Drishyam 2 | Movies that Inspired George Kutty | Video Essay Script
Hi, my name is Kishor and this is MOVING IMAGES. So Drishyam 2 turned out to be a really good movie. With sequels always being a hit or miss, with more of them being misses than hits these days, it is truly surprising that a movie that doesn’t even require a sequel gets to have one that actually does what a good sequel should do; build on the previous movie but take it in an entirely new direction. But today we are not going to discuss the cliched “how to make a great sequel”. Remember how George did this in the first film? Let’s do a fun experiment of trying to figure out the various movies George Kutty would’ve drawn inspiration from for his every move in Drishyam 2. We will be mapping out his character arc based on the movie choices that could’ve possibly shaped his decisions.
UNDERCOVER COPS
Let’s start with the easy one — the two undercover cops and George’s house getting bugged. Although it is not made clear whether George is aware of the police’s plans of spying on him using cops who go undercover as his neighbours, he is still shown to hold his tongue regarding the topic of the murder from the first film even around his own family. This might suggest that he is aware that at some level he is being watched by the police, waiting for him to slip. So what might have inspired George to think this way? Well undercover cops aren’t new to Indian cinema. We have a plethora of choices starting from Ragasiya Police 115 to even Pokkiri. But for fun let’s watch which films might have inspired George in particular.
THE NOVEL
George has his entire plan published as a novel by a writer hired by him and uses that against the cops in a brilliant twist. I thoroughly enjoyed this twist and the more I thought about it the more I realised how this single twist actually brings George’s character arc to a full circle. George is shown as a film buff who bases his decisions and instincts from what he learned from fictional work like cinema. In Drishyam 2 he turns the tables by making it seem the police are basing their instinct to dig up the station floor and plant a body there after reading about it from a fictional piece of work. This is George turning his strength to the enemy’s weakness. As for what films might have inspired George to do this, well we have a couple of choices. There is of course the most obvious Basic Instinct. The film follows the murder of a retired rock star and his wife who has written a novel that mirrors the crime. There is also some homegrown options like New Delhi where a journalist commits murder and reports them first in his newspaper. Although the idea to novelize his plan may have been inspired by other movies, it is George Kutty’s own intelligence and at a meta level the brilliance of the film’s writing to use it in such a way that it ties with his character arc. Something only George Kutty would do.
BODY SWITCH
Ah yes! The one place the makers of the film actually managed to write themself into a corner and had to use “luck” as their excuse to get out of it. I am talking about the convoluted plot George employs to switch the body remains to fool the DNA test. This plan had so many things that could go wrong and it made an otherwise plausible movie seem a bit far-fetched. Well, I’ll give my thoughts on how I would’ve liked to see this resolved at the end of this video but for now let’s focus on what films might have inspired George Kutty to come up with this plan. Well there is a malayalam movie called Postmortem which shows bodies being switched inside a coffin, but again let’s do something fun.
So our story starts right after the events of the first film, George approaches a young film buff and narrates his story so far. The film buff who watches a lot of international movies calls George Kutty’s story a rip-off of a Korean movie called Project X. George is intrigued and does some research and realizes that it is actually a Japanese movie called Suspect X and also realizes he needs a better film buff for his story. Anyways, he watches the film and gets the brilliant idea of switching the dead bodies. Only problem is that he has buried the body under a police station so he has to wait it out.
Now for my vision of how the whole “luck” explanation could have been tackled differently to make the movie work for me. At the beginning of the movie we see the writer asking George Kutty to narrate his story, we then follow the movie and show the climax as it is. Except for the part where the writer goes to the police and explains George’s plans as it unfolds, we cut back to George still with the writer ending his narration for his idea. The entire movie after the scene between the writer and George was just him narrating the story. We then show George hearing the news about the police station being dug up as he predicted and end the movie there implying that now George will execute his plan. Whether he succeeds in it or not is left to our imagination. Until next time, this is Kishor signing off saying….
