Where characters borrow from the real

The script of Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum is not about how much it tells. Rather, it’s about how much it doesn’t, how much it makes you work and how it confuses you on whom to root for. The National Award jury, which reserved gushing praise for the film, though did not have any doubts on which film deserved the best screenplay award.

At the core is a story that could be reduced to a single column item in a newspaper, of a gold chain theft on board a bus. But Sajeev Pazhoor fleshes it out and brings on screen a multilayered humanistic portrayal. A journalist by profession, Pazhoor has put to use those skills too, especially in detailing the procedures inside a police station.

“The question everyone asked us was on whether this is a real story. It is not. I began from the kinds of emotions that a woman who has lost her Thalimaala (wedding chain) would feel, about the loss of a valuable object and the loss of something with deep emotions attached to it. If the thief is a clever one, it further complicates ,” he says.

But a key underlying element, which lies beneath the easily identifiable ones of justice system and power and caste hierarchies, is that of water, and its scarcity. The main characters move from a land bound by waterbodies to a dry piece of land like Kasaragod. The gold chain is their only hope of finding a solution to the scarcity.

With no formal training in cinema, Pazhoor considers filmmaker Shaji N. Karun as his mentor.