The ‘Drishyam’-like story involves a murder. And once again, Mohanlal becomes an ordinary family man put in extraordinary circumstances. But the intrigue factor is drowned out by the loud ‘mass’ treatment. The rest of this review may contain spoilers.
I think this is what Tharun Moorthy has tried to do with Thudarum. He has tried to make a meta movie by taking one of Mohanlal’s most beloved films – Drishyam – and filtering it through the lens of star worship. In Drishyam, Mohanlal played a movie-crazy family man who runs a cable-TV service. In Thudarum, he plays a family man nicknamed Benz, and he was actually in the movies, as a stunt person. In Drishyam, Mohanlal’s character was called George. Here, that name belongs to someone else. In Drishyam, we had the cover-up of an accidental murder, involving a young woman caught in a compromising position. In Thudarum, we get a mention of a young woman caught in a compromising position, and yes, here, too, a young man ends up killed, and a cover-up follows. In both films, the family of the protagonist ends up tortured by a relentless cop.
The difference is the mass flavour in Thudarum, the relentless hero-worship that borders on what we just saw in Good Bad Ugly. In Drishyam, Mohanlal played an almost invisible character, in the sense that he disappeared into Georgekutty. Here, he is Mohanlal, the Star. The film opens with a quote: When elephants walk, the forests walk with them. A little later, the Mohanlal character – who is a driver – tells his passengers that they need not be afraid of elephant herds. It’s only the solo rogue elephants that are dangerous. And of course, our hero turns out to be this solo rogue elephant. He may drive an Ambassador, but there’s a reason people call him Benz. The look may be classic, perhaps even a bit old and rounded – but don’t be fooled. He is every bit a sleek, new-age machine. This may be stretching the metaphor, but what’s the logo of the Benz car? A star!
And the star of this film is referenced endlessly through photographs and even through one of his most famous costars. As Benz’s wife, Shobana does not have much to do in the face of this film’s relentless machismo. If Drishyam was about a man using his brain, Thudarum has him using his brawn. But the casual chemistry between these two actors is intact, and I loved the scene where Benz shouts at his wife, and instead of fear or anger, her response is to try and figure out what is troubling this man she is married to, this co-actor she has made so many memorable movies with. The lines between reel and real blur so much that it takes an effort to pull yourself out and say that, despite these older stars, this is a new movie.
Benz says that fights were the major factor that created all the major stars of our cinema. And accordingly, the second half of Thudarum is filled with action scenes, befitting one of our most major stars. The action is intentionally over-the-top, but after a point, the film offers dimishing returns. One, the plot of Drishyam is so ingrained in us that a mere tweak in tonality isn’t enough to sustain an entire movie. And two, our mass movies are already borderline parodies – so winking at them begins to feel redundant after a point. The villain intro-scene has him accidentally crushing a millipede, and much later, when he plants an accusation in order to crush similarly helpless humans, his mouth curls into an evil smile. It’s too much. The motto of Thudarum is too much: too much cuteness in the early family scenes, too much convenience in the murder, too much cheap sentimentality in the implication of a father slapping a son, too many bits of animal symbolism, too much coincidence in a landslide that excavates crucial evidence, and too much of a Terminator flavour in the action scenes.
You want to give Tharun Moorthy the benefit of the doubt. After all, he made two solid films in Operation Java and Saudi Vellakka. But what does one make of the plot point where we discover the wallet of a person who is stripped nearly naked? Where did it come from? Is this a ridiculous plot point or another wink at how ridiculous some of the plot points are in our mass movies? Does the background score just happen to be loud, or is it another wink at how loud the background scores are in our star-worshipping cinema? How much of all this is meta, and how much is just… mass? Yes, Mohanlal is always watchable, and when he taunts a bad guy at the end with a smile, it’s as though we are seeing a brand new expression from this actor who has given us thousands of expressions over thousands of scenes.
But soon, you get to a point where you yearn for some genuine emotion – I mean, other than the love Benz has for his Ambassador. Yes, it is his biggest passion and there’s a very funny star cameo in a scene that disrespects the old car – but what about the human beings? You want to feel the romance in the subplot of young lovers. You want to feel the tears of a grieving parent, suffering a loss you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. You want to feel the mounting tension when our protagonist is up against odds. There are some strong performances from the likes of newcomer Prakash Varma, but the writing reduces most people to caricatures. Thudarum is fun for a while, but with all the talent involved, it ends up feeling like a minor diversion as we wait for the main event: namely, Drishyam 3.
