Read the full article on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/in-psycho-mysskin-reimagines-the-serial-killer-thriller-as-a-meditative-drama-about-salvation/
Okay, so the detailing, the micro stuff is fascinating! What about the macro stuff? Does the film work as the serial-killer thriller the title leads us to expect? Yes — and no!
Spoilers ahead…
The most stunning image in Mysskin’s new film, Psycho, may be that of a man entering a sort of prison cell. We don’t see the inside of the cell — it’s a giant, dark space — but we know there’s a woman inside, a former teacher in a Christian-run school for orphans. She is, in other words, a “Mother”. And the man, crawling on all fours, resembles a toddler. Like almost everything in Mysskin’s oeuvre, the image is very deliberate, and grandly theatrical — the sense is that of a child crawling back into the womb.
Psycho is dedicated to Alfred Hitchcock, and the homage goes beyond the title. It goes beyond the image of a mummified corpse (which we also saw in Moodupani, Balu Mahendra’s riff on the Hitchcock thriller). It goes beyond Ilaiyaraaja’s score, which — like Bernard Herrmann’s legendary score for Psycho — is built almost entirely around the strings section. Even the percussive effects seem to arise from strings. The homage extends to the deepest theme in Hitchcock’s film: the dysfunctional relationship between a “mother” and a “son”, which results in the latter becoming a serial killer (Rajkumar Pitchumani).
Continued at the link above.
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Baradwaj Rangan 
Raja Sekar
January 27, 2020
Here is my 2 cents on how he selects his victims. Ram’s character tells that baring the prostitutes, the rest of the women were at the top of their respective fields. I think in his mind he confuses ‘success’ in a women’s career with ‘dominant matriarchal tendencies’. The teacher in the cell is the dominant matriarch prototype in his life. This is his way of getting over the hate and trauma he experienced as a child.
By decapitating the body he is essentially stripping the victims of their identity, making them non-dominant or in other words just another women with arms, legs and a torso.
During the ritual that takes place in the cave, one can see that he puts the teacher i.e., the dominant matriarch on a pedestal and presents her with the preserved heads of his victims pinned on one side and skulls on the other side. This tells me that he still hasn’t gotten over her hold on him and by recreating the childhood trauma, she is in a roundabout sort of way also acting as an enabler by keeping his killing instincts going .
Serial killing psychopaths don’t usually commit crimes of passion. Ram is an exception, because if Ram hadn’t found him, he had no other reason to kill him. Ram doesn’t fit his criteria of selection so he disposes the body and displays the head to warn the police to stay away.
The best and the worst part about this movie is, Mysskin leaves so much for the audience to extrapolate, that just one time viewing may not be very rewarding.
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guhanasp
January 27, 2020
Mysskin is taking the route of Nicolas Winding Refn…
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vivek
January 27, 2020
I am curious about this line: “Rajkumar Pitchumani, Nithya Menen, Udhayanidhi Stalin — none of them manages to rise to the strange performance requirements of the MCU, where you have to flatten your line readings and simulate a puppet-like artifice and compensate with more physicality.”
Genuinely am keen to know what sort of “physicality” the Kamala character needed. I ask because now that you mention it, I kind of see how her performance is a very “universal” one that, seen in isolation, could be from any other film. I thought she did justice to the role, but I also felt it changed the tone of the film and now I am not sure if it was for the better or worse.
The others I can understand are less adequate actors but NM surely aces her everyday movie roles.
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Rajesh Balasubramanian
January 28, 2020
I have been reading this website for 8+ years now.
We know the movies BR really like or that worked out very well for him, BUT, I cannot remember when was the last time BR told he (sort of so much) loved this film/MCU ( why I’m a lover)? (of course with trademark Yes and Nos) :d
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H. Prasanna
January 28, 2020
@BR Cool write-up! Some of it reads like a fever dream (and from your tweets, you did have fever when you wrote this?).
Like what BR wrote about K Balachander’s archetypal women once, I feel Mysskin also puts his in a torture chamber. This rote male screenwriting tactic achieves twisted psychoanalytic outcomes because they are honest writers (“Mysskin doesn’t discriminate”): They simultaneously put the men (protagonist and antagonist) on the psychiatrist’s sofa. They are the Hannibal Lectors of screenwriting.
