too.) It’s bliss to see how each little revelation does its bit to keep the story going. When we see that Shilpa and Vishnu first met at a computer centre, it becomes a precursor to where their story will go. But again, this seriousness coexists with comedy. There are hilarious stretches like the one where Vishnu and his friends go in turns to a branch of the finance company, in order to set up devices for hacking.
Sidhartha Pradeep’s music is just the right shade of eccentric: neither too conventional, nor too techno-bizarre. The only plot point that seemed contrived was the very casual way in which Shilpa discovers that Vishnu could be the hacker. But I guess, coincidences are a part of life! Naslen’s performance works wonderfully, though, at this relatively early stage of his career, I can’t say if he’s acting or just being himself. He has a naturally sullen look, like he’s always sulking about something, and this really helps the characters he plays, who all feel that life is depriving them of the things they deserve. I also wished the advice Vishnu gets from his father had been in a more emotional scene, but I realised that this is the only way such a scene would play in a Girish AD movie. It’s the gentle dramatisation of the utterly ordinary.
