Director M C Jithin’s Sookshmadarshini , now streaming on Disney + Hotstar, is sufficient evidence of Malayalam cinema’s inability to deliver a sixer each time. This mortifying misfire is offputting enough to make us wonder if Basil Joseph who once directed the clever if a tad overrated super-hero film Minnal Murali , has been spending too much time in front of the camera.
Some of Joseph’s recent forays into acting like Jan. E. Man (2021), Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey (2022), Palthu Janwar (2022), Kadina Kadoramee Andakadaham (2023) and especially Falimy (2023) were appreciable. But now a certain staleness and smugness has seeped into Basil Joseph’s performance.
Sookshmadarshini is worse than a bad film. It is a bad film posing as a good one. The characters behave like amateur criminals and detectives. The aura of jejuneness never leaves the proceedings as Priya(Nazriya Nazim) resolves to spy on her new neighbour Manuel(Basis Joseph) who does what all shady neighbours do in films: he behaves suspiciously especially towards his mother who we are told, suffers from Alzheimer’s.
But, Priya insists, Manuel’s mother doesn’t behave like she has Alzheimer’s. It’s like saying this film doesn’t behave like a film.
Like Priyamani in Bhamakalpam, Priyan in Sookshmadarshini is not the neighbour you would like to have. She is snoopy intrusive and probably delusional. But we are nonetheless supposed to trust her judgement. Why? Because the weakest mystery plots invariably require us to trust an unreliable character’s judgement, so that the blurry lazy writing can fool around with the buttons on the board.
The Priya-Manuel war never quite makes it on the battle ground. Making the plotting device even more insipid are the incidental characters who never get an opportunity to battle the blur. It’s all hazy and unconvincing. Making it worse is a tagged-on subplot on alternate sexuality, an afterthought which makes as much sense as paan after pao-bhaoji.
This clunky junk of a film wants us to chuckle at humour that never seems to land at the intended place. There is this whole episode of arduously constructed humour in which Manuel serves reptile meat masquerading as beef to his dinner guests.
That is pretty much what this film does to us.