Cinema gender psychology dictates central performance pressures placed on men by society are satisfying your women and protecting your women. The serial killers/rapists are insecure, mocked and derided for non-performance, and ultimately turn against women for being the object that makes this performance necessary. As Freud said, to overcome stress, you either face the stressor and change your reaction to it or remove the stimulus.
When we first meet the Mysskin protagonists they are freewheeling in the privileged world of men without understanding what it takes to love a woman. They fall in love and lose the lover finally to realize the juxtaposition of performance demands of society and empathetic, caring, supportive love. To the women meanwhile, interestingly, all men are the same. The psychos and the heroes carry the same aggression (malevolent vs micro) towards them when pursuing salvation. And that is the one “out” for the women in all this: salvation of men.
Lector asks Clarice at various stages about how the other men treat her (Did your uncle sodomize you? Is Crawford hitting on you?). Mysskin and KB are very much in this position, caught in a box transparent on one side, from where they cannot harm or protect their women physically. So, Lector (and our screenwriters) has to empower his woman somehow to fend for herself, much like a father. These women who have to put up with the non-performance, pestering, and physical threats are empowered by the knowledge of salvation in men. Consequently, they reduce their men to something like children (look at how Clarice brushes aside Lector’s questions as pestering of a lover/child). Then, it is revealed that salvation of all men is in the inversion of the demands of society: the pursuit of a mother and a lover, a woman who will satisfy you and protect you.
P.S. Regarding your one hitch with the script of Psycho: In The Silence of the Lambs, the cannibalism of Hannibal (who is not the serial killer we are in pursuit, I agree) is unexplained. But that is alluded to and brushed off in an early scene. I guess this script didn’t come together fully, or this wouldn’t have mattered to you as much (haven’t watched Psycho).
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apala
January 28, 2020
BR, Loved the write up. It’s a wonderful read. Thanks.
I haven’t seen the film as yet… so I can’t say much on the film or the characters. But I thought this guy had some insight into the head of the killer! Not sure you see any possible similarity of thought here.
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AdhithyaKR
January 28, 2020
Really enjoyed reading this. Written with feeling.
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Rajeev
January 28, 2020
After watching the movie, here’s the Konaar notes 😀
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Ravi K
January 29, 2020
Some stray thoughts:
-Kamala Das reminded me of wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart in “Rear Window,” who had Grace Kelly to dig around and physically do what he couldn’t do.
-In Hitchcock’s “Psycho” the overt speechifying from the psychologist comes at the very end, but in Mysskin’s film the speech comes at the beginning.
-The killer’s motivation could be connected to his attraction to these girls. His traumatic punishment for masturbation caused feelings of guilt and hatred whenever he felt aroused, so he takes it out on these women. That would make more sense than the “top of their field” explanation, since his victims were all young women. All of these women achieved “top of their field” status at such a young age?
-Any Buddhist symbolism regarding pigs?
-The actor who played Rachel was fantastic. Who is she? She was pitched perfectly to the film and upstaged everyone else in her brief appearance.
I appreciated the attention to paid to symbolism and texture. I don’t know if it all cohered into a completely satisfying film for me, but I certainly enjoyed the experience. I wished for a little more stylization in the scenes outside the dungeon.
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brangan
January 29, 2020
Ravi K: I wished for a little more stylization in the scenes outside the dungeon.
Yeah, I felt that, too. I want to go back to Mysskin’s films and see if the stylisation in controlled, closed spaces is generally better than in the outdoors.
Because the lighting in the Unna nenachu song sequence, etc, was so generic and flat — and the lighting in the daytime scenes, too.
But INSIDE… oh boy. Say, the scene where Aditi reaches out to Ram and the focus change keeps happening. That’s why we keep, um, masturbating to cinema, don’t we? ;-P
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MANK
January 29, 2020
Stylization in outdoors in daylight is always difficult. In closed indoors, the lighting and camera movement can be controlled. Even Coppola’s The Godfather, where the interior scenes are so stylized, looks pretty flat in the sunny outdoors. It’s much more easier to stylize outdoors in night sequences. Hence I believe that onayiyum attinkuttiyum is Mysskin’s most visually stylized film
P.s. relationship between Nithya and udhayanidhi is more like the one between Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie in The Bone collector
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Ravi K
January 29, 2020
MANK, I haven’t seen “The Bone Collector.” Good catch.
