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Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum: An eyewitness account

Imagine it’s a lazy May afternoon. You are in the sitout, reading a short story, watching time pass at its own pace. Minute by minute, second by second. No fast edits, no camera jerks. You just sit there and read the story. That is Dileesh Pothan’s Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum.

Pothan, unlike other big names in the industry, is a simple story teller. He might use different techniques in doing so, but they are done smartly and never stand out like a blaring horn on a highway.

Suraj Venjaramoodu gets a good role, zero buffoonery, 100% substance. He gets such roles once in a blue moon, but does justice to it. It’s his onscreen wife who steals the show. Nimisha Sajayan (Sreeja), I googled her name and without mentioning her this review would be incomplete, shines in should I call an understated role. No antics, totally real and smart. When her affair with a lower caste man (Suraj) is discovered at home she promptly says ‘ഒരു ദുർബല നിമിഷത്തിൽ ഞങ്ങൾ ശാരീരിക ബന്ധത്തിലേർപ്പെട്ടു (In a weak moment we had sex)’, a dialogue we often hear in TV soaps and painkili magazines (Malayalam’s Manohar Kahaniyaan).

The star, however, is Fahadh Faasil, who plays a thief who gets caught stealing the gold necklace of Sreeja.  Here on begins the thief’s struggle to get out of the situation he is in. He tries all the tricks, പതിനെട്ട് അടവും so to say, and fails at every stage.

But with every passing second the thief gains the sympathy of the audience, and I suspect his victims, with his charming wit. He is a motivational guru, never giving up hope, even when pushed to the wall. “Try till the very end, that is my ഇത്,” he would say. And the audience, by now eating out of his hand, lapping up every lie he has to say, too doesn’t give up hope till the end.