What on earth is this? Is it a murder mystery? More like a muddled mystery. Rorschach, now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar, is a horribly botched-up monstrous misfire of a movie with pretensions to a solemnity of purpose that is repeatedly belied and mocked by plot twists that make no sense except as a snakes-and-ladder game where the ladders lead only to dead ends.
It comes as a shock to know that this phoney murder mystery with an ersatz eerie energy that seeps into the very core of the imperturbable antics of characters who seem to be moulded in the clay of deception, is produced by the legendary Mammootty who also stars as the protagonist Luke whose wife Sofia is killed as the couple are driving through a dense forest.
Why are they driving through this godforsaken wilderness? And what’s with Luke Mammootty’s American accent whenever he recites some English-language poetry in a voiceover which sounds like an imposer Jim Morrison?
Did Luke kill his wife? Seems not, because she keeps appearing in his daydreams in a lovey-dovey avatar, sometimes we see only Sofia’s hands caressing Luke’s face.
I must say Sofia, which is played by Ira Noor, has very expressive hands. Hold on to that thought. It’s the only eloquent component in this dead meat of the film, more remarkable for what it tries to tell us about vendetta and its ruinous ramifications than what it actually succeeds in saying about property, greed and self-augmentation by killing.
The entire ramshackle setting, a kind of half-constructed semi-haunted home that Luke comes to occupy, becomes willy-nilly a metaphor for the film’s frustratingly incomplete and incoherent jigsaw puzzle that muzzles any clear-headedness of thought in favour of ubiquitous bewilderment.
The dots never connect. They cannot. Writer Sameer Abdul doesn’t allow any character to breathe properly. Every character lies to himself/herself and to others. The truth is the least valuable element in the pulpy plot parading as a profound exposition on the wages of covetousness.
Luke’s intentions remain ambiguous to the end. Is he avenging his wife’s murder? The characters’ capacity for rapacity is immeasurable. He is a mystery to himself and to us. The populous canvas is never fascinating in its evil designs, not even as illustrations from the dark zone.
Speaking of the dark zone, a lot of the plot is filmed in dark dingy interiors emptied out of any genuine human activity. The film is serious sapped of liveliness and emotions. It all feels emptied out and sterile. Luke is a debauch and a deceiver. But he is not interesting.
Rorschach feels like an utterly flattened-out attempt to do a noir mystery buttressed by a moody who-goes-there cinematography (Nimish Ravi) and some of the phoniest songs in the English language which resemble the pathetic efforts of a garage band from the back of the beyond.
The only actor who actually tries to make sense on this morbid mess of a murder mystery is Grace Anthony. She plays Sujatha, a widow trying to keep her husband’s petty business afloat. Weirdly, Luke the grieving widower soon starts making passes at Sujatha, who even more weirdly agrees to marry Luke!!!
I understand avarice is the guiding force for these irredeemable characters. But what possible reason could director Nissam Basher have to create this chaotic universe of charlatans, ghosts, thugs and deceivers?
My sympathies to the film editor (Kiran Das) whose reaction on seeing the rudderless raga of crime and retribution must have been, ‘Are you serious?’
Sadly, they are.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.
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