We have seen, in the past, notable Hollywood filmmakers tinker with historical events by merging them with fictional scenarios born out of their own imagination. To give a few examples: Quentin Tarantino has done it with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Inglourious Basterds; Steven Spielberg has done it with the Indiana Jones films; Woody Allen has done it with Zelig. Rekhachithram is the first full-fledged attempt at playing with a certain chapter in Kerala history — Malayalam film history, to be more specific.
Now, given Asif Ali's excellent recent track record with thrillers like Kishkindha Kaandam, Thalavan, and Kooman, it's natural to approach any new film starring the actor with the 'thriller' tag with considerably raised expectations. While Rekhachithram doesn't quite reach the high bar set by those films in terms of narrative ingenuity, it has enough going on to make us pay attention. Perhaps its principal strength lies in the fact that it doesn't have lofty ambitions.
Rekhachithram is a straightforward thriller that doesn't pretend to be anything more. There's an old-school quality to the film, and what I really mean by this is that you get the feeling of watching some of the yesteryear Malayalam thrillers like K.G. George's Ee Kanni Koodi or any of the K. Madhu-S.N. Swamy classics.
Asif Ali's casting is efficient. He plays a police officer recently suspended for a gambling habit. While this character's past is not the film's primary concern, he is written with sufficient details that come in handy in situations, like when there is no one to exhume a body and Asif's character, who also happens to be a farmer, gets into the mud to do the digging himself.
The primary focus of Rekhachithram is Anaswara Rajan's character, Rekha, a possible murder victim with an unknown past. Here's where things get really interesting: Rekha is a huge movie buff and a die-hard Mammootty fan. This idea provides a cool opportunity for director Jofin T Chacko — a Mammootty fan who cast the actor in his directorial debut The Priest — to play with Malayalam film history, which, I imagine, is not an easy task. I won't tell you whether Mammootty makes a guest appearance in this film or not, but I can tell you that the events in this film are closely tied to the 80s' Mammootty classic Kathodu Kathoram, directed by Bharathan.
Without giving anything away, Rekhachithram appeals to the hardcore film lovers in all of us, and, in doing so, gets you to admire the inventiveness with which director Jofin T Chacko weaves together all the pieces of the puzzle into a simple, coherent investigation story. It gets you strongly invested in the victim's story because, after all, you're looking at the story of someone who is a cinephile just like you. You want to find out what happened to her. You want to find out how she fell in love with movies. And you want Asif Ali to apprehend the culprits.
Rekhachithram is not what I would call an instant classic. It's serviceable at best. But it's not a waste of time. At no point did I feel lost or bored. This is not an overly complicated film. Sometimes all a thriller needs to do to be effective is to keep things simple. Last year, we got the Tovino Thomas thriller Anveshippin Kandethum, which also followed the same philosophy. Like that film, Rekhachithram sticks to the basics and delivers a couple of neat twists in the end, aside from delivering adequate satisfaction to the Mammootty fans among us.
Film: Rekhachithram
Director: Jofin T. Chacko
Cast: Asif Ali, Anaswara Rajan, Indrans, Manoj K Jayan, Zarin Shihab
Rating: 3.5/5
