In a small town where a sense of community and one's image are the only things that persist and prevail, what brings people together and what pushes them apart?
Maybe that's why the often experimental space of OTT has set so many crime thrillers in a small town or city. A tight knit community can be relied on for support, sure, but it also hides many a secret.
These secrets, and consequential deception, is what lies at the heart of Suzhal: The Vortex, the latest venture by Pushkar and Gayathri, who created the fabulous thriller Vikram Vedha.
Suzhal starts off simple, and slightly trite. The cop Regina Thomas, played by an exemplary artiste Sriya Reddy, and an intimidating Parthiban Radhakrishnan as the union leader Shanmugam, never see eye to eye.
Their contentious equation seeps through the small town with, as the show tells us, the residents divided equally in their support. The story truly sets off after the only factory in the (fictional) town Sambalur goes up in flames.
The industrialist Trilok Vadde (Harish Uthaman) blames the union leader and the police, unapologetically on his side, base their investigation on these claims. However, the story gets murkier when a 15-year-old girl from the town, Nila (Gopika Ramesh) goes missing amid the local Mayana Kollai festival.
The way Suzhal, directed by Bramma and Anucharan, imbibes every day of the festival into the story and its characters is admirable and while most shows rely on convoluted metaphors for symbolism, Suzhal makes the parallels pretty clear.
Right from the moment Aishwarya Rajesh enters the screen as Nila's elder sister Nandini, interspersed with images of the goddess Angalamman, she commands the show. Rajesh is the show's focal point regardless of whether the script demands it or not.
Perhaps the show's greatest strength comes from the way the script is structured to rely on the viewer's inherent prejudices and experiences. None of the characters are good or evil– that binary doesn't exist in Sambalur.
With the absence of that binary, you will find yourself making rash judgements about people and that's what the show wants you to do.
Circle Inspector Regina and Sub Inspector Sakkarai (Karthi) both give great performances. While Regina's character is a little stereotypical as the 'tough female cop', the few moments of vulnerability make her a decent character.
However, it is Karthi as Sakkarai who is memorable across the show. He plays multiple roles within the show and within the town and he portrays all brilliantly. Where the show does stutter is in its pacing.
Some scenes go on for much longer than they need to and that often dilutes the urgency of the show. Some of the 'reveals' seem a little illogical, or maybe they weren't set up well enough.
If you've watched enough thrillers or even if you follow the news, the show will be rather predictable but that doesn't make it not worth a watch. The parallel investigation being run by the insurance investigator (Kothandaraman by Santhana Bharti) meshes well with the police, something I was pleasantly surprised by.
In the small town of Sambalur, there is little space for self expression– anybody who isn't a cisgendered heterosexual man would find it suffocating to exist within the confines of Sambalur as the show often points out.
Several try to escape these confines and several conform but as the investigation into the missing girl continues, it becomes clear that nothing is straightforward– it's all a vortex, a 'suzhal'.
Suzhal is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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