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brangan
January 30, 2020
I think I accidentally deleted a comment. If the commenter can re-post, would be great. My apologies.
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brangan
January 30, 2020
“The philosophy fits in a film that shows the killer lifting a knife and lopping a head off and, later, a windmill’s blades slicing the screen. On the ground or up there, it’s the same — which is why we get the quote at the opening, from the psychologist Abraham Maslow, that we are simultaneously gods and worms.”
So I was kinda on the right track about the windmills being gods 🙂 A little like Bergman’s silent, pitiless gods.
See around the 40-minute mark in the interview below (Vishal Menon did it for FC South)
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murugavel
January 31, 2020
Hi @BR
Just want to share some thoughts about the movie. Particularly scenes that were staged well like for instance…
The scene were the SI muthuraman was leaving his station, he suddenly realises about the clue CUT from the side angle we see his station master performing namas and muthuraman is on other side of the grilled fence (acts a visual metaphors indicating) that’s separating him from the boundaries of divine protection. correspondingly we notice that he asks for the bike keys and tries to receive it through one of the holes of the fence, but it rubs against the side walls of the grilled holes and does not come easily out , indicating that a innocent soul is about to slip from the hands of divine creature.This scene had profound effect on me.
The media photographers were repeatedly used as a visual motifs in the film to indicate they constantly preying for tabloid news (hawking for news like how they portray in the Italian movie La Dolce Vita).
3.Like how @Ravik pointed out Kamala Das reminded me of wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart in “Rear Window,” is definitely a homage. Also there is one particular scene that is conveyed beautifully through visuals. When gautam visits her house and goes up the staircase to meet her CUT when he opens the door to a room full of darkness and there is a white light behind him giving an angelic look to him, Since he acts as guiding light (he is buddha) to person whose life is pushed to dark after a terrible incident at the college stairs, then after few conversions we see her emerging from the dark to light, indirectly suggesting this case is going to bring light to her lives.
The Auditorium staircase is one that not paused her investigation and but also her professional. now a buddha like figure coming over the staircase to unpause that.
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Manikandan V
January 31, 2020
சைக்கோ திரைப்படம் குறித்த சில எண்ணங்கள் , விமர்சனம் அல்ல.
படம் பார்த்தவர்களுக்கு மட்டும்
படத்தின் முதல் காட்சியிலேயே யார் கொலைகளை செய்கிறார் என்று தெரிந்த பின்னர் முழு ஸ்வாரசியமும் எப்படி கொலையாளி மாட்டிகொள்கிறார் அல்லது கொலையாளியை எப்படி பிடிக்கிறார்கள் என்பது. இது பொதுவான படங்களின் போக்கு. சைக்கோவை நாம் மேலும் நெருங்கி ரசிக்க இந்த “எப்படி ” குறித்த சில எண்ணங்களே இந்தப் பதிவு. வெறும் குறியீடு கண்டுபிடிக்கும் விளையாட்டு மட்டும்மல்ல படம் நெடுகே உள்ள ஒத்திசைவை கண்டு கொள்ளவே இப்பதிவு.
https://clearlakes.blogspot.com/2020/01/psycho.html
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Varsha
February 2, 2020
I don’t know if anyone, including Mysskin himself, has mentioned this with regard to ‘Psycho'(sorry if I missed some article, comment or video doing exactly that!), but watching the movie, I found it to have much in common to ‘The Cell'(hereafter called Cell), the 2000 psychological thriller starring Jennifer Lopez, than the Psycho of Hitchcock to which this film is dedicated. From my slightly rush-through views of the interviews he has been giving since the release of the film, I don’t get the impression that Mysskin was inspired by Cell. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but notice some striking similarities between both the films.
