Drishyam: The Conclusion

Can third time be the charm, or unnecessary fatigue? As Ajay Devgn’s successful ‘Drishyam’, a remake of Mohanlal’s franchise of the same name, races towards a decisive conclusion, it makes a departure too. In interview after interview, Ajay has claimed that the triquel does not follow the Malayalam original. However, the makers, keenly aware of the truism ‘don’t change a winning combination’, stay with its lead characters and actors.

When will this travesty end? I ask that of almost every Bollywood remake and forced franchise, particularly those anchored by Ajay Devgn. Drishyam: The Conclusion was a rare exception that actually made me curious. Once a line-by-line remake and now an independent continuation, Abhishek Pathak’s film finally steps away from Jeethu Joseph’s Malayalam blueprint. After the second Hindi instalment, that fresh canvas looked like a chance for Devgn’s Drishyam to come into its own. The story picks up six months after Drishyam 2. A distraught Meera Deshmukh (Tabu) is all set to kill herself, and for a moment it looks like the Malayalam film again. Thankfully for us, she aborts her plans soon enough, opens her wardrobe, grabs the make-up box, and returns as the wounded cop and grieving mother the Hindi franchise knows how to deploy.

कहानियां दो तरह की होती हैं-एक वो जो सच होती हैं और दूसरी वो जिन्हें इस तरह से गढ़ा जाता है कि लोग उन्हें सच मान लेते हैं। ‘दृश्यम’ देखने वाले जानते हैं कि हम दूसरे किस्म की कहानी देख रहे हैं जिसे विजय सलगांवकर और उसके परिवार ने इस तरह से गढ़ा है कि वह सच न होते हुए भी सच लगती है, या कम से कम उसे सच मानने को हमारा मन करता है। हमें मालूम है कि समीर देशमुख 2 अक्टूबर की रात सलगांवकर के घर में उनके हाथों मारा गया लेकिन हम भी विजय और उसके परिवार की तरह यह मानना चाहते हैं कि उस दिन तो सलगांवकर फैमिली पणजी गई थी स्वामी चिन्मयानंद जी के सत्संग में, जिसके बाद उन्होंने पाव-भाजी भी खाई थी।

It’s entirely natural to question the existence of the third film — not first, not second — of a crime franchise, regardless of box-office success. Especially if the premise revolves and revolves around a movie-mad father who keeps hiding the body of his daughter’s abuser to protect his family. Especially if the first two are Bollywood remakes of superior Malayalam thrillers. Especially if the third movie, which has “conclusion” in its title, has nothing to do with the third Mohanlal starrer (released in May) and insists on charting its own narrative path. How dare we be original? The signs are ominous, not least because the background score of this Hindi film series has been partially responsible for my hearing problems over the years. How much is too much? Rinse, Roar (that’s Singham, the other Ajay-Devgn-in-Goa franchise), Repeat. Do it once and it’s novel; do it twice and it’s suspect; do it thrice and the cash-cow is mooing.

Does the much-awaited concluding part of Drishyam live up to its expectations? Yes, it absolutely does. A very quick recap, before we jump into the details. In 2013, came the original, headlined by Mohanlal as the not-very-educated cable-TV operator who gets embroiled in a dark cover-up involving his family. Loosely borrowing from the chief plot twists of the globally popular Japanese thriller The Devotion of Suspect X by Kiego Higashino, the Malayalam-language film gained an instant cult following and was remade in a bunch of languages, including Hindi, in which Ajay Devgn jumped into the part and ran with it, in 2015.

Continuing in the same vein as the first two films of the self-contained Drishyam universe, the past never goes out of focus in the concluding part of the Hindi-language franchise adapted from Jeethu Joseph’s superhit Malayalam original. It constantly impinges on the present as the barely educated protagonist, Vijay Salgaonkar (Ajay Devgn), stops at nothing to obfuscate the truth. The inveterate movie buff who takes his cues from the films that he has devoured over the years and believes that the one who controls the narrative holds all the aces. There are two types of stories, he asserts: one hides the truth, the other becomes the truth. Who is telling the story is of utmost importance, he feels as a bunch of people around him ferret vigorously for leads that could nail him and his family for good.

“Are you watching closely?” Christian Bale asks in The Prestige (2006). Across three films, the Drishyam franchise has taught the audiences how to consume it. You lean forward, sit on the edge of the seat and take in all the strokes of the picture. Remember this throwaway dialogue, this glance, this dangling plot point. It is a contest between you and the film. But will you really enjoy it if you win? Six months after the events of the second film, it seems that the Deshmukhs have finally moved on from the murder of their son, Sam. But soon Meera (Tabu) has the muzzle of a gun up her neck. Troubled by his wife’s dwindling mental health, Mahesh (Rajat Kapoor) seeks to reopen the case against the Salgaonkars. Enter the pensively-smoking Rajveer Singh Tomar (Jaideep Ahlawat), a crime branch officer who prides himself as the shani. He moves fast and concludes that if they can’t prove a murder has been done, they can at least prove that evidence has been hidden.

Drishyam 3 walks a dangerous line. How many times can you revisit the same crime, the same family and the same cat-and-mouse game before the formula begins to show? The film doesn’t reinvent the franchise, but it does just enough to keep you invested. A new police officer, Rajveer Tomar (Jaideep Ahlawat), arrives with one mission, to do what everyone before him failed to — bring Vijay Salgaonkar (Ajay Devgn) to his knees. Rajveer is convinced he has fresh evidence that can finally crack Vijay’s carefully constructed defence. His philosophy is simple: “System ka darr bana rehna chahiye.” And unlike the cops before him, he believes he has the ammunition to make Vijay pay. But Vijay has survived this game before. As he puts it, “Agar hero jail mein gaya, toh audience ko accha lagega?” It’s a line that perfectly captures the franchise’s biggest trick: making you root for a man whose actions are, at best, morally debatable.