The film stars Georgekutty (Mohanlal), a kind of lazy cable TV serviceman who lives a simple, humble life with his wife Rani (Meena) and two daughters, Anju (Ansiba Hassan) and Anu (Esther Anil). Georgekutty dropped out of school at a young age, and so is a bit skeptical of his oldest daughter’s schooling, but ultimately it looks like he’s coming around. He has a good relationship with his in-laws. The only real conflict he has is with a power-tripping local cop. Yes, life is pretty good for Georgekutty.
That is until Anju goes to a nature camp, where she meets Varun Prabhakar, the only son of an Inspector General of Police who’s just as spoiled and entitled as that implies. He takes a video of Anju showering and tries to blackmail her into sex. Rani walks in on the whole thing, there’s a struggle…and Varun dies. When Georgekutty gets home that night, he instantly realizes how bad this is for them. There’s no way his family will get a fair shake considering the prominence of the victim, so their only hope is to cover up the death. The full might of the police will be on them, but Georgekutty has one major advantage:
He’s watched a lot of crime shows.
Drishyam takes a while to get going. The first hour or so of the movie is just setting up the family dynamics. I don’t in-theory object to this, but it goes on for quite a while. Not helping is that Georgekutty is kind of a sexist jerk. It’s valid characterization and probably fitting for a man like him, but it made me slightly uncomfortable. It’s thematic, since the movie is about a family patriarch doing what he needs to do to protect his family, but I can see it being a little off-putting. Once the murder happens, a lot of this stuff from the first part falls by the wayside a bit. Thinking back on it, it felt like the movie was divided into two distinct halves with wildly different tones. It makes sense; murder would put a damper on happy times with your family, but it was noticeable.
But the second half is where this movie gets really interesting for blog readers. Georgekutty and his family pretend to go on a religious retreat as an alibi for the murder. Indeed, they’re able to present plenty of evidence showing they were nowhere near the crime scene…but we as watchers know that the retreat was already over. So how was the alibi faked? Like Sleuth (link), this isn’t a fair-play mystery; most of the details, including some last-minute complications, are arranged off-screen. But man is it a good alibi. The movie’s tagline is “Visuals can be deceiving,” and the alibi is a masterclass in manipulation, with carefully worded questions and seemingly unimpeachable evidence combining to make a nearly unbreakable alibi. The scene where Varun’s mother explains how it was done is excellent. Freeman Wills Crofts’s Inspector French would have been honored to break this alibi.
And the ending is magnificent. If I’d watched it in a theater, I would have hooted and hollered in my seat.
All in all, I really liked this movie. Again, the first half drags very slightly, but it’s not a huge issue. Those of you who like inverted mysteries or good alibi busters will like this one. If you can find a good subtitled version—the Hindi language version on YouTube looks good, though me and my friends watched the original Malayalam—I’d check it out. Highly Recommended.
*I’m not naming the book because the similarities are very thin and the writer said that he didn’t use the book as inspiration, so I feel like it would mislead the reader like it did me.
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