Watching Dhoomam is akin to watching a video game where the objectives generate little interest. It begins well enough. The opening hook works. Two disparate events contribute to establishing a fair amount of intrigue. It helps that Pawan Kumar, who made two notable genre exercises, Lucia and U-Turn, chose to have the past and present run simultaneously for a significant amount of the runtime. It helps mask the film’s pacing issues to an extent, but I sensed my interest dwindling whenever its focus on the present track ran longer. And that’s not the only issue plaguing Dhoomam.
Fahadh’s Avinash, a tobacco executive, is kept in the dark until the closing moments, and so are we. In that regard, the film succeeds. Who is doing this to him —and why? Avinash goes through the wringer, but Fahadh never comes off as convincing. It’s as though the direction he got was, “Look agitated,” instead of, “Look naturally agitated.” I don’t think they intended Dhoomam to be an acting exercise, but some degree of conviction would’ve helped. For a film that subjects its grey-shaded protagonist to numerous distressing situations, one feels a sense of urgency—an essential prerequisite for any thriller—sorely lacking. Sure, it has some clever ideas in the first act, but the energy begins to dip in the second, only to mildly pick up in the third. When you realise that it’s only been an hour when the interval card shows up, and you begin to doubt the film’s entertainment potential for the rest of the duration, you get slightly restless.
And my doubts were confirmed when I found myself battling a tremendous urge to fall asleep in, for instance, the portions where Fahadh and Aparna Balamurali get asked to deliver money to separate addresses, aside from a sub-plot with a politician (Joy Mathew). There is an occasional tendency to lose your train of thought, even when the film has explained it in an earlier scene. When this sort of confusion happens, you know the film isn’t doing it for you, and you hope for the whole thing to get over soon.
A fair amount of tonal confusion is also responsible for these feelings. We get an idea of the film’s intended identity only after the end credits roll. Without giving anything away, let’s just say that it has the spirit of a Cormac McCarthy novel without, of course, the gruesome violence. The question of who we should root for is answered only in the climax. Dhoomam shares a few commonalities with another Fahadh Faasil film, Trance, also about a man who makes a pact with the devil. I chuckled when Roshan Mathew, who plays Fahadh’s boss, Sidharth, addresses his employees around a long desk designed like a coffin. The ironical death iconography shows up in other places, like a graveyard, to inform one character that the only way to stay alive is to smoke one cigarette after another. I’m not going to describe the technicalities of it because these are better left unspoiled.
That reminds me: Roshan seems to be the only actor who understood the assignment. You can tell that he had a lot of fun with the material. He doesn’t play the stereotypical boss. Roshan plays Sidharth as a guy who always has Avinash’s back, much to his uncle’s (Vineeth) chagrin. Sidharth is that boss who prefers to be addressed by his name. Siddharth is the boss who doesn’t have an intimidating physique but has enough narcissism and passive-aggressiveness in him to make him unpredictable and chilling. The boss who presents himself as the amiable kind, but you always anticipate sinister intentions. One doesn’t always have to be stocky to be intimidating. Someone can look as malnourished as Christian Bale in The Machinist and still look threatening, provided it’s the right actor. As I said, Roshan seems to have understood the assignment.
One thought that constantly nagged me was that Dhoomam would’ve worked far better had it been made originally in Kannada, with Kannada actors, because, except for Roshan and the Kannada actors, most notably Achyuth Kumar, everyone seems to struggle with the frustratingly stilted dialogues they’ve been given, to the point of even registering a comical effect with the delivery in certain places. Most of them seem to be going through the motions. One example has Aparna asking Fahadh, “What happened to that guy?” and he replies in a deadpan manner, “Avan chathu (he died),” and the awkwardness of it sticks out like a sore thumb.
To put it simply, Dhoomam is a cautionary tale that I wished were wrapped up in a short amount of time. Of course, its anger at the indifference of tobacco companies —especially the hypocrisy of men devising innovative ways to sell cigarettes but haven’t taken a single puff themselves —is palpable, but I wish the makers took a leaf out of Avinash’s book to express it in more innovative ways.
Film: Dhoomam Director: Pawan Kumar Cast: Fahadh Faasil, Aparna Balamurali, Roshan Mathew, Vineeth, Achyuth Kumar Rating: 2/5
