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“Unmaiyilerndhu odaatheenga (Don’t run away from the truth)” This is a throwaway line in one of Tamil writer Sujatha’s crime thrillers that has stayed with me. When a woman refuses to see an unidentified dead body, the protagonist utters this line. That’s what SU Arun Kumar’s Chithha tries to do. It compels us to see things we consciously avoid. That’s why some of the stretches of Chithha are hard to watch. When you hear the pedophilic serial killer say Vaseline among all the other items he asks for in a store, your stomach churns. When Eeswaran (Siddharth) wants to brutally murder the paedophile, you want to scream, ‘Hell, yes!’ But Chithha compels you to look at the issue beyond punishment. It takes the focus away from the perpetrators to the victims. It drives home the point even the burning urge to punish those monsters is an act of running from the truth. When the subject of child abuse continues to be a hush-hush in the mainstream, Chithha is far ahead of the curve. It takes the conversation to a more mature plane.
Chithha works because this maturity is not just in its ideas but also in its form. It is not just a film with good intentions, it is a good movie too. And it establishes that in the very first scene. Shakthi (Nimisha Sajayan) gets off a bus and heads to a restroom. She waits outside as the toilet is occupied. The occupant comes out, and Shakthi stops her from leaving. She asks her pointing inside the toilet, “What’s this?” She orders her to flush the toilet properly. She demands her to take responsibility. And she tells the same to Eeswaran (Siddharth) in the climax of the film, and that’s how one writes a consistent character. Later, when Shakthi comes out of the toilet, there is a close-up shot of her wet legs and pyjamas. Now, make what you will of the shot. It could be an indication of the amount of water Shakthi has spent flushing the toilet, or it could be about the everyday uneasiness of living, or it is just a documentation of reality. It is a simple shot of everyday stuff that no one gives a second thought about, but it becomes much more the moment it gets written about or captured. That’s the pleasure of art, and that is why Chithha is mature in its form.
In another scene, Eeswaran tries to pacify a distressed child, who seems to be scared of touch. He notices something is amiss with her. Yet, the long shot of the scene portrays a different picture of his actions. Now, the audience is not told or even hinted that it is getting recorded in a CCTV camera. However, later, when he is accused of abuse, a video is shown as proof of his crime. Again, we are not shown the content of the video. Yet, we know what the scene is because we can correlate. SU Arun Kumar trusts the intellect of the audience, and that’s why Chittha works.
The representation of the police force is another example of the film’s layers. When mainstream movies are used to either mock the establishment or glorify it, the director tries to get near the truth. Here cops become actual people, who lack empathy because of the system which works like a machine. In the same meeting about the hunt for the serial killer, the senior police officer also offers sweets because it is his wife’s birthday. Now, one cannot blame the cops because it is after all work. It wouldn’t feel out of place in a meeting of a bunch of IT professionals. Chithha captures this bizarre and absurd reality subtly.
Then we have some of the brilliant performances that aid the brilliant script. This is easily Siddharth’s best performance by far. It is painful to watch him suffer through it all without respite. His scream when he realises his nephew is alive is haunting. The moment where he breaks down realising even his family perceives him as a criminal is devastating. And he hasn’t been alone in this fight. All the characters, even the ones which make brief appearances, stand out. Chithha is one of those rare amalgamations of everything perfect. The review doesn’t concern much about the film’s plot, and that’s a conscious decision because Chithha, like all good cinema, is much more than its plot.
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