Barring exceptions, sequels have a way to turn out disappointing. XKCD comic strip on The Matrix sequels is hilarious. John Wick managed to get the sequel right but was hugely disappointing in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. I think part of the difficulty in making a good sequel has to do with the enormous task of matching the high expectations of the previous successful film. So when a sequel succeeds, it’s something to write about.
Drishyam was a Malayalam family thriller made in 2013. Written and directed by Jeethu Joseph with Mohanlal in the lead role, the movie was both a critical and commercial success. It was remade in Hindi as Drishyam, in Telugu as Drushyam, in Tamil as Papanasam and in Kannada as Drishya. It was the first Indian movie to be remade in Chinese as Sheep Without a Shephard, which became the 9th highest grossing Chinese movie of 2019. The fact that all these remakes were highly successful shows the power of a strong story/screenplay.
Making a crime thriller is difficult because of few reasons. First, the premise of the story has to be interesting and believable. Second, all the loose ends must be tied up neatly. Plenty of examples of mystery thrillers can be found that start off great but fumble in the end while reaching the climax. Making a sequel to a thriller based on the same story increases the difficulty tenfold.
Drishyam is not your regular whodunit movie because we already know who committed the murder and how. The thrilling part comes in what happens next. Can Georgekutty (Mohanlal) successfully cover-up the murder and save his family from prison? The challenging part in the sequel is that the story picks up where the first part left off and shows events that happen six years later, as the police investigation continues. An easier way out – as seen in many sequels – would have been to make a movie based on different premise and storyline. Drishyam 2 chooses the difficult path and succeeds.
First half of Drishyam 2 is again slow paced, building the atmosphere and preparing for the thrilling second half. The crux of the plot revolves around the police trying to find body that was hidden in the previous movie. When they do find it, the audience is on the edge of their seat. One has a feeling that some thrilling twist lies ahead but there are no clues as to what it might be.
One remarkable feature of the movie is the restrained tone that makes it more believable and realistic. There was a lot of scope in the story for high melodrama but Drishyam 2 underplays it most of the time. Even the team of police investigators is shown as subdued and methodical, as opposed to the volatile corrupt cop Sahadevan (Kalabhavan Shajon) in Drishyam.
It will not be an exaggeration to say that the restrained performance of Mohanlal carries the movie to a large extent. He is ably supported by the rest of the cast, notably Rani George playing his wife Meena and Asha Sarath playing the role of Geetha Prabhakar, Inspector General of Police. I find the character of Georgekutty particularly interesting due to the many facets it displays. He is barely literate. A self-made man and a movie addict, he has learned everything that he knows by watching movies and being aware of his surroundings. As a cable TV owner, his job helps him in his education. One is reminded of Quentin Tarantino working at a video store, watching movies and learning from them.
Speaking of which, I was a bit baffled in the first half when Georgekutty gets interested in making a movie. It felt as if the plot had lost its purpose, getting sidetracked in subplots. It was nothing but. All these so-called distractions come together beautifully in the second half to weave together a watertight , thrilling climax. Jeethu Joseph also uses a brilliant stratagem – the script which Georgekutty is trying to write. The story of his movie closely resembles his own story which is what has happened in both movies so far. In the climax, Jeethu Joseph uses Georgekutty’s script to raise interesting questions. What would be an ideal climax for the story? Would the protagonist going to prison serve justice? Isn’t living with the guilt of what has happened and constantly looking over his shoulder for the police punishment enough? Should an innocent girl be sacrificed to satisfy a law system that does not look beyond the circumstantial evidence? Does following the law automatically mean getting justice?
Questions such as these take Drishyam 2 to another level. It would have been a great thriller without them but this adds another dimension where the viewer is forced to think about abstract concepts like law and justice. It also makes the viewer imagine what alternate endings to the movie would have been like.
There is a suggestion at the end that Georgekutty will continue to plan outsmarting the police for the rest of his life. This may be a hint for Drishyam 3. If it is, we will be waiting with bated breath.
Drishyam 2 is streaming on Amazon Prime.
