A little over half a month since this film released on Amazon Prime, I finally got around to watching the Tamil version (‘Silence’) of ‘Nishabdham’ yesterday.
After the first couple of scenes, I was a little skeptical of what seemed to be a horror or supernatural film. I was on a completely wrong track and that is one thing I loved. It’s always more fun to be watching a film that throws you off rather than one that you can predict. And here again, this film, after I finished watching, my first thought was that I should have been able to guess where the story was going. And that right there was another thing I loved about this film:
‘A plot hidden in plain sight!’
Getting to the schematics before I go into more detail, ‘Nishabdham’ or ‘Silence’ is an Indian Thriller starring Madhavan, Anushka Shetty, Anjali, Shalini Pandey, Subbaraju, and Michael Madsen in lead roles. Directed by Hemant Madhukar with cinematography by Shaneil Deo, this is a movie you should check out!
Filled with a couple of different timelines, a couple of different flashbacks, and of course, a couple of different layers, it’s almost like the film is a little too complicated for a thriller. I would personally call it more of a drama or a mystery.
While all the experienced stars pull off their roles, Madhavan is the one to steal the show. Anushka seems to have too small a part to play and Subbaraju does well enough with what he has. Anjali does a good job, but her character seems to be almost a little over-hyped. The cinematography is minimalistic and sticks to the point.
What lets the film down though are the screenplay and dialogues by Kona Venkat. Considering that this was originally conceptualized as a silent film, it makes you wonder how much better it could have been. In fact, several parts of the narration don’t add up. For example, Police Caption Richard Dawkins, in one of the earlier scenes in the hospital, gets exasperated to find out that his witness (Sakshi) is deaf and mute. This doesn’t make sense since he’s supposed to have already known her. And then there’s Sakshi’s narrative that gets dropped in between and Mahalakshmi’s narrative that oversimplifies.
On the whole, it’s a nice film you can watch as long as you don’t expect too much out of it. I’d give the film a 3.5 on 5!
A Different Take 
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