Director: Mysskin
Cast: Udhayanidhi Stalin, Aditi Rao Hydari, Nithya Menon, Rajkumar Pitchumani, Ram
I recently watched an exhilarating interview of director Mysskin on a popular online channel, where the topic of discussion was ‘Film Appreciation’. Among other things, Mysskin spoke passionately about how even for ordinary people, interest towards the arts could help enhance the aesthetic quality of their lives. There were also more specific references in the same interview to particular films. There was a debate about Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped and it’s spiritual remake The Shawshank Redemption (directed by Frank Darabont). Mysskin again spoke exhaustively about how an auteur like the French great Bresson, brought his own stylistic signature to a similar plot-line and made his film look so strikingly different. In Tamil cinema, Mysskin is one of the few true auteurs we have. And I was really looking forward to his own stylistic take on a character study already dealt with by other filmmakers extensively in the past- that of a psychopath serial killer.
The film wastes no time in introducing us to the antagonist (the Psycho, played superbly by Rajkumar Pitchumani). In the opening scene, we see him perform the gory execution of a woman who is strapped up on a table in a dark, grimy chamber. The story then cuts to Gautam (Udhayanidhi Stalin), a visually challenged musician, head over heels in love with Dahini (Aditi Rao Hydari), who is an RJ. He follows Dahini around all the time and is your classic specimen of a stalker. He even admits to bribing her maid and office assistant to know her next whereabouts. He might be blind, but he has eyes everywhere! All these scenes are orchestrated in Mysskin’s signature fashion, with soulful violins playing in the background to breezy camera pans. There is also loads of dry, slapstick humour that I really enjoyed here and this in fact continues throughout the film, providing relief periodically from all the gore.
We hit the first plot point when the killer abducts Dahini, his next victim, but strangely isn’t able to follow through with the execution. He says he doesn’t see the fear in her eyes. She says this is because she knows Gautam would come for her and rescue her. You do wonder who the blind one is among them! Gautam for his part makes this rescue act the most urgent mission of his life. The CB-CID officers probing the case don’t take too kindly to his involvement, but he enlists the help of an ex-cop, the now wheelchair-confined Kamala (Nithya Menon) for his sleuth work.
Psycho differs from other recent serial-killer affairs, say Raatchasan, on one key point. This is not a classic ‘whodunnit’. The audience already knows who the killer is from the first frame of this film. Now with the limitation that ‘suspense’ is off the table, the script relies heavily on an inventive screenplay and a really strong plot to keep the audience hooked. While it succeeds very well at the former, there are quite a few shortcomings in the latter.
The screenplay, if seen as a standalone engagement tool, does work and ensures that the audience is never bored per se. This is achieved by innovative staging of scenes, witty dialogue exchanges and some very convincing acting across the board. However, when you look under the hood at the core plot, it starts to crumble at the slightest of touches. There are various logical questions that just go unanswered. If she thought crucial evidence was hidden in an easily accessible camera footage at a college, why did Kamala not even bring it up until very late in the film? And more than this, I couldn’t really buy the police incompetence that was on show. This narrative around the police could have worked in a Sherlock Holmes style context, or closer to home, in a Thupparivalan (Mysskin’s previous outing). But here, with Gautam’s character as the central protagonist, this just isn’t believable.
I was also a little surprised at the lack of depth in some of the character sketches. Now, they did carry the eccentricity that Mysskin is known for, but beyond that, they were all quite shallow. Kamala’s character is a classic example. I’m still trying to comprehend what tangible input her character brought to the table, except for the late video tape evidence that we have spoken about earlier. Her character was in fact relegated to providing mere comic relief through her agitated exchanges with her mother, played by Renuka. The humour actually worked, but does that justify a brilliant actor like Nithya Menon’s potential? Definitely not. The same could be said about the character of a cop played by Ram. I would have loved to learn more about him and how he fell into this apparent traumatized state. And finally, even the killer’s back story itself feels a little stale in essence.
Ultimately, Psycho is one of those rare films that has a bundle of flaws but is still watchable to a large extent, thanks to the brilliant aesthetic production design, engaging screenplay and Ilayaraaja’s hauntingly beautiful music (is Unna Nenachu already the song of the year)? This film might not be a masterpiece and is definitely not his best outing, but Mysskin is still a solid filmmaker. An auteur like Mysskin is essentially a filmmaker who embellishes a strong story further and delivers it with his own magical stamp. From Psycho, you happily collect the stamp but find that the envelope itself wasn’t tightly sealed!
Overall rating: 2.5/5
