Rorschach Movie Review: Mammootty – Age: 71, Swag: 100! Bollywood, please don’t touch this?

Featured cast: Mammootty, Grace Antony, Bindhu Panicker, Jagadish, Sanju Sivram, Kottayam Nazeer, Sharafudheen, Ira Noor, Asif Ali

Director: Nissam Basher

What’s good: It has the ability to completely suck you in within the first ten minutes but…

What is wrong : …if it loses you for those ten minutes, you’ll never come back to watch it

Toilet break: Only if there is an interval at the cinema or if you took a break from watching it at home (the second scenario is highly unlikely)

Watch or not? : Only if you have the patience to digest a slow-burner with the promise of an extremely satisfying climax!

Language: Malayalam

Available on: Theatrical release

Duration: 150 minutes

User rating:

An extremely disturbed Luke Antony (Mammootty) walks into a dimly lit police station in a small village to file a complaint about his missing wife, Sofiya, following an accident he just survived. He takes the police to the site where his car crashed and days pass without finding anything. Luke promises to stay in the village until he finds his wife.

While in the village, Luke splits the opinions of villagers ranging from a caring husband to “a creepy murderer” over his certain quirky personality. He soon buys a property in the village by mingling with the crowd by being one of them. It’s only in the first half that you learn what Luke’s true intentions are and he’s out for some cold-blooded but smartly executed revenge. What is it and how is it planned? Believe me, you want to witness it all first hand!

Rorschach film review: script analysis

Before we delve into the convoluted mind of the screenplay, screenwriter Sameer Abdul, let’s understand what Rorschach is. In layman’s terms, the Rorschach is a kind of psychological test, which can help doctors analyze your personality and was once used to diagnose mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Basically, it’s one of those tests you might have seen on BuzzFeed that shows you different black and white images and asks you to guess what it is. Based on your hypothesis, there is a mathematical conclusion about how your brain works. It was first performed in 1921 by Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach. This is just the basis for understanding how our protagonist’s messy mind works in this movie.

Yes, as every slow burner takes patience, even this one demands your full attention despite the fact that the core is as simple as a man seeking revenge planning to tear it all down. The messy storyline (in an intriguing way) holds your breath until the last while taking you through unpredictable twists and turns. Kiran Das’ editing stitches the past and present together so effortlessly that you’ll feel like it’s one scene if not for different clothes and locations. The transition during the “barn fire” scene from evening to morning with the character sitting in the same spot, is something the movie buff in you will devour with immense joy.

Nimish Ravi’s cinematography complements the dark undertones of the script and keeps things as weird as possible. A theory around the Rorschach test describes how the inkblots made to analyze people’s personalities are deliberately messy, they’re a kind of structured mess and that’s exactly how the camera work in this film can rightly be described as a “structured disorder”. In one particular scene chasing Mammootty’s Luke, the camera slowly rotates and shakes to deliberately disturb the viewer’s mind. Nimish also shoots a few scenes with the spirit POV and it teleports you into the story a bit.

Rorschach Movie Review: Star Performance

Mammootty, Age: 71, Style: 100! With recent movies like Unda, Peranbu, Bheeshma Parvam and Puzhu & now this, the Mammukka era we deserve is back! That’s what people mean when they talk about the “second run” of veteran actors. Kamal Haasan with Vikram & Mammukka with films like this is currently writing a case study for actors today. The fact that he accepts and plays his age on screen helps the director give Luke a certain menacing charm that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Even the action scenes are designed in a way that gracefully provides Mammootty with enough space to make the scene look stylish and not messy and fun.

Grace Antony stands out brilliantly against Mammukka by making her place even in the scenes directed by the veteran actor. But, it is the role of Seetha played by Bindhu Panicker that will have invested you the most after the main actor. Bindhu’s innocence helps him balance the gray undertones of his character with such ease. Jagadish, Sanju Sivram, Kottayam Nazeer, Sharafudheen, Ira Noor and Asif Ali provide decent support for the narrative.

Review of the film Rorschach: direction, music

Nissam Basheer directs the film in such a way that the “revenge” angle is never rubbed in your face because it is never confined to any particular genre. You’re never really on anyone’s “side” throughout the film because everything is grey. Although Mammootty’s Luke is being punished for what happened to his family, the complex storyline makes it difficult to hold his hand and cheer him on and that’s the beauty of the film’s ambiguous nature.

Midhun Mukundan’s music mostly includes a gothic folk/rock vibe and the English songs certainly add an international flavor to the film’s treatment. “My Stories Are Not Over, Don’t Go” gives you the “Red Right Hand” vibe mainly because of the music. From the sound design inspired primarily by natural sounds to an electronic set disguised as rock plunging into the script, this film’s background music deserves recognition more than ever.

Review of the movie Rorschach: The Last Word

If you’re a human from 2050 and stumble upon this review about finding “the best psychological thrillers in Indian cinema”, welcome to the past! Yes, we had the honor of watching this masterpiece in a movie theater and I hope Bollywood didn’t try to remake it in Hindi by sucking it.

Four stars!

Rorschach Trailer

Rorschach released on October 07, 2022.

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Still, to watch Mani Ratnam’s latest magnum opus, read our review of the film Ponniyin Selvan 1 here.

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