Drishyam

Starring: Mohanlal, Meena, Ashah Sharath, Siddique
Directed by Jeethu Joseph
Rating: ***

In Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, the witnesses to the murder scene— the victim through a medium, the victim’s wife and the murderer— tell wildly contrasting tales of the same murder scene. Each is a facet of the truth or illusion of a truth that is mind’s play. Writer-director Jeethu Joseph’s Malayalam film Drishyam works on a similar premise, but here the web of deceit is crea­ted by the perpetrators of the murder. They dec­ide to spin the same tale right down to the last detail. Georgekutty (Mohanlal) works on the alibis to tell the same lie. Will it hold up to police investigation? That is the crux of the film.

Set in the idyllic high ranges, the film revolves around a small family. Georgekutty, the father, runs the local cable TV network, his wife Rani (Meena) is a housewife and the better educated of the two. They have two daughters, Anju and Anu. All goes well till the older daughter goes on an outstation nature trip and a boy from ano­ther school, Varun (Roshan Basheer), takes her picture on his mobile while she’s bathing. Varun then goes calling on Georgekutty’s house for a deal. But something goes horribly wrong and there’s a murder in the house.

Mohanlal’s powerful portrayal as Georgekutty and Asha Sharath as IG Geetha Prabhakaran create the tension in the film. Drishyam has been running to full houses for over a month. It will soon be made in Tamil, Telugu and perhaps in Hindi. Talk is that Kam­alahaasan will play Geor­gekutty in the Tamil version.