Now Premiering - Nishabdham

Nishabdham – The muted condemnation of Sakshi  transcends into the Cinematic Intellect ofthe filmmakers.

In the opening scene of Nishabdham, you get a couple having their sweetest times in their old mansion® dancing to the music on a gramophone, Enter: a screen card saying 1972, which though isn’t needed as the scene is shot in richness of cliché with a dulled browns and blacks. Enter: a series of POV shots, door squeaks, light bulb flickers, husky whispers – which I think is the voice of Ghost© and the couple goes haywire. The husband is made to play hide ’n seek with the Ghost(s) - another clichéd game in a dark basement. Enter: A collection of .mp3 extension files of jump scares, cheap thrill sound effects and a frightening enough setting to make me stop and go for a pee. Enter: A shrill note of ghost voices with increasing sound levels and then !! a blackout. 

We get the titles Nishabdham – aptly given as these jump cut abrupt Blackouts with no sound is the silence that is getting referred to (maybe the editor demanded more recognition for his work) and not the muted condemnation of the... wait... Enter Sakshi – The highly talented Painter whose expression is only through the hand gestures – the only part of the film written with care and performed with prowess by Anushka. But even before Sakshi makes her way to the story, we get a Jogging shot© of a “seems to be dedicated“ Police officer (Anjali) dumping down the dumped down opening scene as some Murder Mystery® and not an Everyday Haunted House tale©. But nobody can help it, cause the script is as dumb as her Investigative Skills ( Caution!! you’ll have to follow her throughout, so please co-operate).

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Enter: another couple( this time it’s Sakshi ( Anushka ) and Anthony Gonsalves ( Madhavan )), having their sweetest times in their posh car. The genre is romance, and don’t worry if you have second thoughts on whether it is the film itself, which spoon-feeds you the info in a “Dumped Down” form. Enter: a romantic number Ninne Ninne with­ the most Gopi Sundaresque dub steps and Sid Sriram flexing his jaws along with his voice. For a moment I thought I’m watching a Vijay Devarakonda film ( no offence to him ), but no, this couple is way older to be in the 20s. You get the trademark close-ups, slo-mo, fairytale trains and long stretches of beautiful sceneries and amidst all this is our couple romancing. Awfully dumber is their ”Haunted House” as a holiday destination than their romance on the way.

These are just the first 20 minutes of the movie which are very crucial for preparing the audience and setting up the mood, but what we are prepared for is a series of a misplaced sense of theatricality and genres. The script yells at us to think slow as we can’t help the fact that the movie’s inherent thinking is based on high drama and low IQ. There is no restriction that drama should be ”intelligent” enough to be enjoyed. It should be subtle and as complex enough as we humans are, so that the “Slow burn” factor might work (one of the best examples is Prisoners [2013]). You only get “been there seen that “ vibes, not only to the level of the story but to the level of characters.

The roles played by Micheal Madsen, Anjali, Avasarala Srinivas ( Shalini Pandey is spared out my margins of caricatures) and the other 40-45 foreign props who came to the set to fill the frame with some Seattle look are as much important as the seconds' number in the movie’s runtime. Micheal Madsen, so to speak, was just there to be radical, ignorant and just swear words with a highly modified American English. The modification is overkilled to a limit that even his slang feels clichéd. Our Very own Kamal Hassan’s Fletcher was less of a readymade American Crazy in Dasavatharam. 

Even more disturbing is the myriad of twists and turn with no intrigue or excitement or suspense – which is very important for Thriller ( let’s just settle for this genre as it’s predominant than Romance and the 10min. Horror we get at first). Everything from the bgm (which is enough to make even you mute for a few minutes after the movie. I had to listen to some old classics to save myself) to the costumes and locales is predictable and blunt. Shaniel Deo’s Cinematography benefits from the high budget of the movie as the camera get’s a worthy frame in whatever direction it pans. 

Bored in this lockdown!! - Here's just the list of movies for you 

A movie this bland, boring and lazily written made a big release and procured enough resources. Give a fraction of that to quality filmmakers or at least writers, the return on investment, not only in terms of money, but respect and zeal would have doubled up. Enter End titles – An Amazon Original Film©.