According to ancient Sumerian tablets, a race of beings from another planet called Anunnaki descended on Earth in search of gold. Why they needed gold isn’t clear yet but they needed lots of gold. When the slaves they brought with them to mine for gold revolted, they extracted the genes of pre-human race of beings (Neanderthals, Homo Erectus) and combined with their own genes to create us. This is up for a lot of debate and in Genesis 1:26 in the Bible, God says “let us create them in our own image” where “let us” means there is no one God that created us. I am a believer in this story for two reasons:
1) Our natural tendency to look up when we pray which indicates the Gods we are worshiping came from above us
2) Unlike metals like iron, copper and aluminum, gold is useless to us. Then why take all the effort to mine it and why is it precious to us? Tons of gold have kept in a temple in India under the protection of the temple God for hundreds of years. This means gold is important to the Gods which is why it is precious to us.
Most importantly, the story is an indicator to us that we were created as biological robots to obey our creators. Why didn’t the Gods simply build mechanical robots for mining and why did they take all the effort to engage in genetic engineering to create us? Because they wanted us to think on our own and also have emotional intelligence. Why emotional intelligence? Because they wanted to control us emotionally and not mechanically. How? When we talk about Gods, we do not ask ourselves how did the concept of God and the fear of an unknown all knowing entity became embedded in us. We are in the 21st century and with so much of technological advances we are still under the control of Gods through various religions. There is nothing more advanced, complicated and powerful that can control us than the concept of God.
Do we have a similar controlling mechanism for the intelligent machines we are building? What would happen if AI grew to a point where it could think and act autonomously? The scene in The Matrix where Agent Smith tells Morpheus that human beings are the most dangerous virus on the planet has stuck with me. It is not only true that we do behave like viruses, if intelligence created by us becomes powerful enough to come to such a conclusion, what is shown in the Matrix and Terminator series will become real.
When I see all the excitement and euphoria over what AI can do all it tells me is how blatantly ignorant we are about ourselves and our past.
Making sequels for any movie is tough and especially more for crime thrillers. Unless the script was prepared for 2 parts like the Uma Thurman blockbuster Kill Bill, getting the flow of the story from the first movie to its sequel is extremely difficult. Even in the case of The Matrix trilogy, the struggle to take the story forward from The Matrix through its sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions was very apparent. But Mollywood movie director Jeethu Joseph has done a memorable job with Drishyam 2, the sequel of his highly successful and acclaimed movie Drishyam.
The plot of Drishyam 2 is built on the fact that no crime is perfect and there could be a witness to every crime. To recap, Drishyam narrated the travails of Georgekutty who runs local cable TV service in a small town in Kerala and lives with his wife and two girl children. He is an orphan, school dropout and had found his feet on his own in a tough world. He is obsessed with movies and unknowingly picks up plentiful of cues from crime movies which becomes his mighty weapons when he has to hide a murder and protect his family from the world and keep them out of reach of the long arms of the police system breathing down their necks.
Jeethu had left the door open for a sequel with the climax of Drishyam and what is impressive is, after 6 years of making Drishyam, he has seamlessly picked up from its climax to get the sequel rolling. Drishyam had meandered a bit in the beginning as the stage had to be set before getting into the crux of the story but with Drishyam 2 Jeethu seems to have put in every effort to make the audience feel that even though 6 years have passed the continuity to the story is perfect to the inch from the beginning. Jeethu has a unique knack of making successful police stories and crime thrillers and he has ensured that new characters and new situations blend in perfectly with the original story background of Drishyam.
There will be plenty of reviews about the movie so what I want to write here is about Georgekutty’s character and I believe it is a masterpiece. Orphan, school dropout, married, running a small business. Many people who have watched Drishyam and Drishyam 2 may have found it hard to believe and digest that an uneducated insignificant man could be smart enough to take on the police on his own and outwit them twice.
Christians in Kerala, especially from the southern parts are extremely smart in doing business and figuring out their lives irrespective of their educational qualifications. Georgekutty’s addiction to crime movies and picking up so many cues from them underlines the fact that if he had a different upbringing, he could have become a successful detective, crime investigator and even be part of the police or an investigation agency. This is where our education system is failing our society. Education when done right helps in creating critical thinking ability in us which helps us in asking questions and not becoming gullible to accepting anything blindly. But the same education system does nothing to create real world problem solving skills in us. This yawning gap exists in every job sector where problem solving skills are of primary importance and so much in demand but most educated and qualified people do not have them.
Georgekutty’s character reminds me of Frank Abagnale on whose life the highly successful movie Catch Me If You Can was made. Frank became a well known conman even before his 19th birthday and never got caught by the law. Finally, the system bowed down to him and FBI enlisted his help for nabbing check forgers. In Drishyam 2 the police is seen making several good assumptions and simultaneous moves to make Georgekutty reveal the location where he has hidden a dead body, completely oblivious of the fact that he has always known that the police will constantly be on his heels and will never stop till they find the dead body. More than the police observing him he has been observing the police all the time. Staying so much ahead of the police helps him make some ingenious plans because he knows fully well that he cannot hide a crime or a dead body forever. The education system fails even the police here. They keep following standard investigation procedures and even though Georgekutty outwitted them soundly in Drishyam, they keep assuming that he was lucky and he won’t be lucky every time. Their higher education and social status comes in the way of seeing through and accepting the fact that Georgekutty, though uneducated is wily, smart and far more intelligent than them.
The police does not seem to have the ability to think out-of-the box either. Recreating the crime scene or crime situation is the key to solving a crime. Although they know Georgekutty may not have hidden the body far from his house, they fail to look back in time to find out what was the situation on the ground 6 years back. From the way Georgekutty is living confidently and the fact that construction of the new police station was underway when he hid the body, the police could have connected the dots and arrived at the suspicion that he could have hidden the body right under their feet. Georgekutty knew he was taking a grave risk by hiding the body in the police station and he knew there could be a witness or someone in the police could connect the dots at some point in time which is why he started making plans to save his family right away.
So could someone of Georgekutty’s stature have done all this? He understands crime like the back of his hand from watching movies, he knows how to make friends with people and influence them completely oblivious to them and he knows to exploit a porous and corrupt system. Sizing up the opponent or failing to do it is the sure shot recipe to success or failure as both Georgekutty and the police finds out. Do such people exist in real life? There are all kinds of people in the world and we have no clue what each one’s skills and abilities are. Only when life forces us into corners and we start fighting back does the world get to see who we really are. There is a Georgekutty in all of us, in one way or the other.
Renowned Mollywood actor Mohanlal reprises the role of Georgekutty and completely owns it. Drishyam had an ensemble cast and all the important characters have been retained along with the addition of new ones in the sequel. Both Drishyam and Drishyam 2 are intense movies like most crime thrillers and it is easy to get distracted among so many characters. Georgekutty is the pivot to both movies so understanding his character and watching from his perspective is the key to appreciating them.
Ranjeet Menon's Blog 