Dileesh Pothan on How 'Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum' Changed Cop Films in Malayalam

Director Dileesh Pothan’s second film was Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, starring Fahadh Faasil. It narrated the story of a thief who swallows a gold chain while he travels by bus. He is then taken to the local police station located in Kerala’s Kasargode district where we witness an investigation unlike any we’d seen in Malayalam cinema before. It was the film’s hyper-realism that set it apart from the massy police films that were being made in Malayalam till then.

Speaking about the effort that went in, Pothan tells THR India, “When we watched police films as children, we believed that is how policing works and this is how police officers behave. We grow up with the wrong notion. Then we when meet real officers and come across real situations, that’s when we notice the difference between real life and movies. Even the courts we saw were cinematic. What came to mind was a core plot, and when we were thinking about making Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, the idea was to place that plot in an authentic police station and police officers.” 

He explains the amount of research that went in to bring about this hyper realism. He says, “When I’m making a movie, I want to make sure I do not take any references from earlier movies. I try to replace those reference thoughts with real-life events. That why I felt it was important that we are surrounded by people who have that working knowledge. At that point when we face a doubt, it’s good that we have someone from the police department and that’s why I approached Shahi Kabir to work on my film then as an assistant director.” 

During the shoot, Pothan says he didn’t have to go far in search of that authenticity because he had that freedom to cross-check an important detail with any many as the 21 real-life police officers who worked on the film. He adds that a regular day of shoot included hundreds of questions to these officers to maintain a high level of perfection. 

Recalling one of these questions, director-writer Shahi Kabir says, “(On a shoot day), I was asked to rush to the sets by DOP Rajeev Ravi. When I went there, I could see Sibi Thomas along with all the other officers standing behind the police jeep. They were shooting a rig shot in which Fahadh Faasil was being taken away. The first thing Rajeev asked was, 'Where do you make the thief sit at the back? On the right or left?' Right off the bat, I said left side. Then he asked, 'Why there?' So I said if the thief sits on the right, there’s a chance he chokes the driver. I just made it up based on common logic. But Rajeev said that felt right and that’s how we shot that scene.”