FAHADH FAASIL: A WRITER’S ACTOR
FAHADH FAASIL DOESN’T ALLOW HIS STAR CREDENTIALS TO STOP HIM FROM PLAYING CHARACTERS THAT MATTER TO HIM
Right now, Malayalam cinema’s Fahadh Faasil and Dileesh Pothan make for the most wondrous actor-director pairing in Indian cinema. A lot of discourse around Faasil centres on him going for roles that star actors would otherwise steer clear of—the notso-meaty ones, the emasculated ones or the ones in which weakness and deception come rolled together. The truth, though, is more complex. Faasil, in Kerala, has at his disposal some of the brightest writers and directors working in Indian cinema today. Syam Pushkaran and Pothan are two names that are at the forefront—probably the best in the country and with an actor at their disposal who can bend to their will and offer gravitas to already compelling material. Faasil’s talents and capabilities—as a star and a performer—can be gleaned from his three films with Pothan—Maheshinte
Prathikaram (2016), Thondimuthalum Driksashiyum (2017) and their latest that released on April 7—Joji.
In Maheshinte Prathikaram, Faasil’s Mahesh follows a serene lifestyle proportional to the seemingly peaceful town. But it is completely at odds with the roaring exasperation of masculinity and decrepit attitudes that simmer underneath the locale. Faasil manages to project an acute reflection of the town around Idukki at a surface level—calm and quiet and seldom pushed to the limits. He plays Mahesh with a cackling innocence. The character is stripped of his usual lead status and we believe him to be the man he is shown to be in the opening scene—one who washes his slippers carefully in a flowing stream, as if the stream could feel a tinge of pain.
Contrary to popular perception, his turn in Pothan’s sophomore film Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum is one that involves a more mystic presence. It also marks Faasil’s gradual shift from a vanilla Mahesh to much greyer territory. Even his introduction scene turns from perfunctory to grand in seconds. Prasad—as we learn his name deep into the film—doesn’t show his face, instead he tiptoes into the scene with smooth, staccato strings accompanying his action of chain snatching. The rest of the film has Faasil at his best, blossoming on the sidelines. He slithers in front of police officers and beseeches in front of aggrieved parties—the film’s ostensible leads played by Suraj Venjaramoodu and Nimisha Sajayan. It is partly due to Pothan’s artful staging, but a lot of it rests on Faasil’s invisible performance as an inscrutable vagrant, his non-answers guiding us through his tumultuous backstory, something that transforms an unscrupulous character into someone to be empathised with. In their new film Joji, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Faasil plays Joji, the youngest of a bourgeois family and the one that will be relegated to a footnote by the patriarch in the dynasty’s history books. Joji, like Macbeth, wants to take over the wealth and this has Faasil playing at his most showy and slimy. In a modest but spacious house, Joji is contained within a matchbox where he not so much as plots his moves but makes decisions on the fly. It is not just a paradigm shift from both Mahesh and Prasad, it is on the opposite end of the spectrum as Joji schemes and slips his way into a dark web of his own deception. For the role, Faasil is reduced to skin and bones, Joji might be sick by character, but he must also be sick by disposition. And the disposition of a director’s actor is ever present in Fahadh Faasil, vying for the best of the best in history books.