Years before stepping foot on a film set, Jeethu Joseph heard a story from a friend. It was the story of two families, a boy and a girl, who end up in a police case. Both families did the right thing. They were both doing something wrong. And no one there could decide which side to take.
That question lodged somewhere in Joseph’s mind and stayed there. What if we put the audience in the same position? What would they do if they couldn’t pick a clean team?
This ethical knot was the seed for the 2013 Malayalam thriller film Drishyam, in which Mohanlal starred as Georgekutty. Georgekutty is a cunning cable operator who keeps his crimes so thoroughly under wraps that it takes years for the law to find its footing. This movie became a phenomenon. The series is still expanding, with two sequels, remakes in Hindi, Telugu, and Kannada, a remake in Tamil directed by Joseph himself with Kamal Haasan, and adaptations in Chinese and Sinhala. Now, Joseph is back at Georgekutty’s house for ‘Drishyam 3’, but this time the walls are closing in.
“What ‘Three’ basically focuses on is Georgekutty’s fear and nervousness from his angle,” Joseph told Variety. Children have grown up and their ways of thinking have changed. George Kuti is old. And the punishment ‘Drishyam 2’ left over his head is no longer theoretical.
“He’s going to spend the rest of his life expecting the police,” Joseph said. “That is his punishment. Will he live a peaceful life? Every time he sees something, he will feel that someone is following him. He lives his life in constant vigilance.”
It’s a quieter, more psychological threat than fans of the series might expect, and Joseph knows it. From the moment ‘Drishyam’ became a cultural event, audiences were captivated by Georgekutty’s labyrinthine common sense and perceived it as a thriller. Joseph did not agree with that classification at all.
“I actually believed then and now that this was a family drama,” he says. “One family is trying to protect their daughter, and another is fighting for justice for their son.”
In his view, the franchise’s reach as far as China, where Joseph attended screenings, vindicated that point. The heart of the story, in which a father unites his family in despair, requires no cultural translation. He traces the appeal of Georgekutty back to the origins of the character, a man who came from nothing and built everything through sheer will.
“He was an orphan who worked hard and grew up and started his own family,” Joseph says. “As he sees his family slipping away, he clings desperately because they are the only thing he has in his life.”
But that universality is shrouded in expectations, or pressures, that Joseph speaks frankly about. Viewers who loved the series’ procedural ingenuity will arrive at “Three” expecting the next great operation. Joseph says he can’t write to it.
“We took an organic approach to the characters and storyline,” he says. “I hope they’re happy with it. But there’s no formula for the movie.”
He’s been equally candid about the price of the franchise’s success. The industry labeled him as a thriller director in 2013 when his atmospheric disappearance thriller films ‘Drishyam’ and ‘Memories’ were released in the same year. Stamps don’t easily shift. He made ‘Life of Josutty’ right after ‘Drishyam’, but he knew his tonal departure would land differently. It struggled at the box office. Audiences had arrived expecting a twist.
“‘Memories’ and ‘Drishyam’ are both a blessing and a curse,” he says.
Still, he continued to push on the edge. ‘Neru’, a courtroom family drama starring Mohanlal, was a huge hit. The comedy “Nunakuzhi” did an admirable job. Horror, musicals – he says that these are the genres that he is actively developing. The goal is simple.
“I’m basically a storyteller, someone who wants to tell stories,” he says. “If I have a good storyline, I want to do it, whether it’s a big movie or a small movie.”
After ‘Drishyam 3’, I have two projects lined up. A Telugu film penned by ‘Nell’ screenwriter Santhi Mayadevi and a project with Prithviraj Sukumaran, both of which are currently in the writing stage.
As for ‘Drishyam 4’, Joseph has not ruled out the possibility. After previewing “Two”, Mohanlal asked Joseph if a third film was possible. Joseph tells him that if there is a “3”, we already know how it should end, and that depending on how the third film turns out, the fourth one will remain unresolved.
“Let’s release ‘Three,’” he says. “Now let’s see what happens to this family.”
