Rekhachithram Review: Alternate History Saves The Day

Rekhachitram is the latest in an assembly line of films that use the allure of the past to drive home the suspense of relatively straightforward genre stories, notes Arjun Menon.

What If this happened instead of that?

This is the basic premise upon which works of alternate history or speculative fiction operate.

Jofin T Chacko's sophomore directorial outing Rekhachitram reimagines a scenario involving Bharathan's beloved musical romance Kaathodu Kaathoram (1985).

Rekhachithram provides the necessary scaffolding for filmmakers to elevate a mundane why-dunnit into the realms of a well-observed 'meta' cinema.

The film proposes the question: What if this inconsequential figure from the past had made her way into the making of one of Malayalam cinema's revered canon classics? Would she have made a difference if history gave her the chance?

The film is operating in two timelines, one set in the present and the other happening in the year 1985.

A junior artist's experiences on the set of a now-classic film have been re-interpreted as the focus of the story, and you get two separate dreams involving two women at the centre, leading to disastrous consequences for both.

You get an AI-enhanced digitally rendered Mammootty appearing for a few scenes and the placement of his character as a side player in the alternate retelling of the shoot days is handled with relative grace. Though some of the imagery involving the actor lacks a certain polish and appears wobbly, the thrust of his presence cannot be negated.

Rekhachithram works, thanks to its dedication to the fabric of alternate myth-making.

Asif Ali stars as Vivek Gopinath, a suspended police officer with a history of compulsive gambling, put in charge of a weird case that ties back to a film production that happened in the mid-1980s.

The case involving a dead old man, a belated confession to a crime and a recovered skeleton, unearths a botched cover-up job in the past.

Vivek takes special interest in the seemingly random case that goes back to 1985 when the Mammootty starrer Kaathodu Kaathoram was made.

Rekhachithram tries to be two things at once, a satisfying crime drama with a foregone conclusion and a piece of curious alternate history that tries to metaphorically invoke a fictional reconstruction of a key period in the Malayalam film history from the vantage point of someone who was not given the chance.

The film is not always successful, as the ambition of the conceit is not met by the clunky, expository filler scenes that seem to be in a hurry to get to the conceptual point of the narrative. For instance, the interactions between Asif Ali and the rest of the supporting cast in the present timeline is underwritten with the precision of a Chat GPT prompt.

The jarring dissonance in the way these interactions are staged undercuts any sense of immediacy.

In a private moment when the protagonist confides in the forensic surgeon as the case is taken away from him, the doctor responds, 'I think you should investigate this on your own.'

You never get the sense of how these characters get so worked up by this particular case and the random, unintentionally funny lines make it harder to engage with the supposedly sober investigation.

The period detail and creative re-interpretation of the events involved in the film-within-the-film format get to you for its meta quality. You have seen these images, scenes and songs before and the new context helps to provide a novelty to the familiar beats.

Asif Ali is mostly asked to do nothing other than look intrigued, conflicted and frustrated.

There is a clear lack of definition in the way his character is penned and the broad strokes and plot-focused writing makes it a thankless part.

Anaswara Rajan is well cast as the wide-eyed, hopeful figure who dreams of a different life from the one she eventually gets handed over. It's her character and the small emotional payoff at the end that work in some sense of emotional resonance in this otherwise cold, passively laid back crime thriller.

The lack of clarity in building personal stakes and the amateurish handling of these simplified scenes baffle you, even though Rekha Chitram is never boring.

The occasionally functional character motivations deprive the writing of any flavour and you can sense the screenplay crumbling, one line at a time, under its pressure.

Characters like the journalist's girlfriend drop in and out of the film, based on the immediate plot requirements, not offering much by way of their presence.

Nothing is revealed about these people and their interest in pursuing such an old, forgotten crime is treated as an inevitable occurrence to move the plot forward.

Cinematographer Appu Prabhakar is not flashy with his frames and manages to capture the contrasting aspirations of the two timelines.

Composer Mujeeb Majeed's score is thunderous and suggestive at times and tells you exactly how to feel on a scene-to-scene basis, with few exceptions.

The film is similar to the one-dimensional thrillers from Malayalam cinema in recent times like Ozler and Anweshippin Kandethum. It's too busy building texture, forensic jargon and mood into its setting, without adhering to the interiority of the hero's obsession with the truth.

Structurally too, these films pose no interesting upending of existing screenwriting conventions and just drop in an underdeveloped hero figure in the midst, mistaking a past personal issue for character development to hold the weight of pulpy hardboiled fiction.

It feels like the writer came up with a fascinating story beat and worked up an entire trope-ey trajectory as a crutch to hide the genuine lack of inspiration in the telling. The end is sure to leave one truly perplexed by its abruptness.

Rekhachitram is the latest in an assembly line of films that use the allure of the past to drive home the suspense of relatively straightforward genre stories.

The inclusion of and reverence to titles like Mutharamkunnu PO (1985) and Unnikale Oru Kadha Parayam (1987) do much by the associated nostalgia of this particular period in Kerala’s varied film history.

The familiar yet hopeful re-interpretation of an actual event to predict a different outcome is a tricky proposition.

The abrupt melancholic feel of the film in the finale is a good note to end such a sad retelling of crushed dreams and the sense of poetic justice that transcends time.