PSYCHO – THE PARENTAL NARRATIVE

Psycho – A visually challenged man is to save the girl he loves, kidnapped by a serial killer, whose anonymity defies even the police.

First of all, it is indeed a challenge to tell a psycho thriller to the people for whom gory experience is no more a new thing especially because of the outstanding commercial thriller Ratchasan. But still, regardless of repeating the same wine, Mysskin must have been so confident on the colour of his wine bottle which we can refer as the noble and aesthetical approach towards the genre. It is less about the thrill and more about the universe we get to witness walking through the thrill.

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To start off with his writing, to make a girl (Dhahini) let the person (Gautham) walk into her world just an hour after she blasted him publicly for following her, Mysskin just needed a two-minute conversation between her and him. To hold the unstoppable serial killer from killing Dhahini (Gautham’s love), Mysskin used Dhahini’s trust itself. To give a meaningful conclusion for Rajanayakam (Gautham’s caretaker), Gautham’s wish to be alone itself has reasoned him to stay out and eventually help Gautham get closer to the villain. When the progress of the story is made happen by letting people unfold, it becomes more relatable and credible.

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Not just the screenplay but the narrative is also so simple without any overdoing. Many places are left less dramatic as the director wanted us to perceive things on our own, which also requires us to be active throughout the narration. It is widely a complaint that Mysskin failed to let us emotionally receive the victims’ life-loss but it must have been what the director actually wanted. He believed that empathizing with the victims not necessarily has to be an essential part of a psycho thriller, when he has lot more exclusive and overlooked things to discuss about. As said earlier, requiring our role to fill the rest of the world, in the beginning itself Mysskin has effectively picturised what it is like to be in victim’s side.

There are still logical flaws, naturally impossible adventures, deliberate attempts to make Gautham’s pursuit look investigation like and the director failed to speak the emotions of the father who misses his daughter. But we can call these as things he could have worked on but not as unbearable blunders as long as addressing the untold world was the context he chose.

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There are things we can see only in Mysskin’s movie. The noble dimension he sets to watch certain people of the society, the beauty lying beneath the things that are found alien by common people, the yell of certain community we are ignorant and insensitive of, etc. As long as this Mysskinism is concerned, he has succeeded in Psycho as a great story teller. He starts his tale with the universal feeling love, which everyone connects with, tames us with his beautiful narrative and Raja’s mellifluous bgm, lets us forget that we are being tuned to his vibe and then gradually feeds us with his own recipe of exploring the underrated pain of the psycho, the innocent evil in the disguise of a strict moral obsessed teacher and so on.

The major area Mysskin fails not just in Psycho but in many of his movies is the absence of others in his universe. So much of minimalism in his movie encompasses nothing except the subject he wants to convey. This, beyond an extent, keeps the world unpopulated and so except the reality Mysskin constructed, nothing contributes to the progress of the story. In short, the world remains non-functional. Otherwise, understanding who Tamil audience are, Mysskin has matured as a parent who knows how to tame even an adamant child with a candy and then get him watch what he wants him to watch. It is clear that he has discovered his own grammar with which the ideal form required for his content is effortlessly attained.

Psycho – Successfully narrated is sometimes successfully created too.

– Javith Razvi