We watched the telugu movie Drushyam this afternoon as a staff. I was watching a movie in a theatre after almost two years. The movie is basically a remake of a Malayalam one by the same name.
My overall observations:
Let me begin with something positive. The notion that it is love for the family that propels the man to go to any extreme is conceived well - though not sufficiently highlighted. Some other significant positives the director deserves are: no unrelated songs and scenes, no sub-plots to confuse or distract the audience from the main story, and of course the intelligent twists in the second half of the movie.
However, there is something faulty in the basic theme of the movie itself. In other words, the theme gets overshadowed by dramatization or cinematic license! Take for instance, the very event that proves to be the turning point of the movie. The instant where the boy begins stalking the teenaged daughter, blackmailing her with some obscene video clip of her. That the girl is terrified beyond reason is something illogical, for just a few scenes earlier she admonishes her mother for her ignorance about cell cameras and internet. Leave that alone. Take the next scene. The one where the mother 'pleads' with the youngster! Perhaps it was the cinematic license that exaggerated the event but if only the mother rapped the boy with two resounding blows... (perhaps the movie itself would have ended there!). In the process of showing a man's anguish in protecting his family, some very basic values of a family are either bypassed or trivialized.
Besides this basic lacuna, the viewer is now (possibly) led to believe that cell cameras in the hands of youngsters are an evil and so are educational camps, policemen because they are constantly on the move grabbing bribes and torturing 'innocent' victims
While the intelligence of the father, who in spite of his barely making it beyond primary education, is attributed to his obsession with watching movies, the movie sometimes tends to portray this fact over and above the value that it is love for his family that drives him to do all that he does... not merely movie-watching skills. Most often we are not able to see the value in a whole gamut of circumstances, events, people, actions and what not. In the process, we mistake some instance or circumstance for values and then project these as goals.
Finally, the subtle messages are at times, too overshadowing and tend to convey the wrong notion. The main theme at times is compromised at the cost of something very cheap or trivial. Whatever it be, on the whole, the movie is worth watching for its concept, acting and glimpses of creativity.
My overall observations:
Let me begin with something positive. The notion that it is love for the family that propels the man to go to any extreme is conceived well - though not sufficiently highlighted. Some other significant positives the director deserves are: no unrelated songs and scenes, no sub-plots to confuse or distract the audience from the main story, and of course the intelligent twists in the second half of the movie.
However, there is something faulty in the basic theme of the movie itself. In other words, the theme gets overshadowed by dramatization or cinematic license! Take for instance, the very event that proves to be the turning point of the movie. The instant where the boy begins stalking the teenaged daughter, blackmailing her with some obscene video clip of her. That the girl is terrified beyond reason is something illogical, for just a few scenes earlier she admonishes her mother for her ignorance about cell cameras and internet. Leave that alone. Take the next scene. The one where the mother 'pleads' with the youngster! Perhaps it was the cinematic license that exaggerated the event but if only the mother rapped the boy with two resounding blows... (perhaps the movie itself would have ended there!). In the process of showing a man's anguish in protecting his family, some very basic values of a family are either bypassed or trivialized.
Besides this basic lacuna, the viewer is now (possibly) led to believe that cell cameras in the hands of youngsters are an evil and so are educational camps, policemen because they are constantly on the move grabbing bribes and torturing 'innocent' victims
While the intelligence of the father, who in spite of his barely making it beyond primary education, is attributed to his obsession with watching movies, the movie sometimes tends to portray this fact over and above the value that it is love for his family that drives him to do all that he does... not merely movie-watching skills. Most often we are not able to see the value in a whole gamut of circumstances, events, people, actions and what not. In the process, we mistake some instance or circumstance for values and then project these as goals.
Finally, the subtle messages are at times, too overshadowing and tend to convey the wrong notion. The main theme at times is compromised at the cost of something very cheap or trivial. Whatever it be, on the whole, the movie is worth watching for its concept, acting and glimpses of creativity.
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