Mohanlal and Meena are back as Georgekutty and Rani. They want to get their older daughter married off, but the past keeps following them. The characters could have used more depth and detailing. And yes, the familiarity of the structure does become an issue. But the plot is rock solid. Towards the end, the twists and thrills keep coming, and the closure to Georgekutty’s journey is satisfying even as we get a hint of a sequel. That’s the quick review. A longer analysis follows, and it may contain spoilers.
There was a masterstroke of imagination in the way Drishyam 2 took off from the first film. By the end of Drishyam, we thought everything was dead and buried, both literally and figuratively. The problems facing Georgekutty and his family, the evidence, the police investigation – everything was dead and buried, and we returned home with the satisfaction that justice had been served. After all, whatever happened was not a premeditated crime, and we felt that we may have done the same thing to protect our loved ones. But Drishyam 2 played with the idea that there is no such thing as a perfect crime. It introduced an eyewitness who caught Georgekutty in the act, and to extend that idea in the very Christian universe of the film’s central family, it said that God is always watching. This was a masterstroke, and Drishyam 2 ended with Georgekutty as a winner as well as a loser. In the eyes of law, in the eyes of the cheering theatre audience (myself included), he won. But in his own eyes, as per his conscience, he’d always have the shadow of his sin hanging over him.
In other words, even if Georgekutty was not legally punished, he and his family were morally punished. His older daughter had epileptic fits. His wife was always terrified, and she could not spend a night alone if Georgekutty was not at home. The Drishyam series is one of the epic entries in Mohanlal’s epic filmography, and he wears the part of Georgekutty like a second skin. But along with the great man, let’s also acknowledge Meena, who plays Rani. Meena’s innate childlike sweetness and innocence makes you want to protect her. She is the perfect wife and mother. She keeps arguing with Georgekutty and she keeps scolding the daughters, but there is no doubt that she loves this man and this world they have created. The obedient older daughter is Anju (Ansiba Hassan) and the younger one is the rebellious Anu (Esther Anil). And as we enter Drishyam 3, there is a sense of familiarity in the franchise, which is inevitable.
Drishyam 3 acknowledges this with a meta reference to the cultural phenomenon that these movies have become. Georgekutty has produced a movie about his life. It’s called Drishyam, and it is a blockbuster. But as the tag line of Drishyam 3 says, the past never stays silent, and Georgekutty is always aware of the fact that his actions can always catch up with him. Drishyam 3 follows the same structure as the earlier films. For a long time, we have the feel of a drama, with a constant undercurrent of unease. And then, the last hour unfolds in the form of a thriller with one twist after another. The domestic aspect of Drishyam 3 is about the efforts to find Anju a groom. The thriller aspects of the film are about someone from the past that never stays silent. Georgekutty says, “Someone is after me”. As always, his instincts are on point. And as always, we wonder what tricks he will pull out of his bag to get out of these tricky situations yet another time.
There are many characters. (I won’t name the actors because part of the surprise is seeing who’s back in this universe.) But what stands out is the number of fathers and daughters. There’s Georgekutty and his daughters. There’s a psychologist with a daughter. There’s a dying man with a daughter. Even the villain of this piece – who looks like a devil with red eyes – has a daughter. And the fantastic idea at the centre of Drishyam 3 is that Georgekutty himself may have a bit of the devil in him. He is somewhat like Michael, the Al Pacino character in the Godfather films. At first, Michael kills only to protect his father, his family. But slowly, killing becomes something that comes naturally. For Georgekutty, lying and deceiving and manipulating people and even harming them becomes almost instinctive. And by now, Jeethu Joseph knows how to pull us into this world and keep us in tension about how Georgekutty is going to pull off yet another escape act.
Drishyam 3 is not as solid a sequel as Drishyam 2. For one, we now know the design of these films. And two, the scripting is a little loose. A television reporter who is a big part of the beginning slowly gets lost. She could have been used to suggest how yet another daughter is paying for her father’s actions. For that matter, we no longer feel bad for the characters played by Siddique and Asha Sharath. At least in the first part, the Siddique character had a moral dimension. But by now, the films have forgotten that their son was a sexual offender who preyed on an underage girl, and I wished that point had been used to construct some kind of drama with the parents. Maybe we could have seen that even a moral man can, over time, become a criminal – and though we can sense that here, it is not very convincing. I also felt that there was a lost opportunity in not addressing Anju’s fears about sex, which could have given her character more shades instead of her character being more of the same.
But the plotting is rock solid. And though you know what is coming, you can’t ever predict how it’s coming. Also, one aspect that makes me return to these films is how they break the hero mould in our cinema. For one, the “mass” moments are wonderfully organic. They rise from the writing and not from random slow-motion shots backed by a big score. The theatre erupts in cheers because of the relief that Georgekutty keeps getting out of the troubles he is in. And secondly, in a film culture that celebrates the vigilante hero, we are invited to see what happens to the hero after he saves the day. The sequels are all about Georgekutty paying for his one act of taking the law into his own hands. I liked the crime and punishment aspect of the ending, but if the sequel that is hinted at does happen, I hope that it deepens the characters along with the plot. But yeah, whatever the case, I will be in line.
