The movie synopsis of Chithha centers on a tiny community where reports of sexual abuse and missing women are on the rise. A youthful gentleman who adores his niece. A killer who preys on children is at large. How does everything come to an end?
Review of the film Chithha: Chithha is essentially a companion piece to the excellent Gargi from last year. Similar to that movie, this one also addresses sexual abuse. Both movies have a suspenseful atmosphere, but they avoid sensationalism and deal with the effects of abuse in a kind and compassionate way. Both demonstrate the effects that a sexual abuse allegation may have on a person and their family unit.
In addition to its small-town setting, Chithha varies in that the protagonist is a different gender. Here, we have a male protagonist whose response is masochist, in contrast to Gargi's female heroine who uses legal methods to fight for what's right. This is also a commentary, in a way, on the misguided sense of righteousness that men have when it comes to crimes like abuse and the Catch-22 that women find themselves in, where they have to deal with oppressive protective figures whose first response to their distress is retaliation rather than consolation, and the horror of coming across cold-blooded abusers.
The main character of Chithha, Easwaran (Siddharth), also known as Eesu, was forced to assume parental duties at an early age. We find out that he was hired by the government to work in the sanitation department after his older brother passed away unexpectedly. He is currently responsible for looking after his eight-year-old niece Sundari (Sahasra Sree) and his sister-in-law Anjali Nair. We witness him reigniting his love affair with Sakthi, his former classmate and current coworker (Nimisha Sajayan). We witness his almost family bond with his niece Ponni (S Abiya Tasneem) and his pal Vadivelu, a lower-level undercover police officer. In a scenario where police talk about a locality, we sense the impending calamity for all of these folks.
Then catastrophe occurs! but not in the manner that we anticipate. We witness how even the smallest doubt can have disastrous consequences, emerging from the utterance of an apparently well-meaning statement or an action as basic as a mother deciding to sleep with her daughter on her bed.
And before the viewer and the characters have a chance to move over it, another horrific incident begins. By the time the interval block ends, we want to rush out because we don't want to see a character suffer, but we also find ourselves riveted to watch the difficult-to-watch scenes because the cinematography, which is now primarily handheld, evokes a sense of unease and dread.
A while later, the drama shifts into a survival thriller set against the clock, albeit we do wish the filmmaker had avoided including a scene that shows the kidnapper's violent tactics. Do we really want to see the how when the thought of a little child being held prisoner by a serial killer and rapist conveys the horrible nature of the scenario enough? Wouldn't it have been preferable to let the audience imagine such a scenario even if the movie doesn't show it explicitly?
Fortunately, the sequence of events at the police roadblock sets up one of the most suspenseful scenes we will witness in a movie this year.
