THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
Fahadh Faasil has a way with his eyes; a trait he exhibited to full measure in the movie ‘Thondimuthalum Driksaakshiyum’. In his opening scene in the film, a close-up shot shows his eyes sparkling with a rare cunning. It acted as a premonition to what was to follow. A golden chain slid along the neck of a woman and coiled up in the
index finger like a snake would. The eyes swiftly blink to innocence and it doesn’t flutter again even when he is slapped on cheek, kicked in the belly or when the woman points her fingers into his eyes threateningly as though to pierce them.
After a forgettable ‘Kaiyethum doorathu’, Fahadh resurfaced as the poster boy of new generation
Malayalam cinema which dissolved the lines between a hero and a villain. Fahadh’s characters flirt unabashedly and do not shy away from uninhibited intimacy. In his short career, he has been the first choice for unearthing the good and the bad in one character.
“The idea is to keep challenging yourself and that’s what I truly wish for the audience too. I don’t think I could have made many of my films anywhere else in the country. I am thankful I belong here,’’ Fahaadh has said. In ‘Thondimuthalum Driksaakshiyum’, which the jury termed ‘brilliant’ and fondly translated as ‘Chain snatcher’ for their convenience, Fahadh’s character was a thief with survival instincts who would not even hesitate to steal the name of the complainant and attach it to himself. Prasad was someone who would stretch his skills to the point of obduracy, angering the cops and weakening others in pursuit of the stolen chain. “You should hang on until the last minute,” he whispers in the film after he had been subjected to extended bouts of torture.
For all his infuriating endurance, his eyes also flash with pure helplessness in the face of hunger. “Vishappu aanu saare prasnam,” he tells cops who enquire about his past.
Fahadh has said that he got to play the character in a matter of ten days. He would sit on the steps of the jail along with his co-actors, sleep in the cell to absorb what he was to portray on screen.
When Fahadh Faasil was cast aside in the
state film awards, there were many who expressed surprise. A director who was the jury member says “He had lost in a good contest then, but now he has come back and that’s what good actors are known for”.
