Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Rekhachithram
Rekhachithram begins by introducing a crime in a conversation between two young boys in the year 1985. One of them saw a young woman hurriedly carried away by a bunch of men on a rainy night. The scene cuts to the present day, showing a character walking to a lonely spot in a thick forest and confessing to a crime he committed decades ago.
On video, the man admits to the murder that he and two others were responsible for, and that a skeleton is buried under the earth where he is seated. He releases the video live on a social media channel before ending his life.
And so, within minutes, Rekhachithram reveals two crucial bits of information central to any thriller – who the victim and murderers are.
However, investigating officer Vivek Gopinath (Asif Ali) realizes that the testimony of a dead man alongside a skeleton proves nothing without irrefutable evidence and a firmly established motive. These are the challenges as he starts the investigation of the crime from decades earlier. Rekhachithram is not a run-of-the-mill mystery that deliberately holds back portions of the plot to move the narrative forward. It is a solid crime drama that presents the barriers a detective faces when investigating a crime and uncovering a motive.
Fact & Fiction
After painstakingly rummaging through old documents, Gopinath discovers the possible identity of the victim, Rekha (a perfectly cast Anaswara Rajan), and proceeds with the hypothesis that the skeleton is hers. His investigation, relying on threadbare information, stumbles on evidence that becomes a turning point for the movie.
Gopinath finds photographs and actual video footage confirming that Rekha was a junior artist in a 1985 movie called Kathodu Kathoram. By inserting a fictional sub-plot involving Rekha’s disappearance on the sets of an actual film, the director lends a unique, if somewhat tricky angle to the screenplay, but Director Jofin Chacko constructs his backstory slowly but convincingly.
Gopinath gradually peels back the layers behind the reasons for Rekha’s disappearance and possible death, as a few living witnesses recall incidents from the day of the film shoot. Lengthy interrogation sequences come alive through perfectly paced flashback sequences. We learn more about Rekha than her murder, and therein lies one of the movie’s strengths. In a healthy blend of suspense and emotion, we begin to understand the beautiful person Rekha was.
The emotional angle
Through Rekha, the director also shines a light on the aspirations of junior artists in the industry. Rekha is a fan of the big screen and dreams of becoming an actor someday. Like several other junior artists in the movie, she gets to stand next to a real superstar (Mammootty), but cannot gather the courage to say hello to him. Rekhachithram is a heartbreaking nod to how in life that you could be so near, and yet, so far from your dreams.
Rekhachithram is not just a thriller. The movie is an immersive experience into the life of a teenager, whose love for cinema is crushed on a fateful night. The director gives the character of Rekha generous screen time, as we feel for her and her shattered dreams. We get an extended peek into Rekha’s past life even after a culprit is nabbed. Jofin Chacko is in no hurry to end the movie; we even get a gut-wrenching song closer to the climax featuring a younger Rekha.
Rekhachithram is the kind of film that overwhelms the viewer with compassion for its endearing central character, just the way I felt for Rosie in Talaash and Jessica in No One Killed Jessica.