Both the films meditate on the salvation of a serial killer. While Psycho reveals the killer in the first few frames, Cell goes one step further and even gets the killer caught. The victims are young women and the only suspense left is how a victim is going to be saved. Also, there are stunning visuals and stylizations in Cell, comparable to Psycho. Both films also end the same way, with the killer dying and the victim saved. Funnily enough, both directors being Indians could be the most coincidental of similarities!
Mysskin’s Psycho did not work for me as well as his previous films, especially Pisasu. Comparing Cell with Psycho, I was able to come up with a theory why it didn’t. As BR has also mentioned, Psycho does not delve into the mind of the killer as much as is required in this kind of movie, but Cell does it much better, IMO. Especially, what exactly we are supposed to save a serial killer from, and feel sorry for, is brought out beautifully in Cell. There is an innocent Young Stargher, who suffers as much or even worse than the women victims, inside the body which also houses a murderous King Stargher. It is this innocence which is saved at the end, not the abomination. Also, in the beginning, there is a dialogue between the police officers that conveys the fact that the killer is deliberately being careless since he wants to get caught. Though it is not very clear, it could be that, in addition to a selfish need to get caught to get medical help for the schizophrenic illness, the innocent Stargher could also be responsible.
Psycho comes pretty close to achieving a similar effect with the ritual scene in a Mysskinesque way towards the climax, but somehow it seems so sudden that I never felt the same kind of emotion as I did for Cell. The interaction between Dahini and the Sister(terrific acting!) too does not help. Maybe, instead of dialogues, the killer’s past could have been shown. The other characters in the film, including the quadriplegic policewoman, end up being mere caricatures since the main emotional drama fails to sustain interest. Lastly, though personally, I did not find the lack of logic, as opposed to the lack of enough emotion, to be as jarring as some of the audience have said, I think it bears mentioning that, in Cell, the logic does not take much of a beating within the science-fiction universe where the plot unfolds. In fact, the logic does help in upping the ante of the emotional drama. This is not to say that Mysskin should have taken care of the logic in Psycho. By all means, do away with logic all you want, but all I am expecting from someone of Mysskin’s calibre is what you do end up showing should be captivating, with or without logic. Great visuals, stylizations, camera angles are all welcome, but they all get meaningful and enhanced in a film domain only when they come together to give the experience of watching a good film. Psycho, for me, sadly, does not scale that most elusive of artistic peaks!
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Ruminating Aesthete
February 2, 2020
I recently got to watch Mysskin’s Psycho. I was amazed by the idiosyncratic universe that the maker manages to create. At one level the eccentric metaphors blend in seamlessly to form an exciting yet outlandish narrative, whilst at the other, an unlikely protagonist traverses an improbable arc to a poetic end. Like several creations of his, Mysskin suspends disbelief at a level that is not common for the regular audience. If Mysskin’s creations were a lens, they would be an ultra-wide-angle type. In his world distortions are not the exception, but the norm.
Genre-elements, and its dictates, are indeed important for any narrative art form to sustain, however, they should not become the sole guide to the creative process. Such elements need to be periodically revised by the artist in the form of stylistic and formal experiments. These experiments supply the novel feel. This exalted and unique visuo-aural experience, which we get as a result of these experiments, are the reason we assimilate art. I think, this whole argument of logic in Mysskin’s universe is misplaced.
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steadymeandering
February 2, 2020
I had a doubt. What does Ram character suddenly realize to find the killer? And how did they jump to the conclusion that the killer didn’t have one finger ?
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Varsha
February 7, 2020
steadymeandering: Ram gets to know from one of his fellow police officers that Gautam is visiting pig farms. He initially is puzzled, but when he sees a muslim do namaaz, he remembers that Gautam was in a similar posture near one of the bodies and was trying to catch a scent. So he deduces that one of the pig farms might house the killer.
As for your second question, BR himself has explained it in reply to an AskBR question, I think. Basically, Gautham gets to know two things: His friend’s little finger on his right hand was cut by the killer and, at the auditorium, the killer used his left hand to get popcorn from his neighbour, even though he was right-handed and from his sitting position, it was natural for anyone to use their right hand. He pieces these information together to arrive at the said conclusion. As BR says, this is more of a kind of intuition or instinct rather than a logical deduction.
