New Delhi: Do you know why thriller is one of the best genres to be making films today? It's because this genre, unlike others, does not spoon-feed the audience, a trend so rampant today. While many have mastered the art of spoon-feeding thrillers as well, 'Drishyam 2' thankfully is not that kind of film. 'Drishyam 2' starring Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Akshaye Khanna does not tell but shows, it strikes a balance between simplicity and drama to reach its objective, to bring order to a disordered state of affairs. 'Drishyam 2’ does not follow its characters around but achieves even greater effect by connecting plot points and not reiterating the film (directly or indirectly) in a scene.
'Drishyam 2' opens with an interesting connection with the backstory of the film, the first installment( Drishyam) which was released in 2015. We are told that someone saw Vijay Salgaonkar( on the night) he shifted the body of Sameer Deshmukh. Soon after the title song plays to an opening sequence replaying the entire 'Drishyam' in shots to refresh audience memories about what had happened then. A move, more adapted for TV series, used in a film to create a sense of connection with the first part; where most sequels loosely follow the narrative, 'Drishyam 2' picks up ideologically from where 'Drishyam 2' left us.
Soon after the opening sequence, we are shown Vijay Salgaonkar's family trying to live the normal family life, with Vijay having progressed to become a theatre owner and an aspiring film producer. This is accompanied by a score which creates a sense of breather in the film before it tightens the noose around all the happy elements. The Deshmukh family returns and Sam's father( Rajat Kapoor) pays a visit to Vijay in his new theatre creating a sense of foreboding very much similar to how the IG of police( Akshaye) pays a visit to Nandini( Shriya Saran) later in the film. This kind of re-echoing of scenes within 'Drishyam 2' and from 'Drishyam' is a thematic device followed throughtout the film.
The makers of 'Drishyam 2' set the stage 7 years after the unfortunate accident of 2nd October and the staging is commendable. Using symmetrical frames to reveal the asymmetrical state of its characters' minds, the slow-burn feel with a simplicity that is rooted in a small township in Goa, and how like the audience, the Salgaonkar family is trying to figure out what is happening and how.
The background score compliments the genre and sequences to further the narrative, the emotional tangent is widely explored( more in fact in comparison to Drishyam) to root for the Salgaonkar family. One classic way of doing this is to directly own the sympathy of the audience, and the maker does that by showing Anu( the older daughter of Vijay) suffering from fits of epilepsy.
30 minutes into the film, we are also introduced to Akshaye Khanna( Traun) as the new IG of Police department whose intelligence and smartness is complimented by a voiceover narration of Swant( a local police officer) who is talking to Gaitonde( yes, he returns too from the first part) about him.
The Deshmukh family and Tarun get together to hatch a plan to catch Vijay Salgaonkar. They have some proof but not the complete evidence. The cat-mouse chase is not so defined in 'Drishyam 2' which follows a more nuanced and mature way of building to the climax which brings back memories of the first part.
Interestingly, this time, the space between scenes is so tight with no breather in between that you have to keep yourself up and about the developments in the plot of 'Drishyam 2'.Thus, we know that Salgaonkar is in trouble again, but he is not chased, this time the game is reversed with the former trying to keep an eye on the police until we are told in the end how and why.
If the pre-interval film is about staging, the post-interval film is all about action. From all the dots and hints we have been looking at in the first half are connected and revealed in the second.
The second-half is also high on drama. The buildup for catharsis in the interrogation is the only high-pitched dramatic element where we see Vijay lose his casual-cat form. Otherwise, for the most part, the 4th-grader cable operator holds his ground and cool most of the time. Likewise, there is a staginess in the way Shriya Saran's character is presented. She doesn't lose the sense of being impecably dressed in a saree come what may.
In terms of actor's performances, Ajay Devgn, Akshaye Khanna, Tabu, Saurabh Shukla, Shriya Saran and Rajat Kapoor, are all great. A well-seasoned ensemble cast like this only lends more layers to a well-developed screenplay. But the problem with the performances is that they have a sense of physicality and caginess to them. Ajay seems to be acing his stoicness as does Tabu in playing a grey shaded character but there is an aloofness in the emotional space.
'Drishyam 2' has a very physical quality in which it excels while the emotional tangent is barely real and well-established. The film ticks all the right boxes in terms of technique delivery but loses out on the emotional depth. Its moral ambiguity about Vijay's motives come what may or the establishment trying to bring down people like him through every unethical means possible, are almost championed in a film like this. Shouldn't that pose problematic questions in the minds of audiences which is so willfully accepting the stance projected on screen?
The editing is divided tonality wise. We see lengthened shots in the first half where the staging happens with bouts of montage of uninflected and pristine images. In the second half, we see shorter shots which sharp editing to cut the pace, narrative and what audience expectation is. One also sees the use of montage more in the second half which tries to create meaning out of unrelated context( like drinking in Andrews Medical College to jasmine flowers to reveal their connection with stress etc.)
'Drishyam 2' offers a good closure to both the Salgaonkar and Deshmukh family with a reiteration of what Vijay Salgaonkar had said in the first part about his family.
The film besides being on-point with its technical aspects also layers the text thematically with questions like 'what is truth, destiny', 'do we make our own destiny', 'can truth be rewritten', 'what is right and wrong-ethically' etc. But, like 'Drishyam' what really hits the relatability factor is how Vijay happens to a regular person like you and me facing extraordinary circumstances in life. What he does under those circumstances makes a film like 'Drishyam 2' stand out.
Note: 'Drishyam 2' also happens to be a remake of the Malayalam film 'Drushyam 2: The Resumption' which was released in 2021. However, the Ajay Devgn film is different from the remake and in fact better in some parts especially with the way it strikes a balance between show and tell.