Sachy’s special talent shone through his writing in his last two films: they’re a masterclass in how to make the same “story” look and feel different.
Spoilers ahead…
Range is one way to tell how talented a screenwriter is: he can dish out a four-handkerchief melodrama, he can also dish out a serial-killer thriller. The lack of range is another way to discern a writer’s talent. I don’t mean this in the “he does not have range” sense. I’m referring to the two final films we got from Sachy: Driving Licence (2019) and Ayyappanum Koshiyum (2020).
A bird’s eye view of the “plot” will suggest that these two are essentially the same movie: a privileged brat locks his privileged horns with a paavam government servant, who exists several rungs below in the class ladder. In other words, if Sachy had narrated this “one line” to you (and if you didn’t know his earlier work, like Chocolate or Run Baby Run or Ramaleela), you’d have thought he “lacked range”.
But this is where a special kind of talent shines through: to make the same “story” seem different. Driving Licence is directed by Lal Jr., but this is not a film you watch for its filmmaking. Like many mainstream Malayalam films from the 1980s, this is a pure “writer’s movie”, in the sense that the screenplay is so rock-solid that you brush aside the lack of cinematic aspects like framing and lighting and camera movement. For a while, I did find the generic staging a bit of a bummer, but once the plot took off, I was riveted, moved, roused, thrilled. I was everything I want to be as a movie is unfolding before me. The actors are fantastic, but Driving Licence is a Sachy show from start to finish.
Read the rest of this article here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/features/malayalam-features/revisiting-sachys-screenplay-for-driving-licence-with-prithviraj-and-suraj-venjaramoodu-now-on-amazon-prime-baradwaj-rangan-ayyappanum-koshiyum/
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tonks
June 22, 2020
This piece made me tear up. A moving tribute beautifully articulated and worthy of the man it is written about. Cannot bear thinking about the loss to cinema by this life cut short so soon.
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ravenus1
June 22, 2020
Coincidentally watched Driving Licence last night. I had refrained from watching this for a long time, since the plot outline seemed too similar to Ayyappanum Koshiyum, which also starred Prithviraj. I thought DL was only okay where AK was exhilarating. The situations in the script don’t feel as organic, there’s too much of buffoonery and deus ex machina. Every script has its contrivances, but they need to be done well enough to not stick out, and I thought this was a deficiency in DL where I was repeatedly assailed by plausibility issues:
How come Kuruvila is Hari’s number 1 fan but not a member of his fan associations who could have mediated the issue?
Wouldn’t it have been more convenient (and a bigger thrill to the fan) for Kuruvila to visit Hari’s house to grant him the license than make him come to the office where he is bound to be noticed by other people (even if the media stunt hadn’t happened)?
Why at the very outset Hari doesn’t explain the problem about his wife and his urgency to get the DL, which would have made everyone more cognizant of his situation and not regard him purely as an arrogant prick (although he is that as well).
I found the contrast between Kurivila standing up in trademark macho fashion to Hari but sitting quiet even when his wife tells outright lies that aggravate the situation hard to take.
I did appreciate that Hari’s character was a lot more nuanced that I’d assumed it would be, but I think Kuruvila’s character seems to be more driven by script contrivance. Also liked the “what if ” fantasy song Kuruvila has about meeting the star and becoming his best buddy before reality goes the other way.
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PKumar
June 22, 2020
Well written article. Tribute to Sachy. As you mentioned in the end of the article, we will never know. A great writer will be missed.
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Anu Warrier
June 22, 2020
Lovely article, BR. It really is a shame, to lose Sachy like this. Though I must confess that he really didn’t ‘get’ women… even though he moved away from the misogyny of his earlier films, his female chararacters are pretty ‘stock’. He drew a man’s world, and he did it well.
Prithviraj’s tribute was touching.
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sorenkierky
June 23, 2020
DL was underwhelming for me for various reasons, but that said – it was certainly a writers movie and whatever that was enjoyable came from the writing (and the performances).
But as Prithvi said in his obit post, Sachy was just starting off with movies that he really wanted to make, and AK was just a beginning (all the issues I had aside, it was a terrific masala movie, can’t recall the last time I’d seen a solid masala movie in Malayalam esp). And I really was looking forward to what he was doing next. Really did come as a shock. RIP.
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