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Amit Joki
March 18, 2020
The film wasn’t a coherent piece of unit. You can have all your imageries, symbolisms, but you have to make something out of them instead of just dropping them here and there.
The setup didn’t work for me. I didn’t buy Aditi waiting for a guy in a desolate trains station when just the previous scenes has her talking to a psychologist about a serial killer who’s killing off women. Is she so dumb?
And I think Mysskin backtracked with that stalker plot point. He must have had, “a blind lover sets his damsel in distress, free” in his mind to which adapted the stalker angle.
We don’t see how Uday first saw her, what made him attract to her. If it is just perfume, you wouldn’t need Aditi-level beauty no? Anyone wearing that perfume could have attracted him. What’s the X factor?
So the whole Uday trying to get his love back and Aditi waiting and the killer waiting for their reunion before killing her was totally out of place. There was no rooting for them to actually meet. I was like, meh.
This is the problem with too much subtelty. You’ll just be stripping down the aspect of why certain plot points work.
In Raanjhanaa, you know how bad Dhanush wanted Sonam. That drives the entire plot. You strip down that down, the whole film will become useless because we aren’t invested in the characters. Here I cannot imagine Aditi being like, “Gautham varuvan….” because there wasn’t any give and take between them. He liked her, she didn’t. So the transformation is jarring.
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Rajesh Balasubramanian
April 4, 2020
Wondering how BR is able to note so many details. Of course it is his job. But this is mindless
Kannadasan solrathukku munnaadi Arunagirinaadhar;s Kandhar Anubudhi talks about it
திரு அருணகிரிநாதர் அருளிய கந்தர் அநுபூதி
உருவாய் அருவாய் உளதாய் இலதாய்
மருவாய் மலராய் மணியாய் ஒளியாய்க்
கருவாய் உயிராய்க் கதியாய் விதியாய்க்
குருவாய் வருவாய் அருள்வாய் குகனே
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brangan
May 2, 2020
PSYCHO is now on Netflix.
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Filistine
May 5, 2020
Why do many Tamil directors, including Mysskin, struggle to write women characters? I am not referring to ‘strong’ women characters, just well written ones. Just saw Psycho. Mysskin has a great sense of atmosphere and some of his male characters (like the detective with the AM Rajah fetish) are sketched out well, but the women are just stick figures. Aditi Rao seems to have wandered into this movie from another set – a woman who is stalked, one who falls for her stalker because he lip syncs a song and suddenly relies on him as a saviour! Nitya Menen’s profanities seem like she was lip syncing a character from a Selvaraghavan movie. I found it really difficult to ‘buy’ them as real characters
Only the Christian teacher (ironically played by a man) seemed to have some semblance of a character. And the disturbing Stockholm syndrome impact on Aditi’s character. She watches a serial killer brutally (and quite meaninglessly) murder a horde of women. Yet she finally claims that she didn’t see him as a killer!
I kept contrasting this with another character played by Aditi Rao in Kaatru Veliyidai. In KV, she is hardly a strong character, but she is etched out really well. You feel for her, you know she is making a mistake, you are even disgusted with her choices. But you don’t doubt her authenticity.
Most films tend to have a male gaze, but it seems a lot stronger in Tamil Cinema. Or am I missing something?
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hari
May 5, 2020
Filistine completely agreed, I was disgusted when Aditi’s character was justifying the serial killer. What about so many parents/family members who lost out their dear ones because of this mani
Spoilers ahead
Watched in Netflix, and for the love of God I could not understand the last 30 minutes. Scent of a women inspired car driven by a blind man scene seemed too out of place. Why in the world did Nithya;s mom not drive them all the way to the spot? What was that all about the villain falling off the cliff? I don’t understand Christian theology so could not make heads or tails out of crawling out and crawling back again scene.
LOL moment when the police says to Andrea, Gautham would come and help. Don’t understand why he came to the spot in the first place. To be probably killed I suppose, like the friend character who chases him only to be killed.
Weakest movie of Mysskin I suppose.
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Kanchana Dasun Rathnayaka
May 16, 2020
Why the killer couldn’t see at the end of the movie?
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