‘Psycho’ has the Mysskin touch but not the feel

Mysskin seems to have been too engulfed in the emotions to worry about logic when he wrote the screenplay for Psycho

The first few frames in a film can convey if the director has a flair for the medium. That’s what Mysskin’s ‘Anjathe’ did to me though I watched it only because the producer was a friend.

I caught up with ‘Chithiram Pesudhadi’ later, but the craft and the content was first rate in ‘Anjathe’. Mysskin later confessed it was written in a rage because he could not find a producer for ‘Nandalala’. He shut himself in a room and wrote a tale of friendship, jealousy, love and guilt that made you want to reach out to the characters and put an arm around them reassuringly. That’s what cinema is all about. The director’s triumph is when he locks you up in a dark hall and makes you empathise with characters you’ve never met. ‘Anjathe’ did that to me like very few other movies. The emotions and reactions are raw and real with characters mostly in a moral dilemma making their decisions fascinating.

Mysskin worships Akira Kurosawa and venerates Jean Paul Melville whose ‘La Samurai’ and ‘Army Of Shadows’ he recommends. Then there’s ‘The Return’ by Andrey Zvyagintsev. Mysskin is a loner even in a crowd mostly lost in thought. He narrated how he once bumped into somebody on the road who kept saying hello till he realised it was his father.

His office has bookshelves for walls and is a voracious reader irrespective of genre. ‘Wolf Totem’ is one of his favourite books. It happens to be Vetrimaran’s too.Mysskins oeuvre is sketchy by his standards and talent. ‘Psycho’ is his ninth directorial in 14 years. Very few films have worked as a whole after ‘Anjathe’. They all have his trademark, but in stutters. ‘Pisasu’ was first rate.

Directors like Mani Ratnam and Mysskin like superstars have cultivated a claque, more polished and passionate. That’s fine till intolerance creeps in when there’s criticism. An admirer turns fan when he accepts unquestioningly and this seems to happen unconsciously. It happened with Mani’s ‘Katru Veliyidai’ and now Mysskin’s ‘Psycho’. Some have loved it, but many have not and the curious are watching it to figure out why. . Of course fans will say: ‘You did not get it, just like you could not appreciate ‘Katru Veliyidai’.’ Well so be it. I watch films to feel rather than wrack my brains about intentions (some unintended), symbolism, references and metaphors. I don’t expect to be spoon fed nor do I like to be stuffed.

‘Psycho’ left me cold like no other Mysskin film. He seems to have been distracted while writing or was too engulfed in the emotions to worry about logic. It’s only when the former overwhelms you that you don’t worry about the latter. The plot is formulaeic. You don’t really know what the blind hero really does other than stalking a girl but lives in a bungalow, has a male help and an expensive car. Humiliation and a song later heroine falls for him strong enough to taunt the psychopath that he will come to save her. Villain is a suave industrialist who kidnaps girls, straps them to a cold board and decapitates them keeping the head as a trophy and displaying the carcass in public triumphantly. This is not a whodunit. It’s a whydunnit that turns into a ‘catch me if you can’. The film claims that no bird or animal was harmed. It’s humans who’re butchered in cold blood. Cops are portrayed as kind but inept while the press comes across as a pack of impertinent pests. ‘The cops are only searching with their eyes. Use your brain,’ is the advise a shrink gives our blind hero. The trail for the cops is cold and they’re so clueless that they don’t question kids playing near the place of a victims disappearance though one of them knows her. Of course the hero later does. They’re so dumb they have to follow the hero’s clues. Let’s not even talk about the blind hero driving his car at breakneck speed. The denouement in Mysskin’s films is usually well thought out and powerful. Here it just doesn’t work because you’re expected to sympathise with the perpetrator. I found the heroine more cold-blooded especially after witnessing heads of hapless girls rolling at her. She’s simply doesn’t seem traumatised enough by the inhuman acts.

Santhanam in a film says: ‘How could I expect an appropriate expression from you?’ to Udayanidhi Stalin. Mysskin must have cast him because he’s big on friendship and needed someone stiff, mostly in the shadows and donning dark glasses. Of course, he covers his face when he has to weep in one scene. The rest of the cast consists of competent performers. Directors praise and approach Ilaiyaraja at their convenience and for all his so-called arrogance the maestro knows, but accepts and never lets them down. I’ve always said the only magic I’ve witnessed is Raja watching a reel, writing the score and when you watch it later you realize he’s added soul, enhancing the emotions even if he doesn’t like the content. The director will get an earful later. I’m curious about what Raja thought about ‘Psycho’ especially since he doesn’t mince words.

Some of the characters are brilliantly written, especially Nitya Menon with her acid tongue. The craft is intact with carefully choreographed and composed shots but the content just doesn’t match. There is the protagonist named Gautam and the baddie Angulimala, while one character is called Kamla Das, a victim is Sylvia Plath. You don’t relate to or empathise with most of the characters even when they’re in dire situations because there’s no mystery. It’s definitely not a fitting tribute to Hitchcock whose films were more about sleuthing than slaughtering. It’s more like Na Hong-jin’s 2008 thriller ‘The Chaser’ sans the chills and thrills but with as much blood and gore.

‘Psycho has the Mysskin touch but not the feel. We’ll watch a classic when the twain meet.

sshivu@yahoo.com