Dhoomam Kannada: Fahadh Faasil, Pawan Kumar, Dubbing & more | What Works, What Doesn't

Pawan Kumar's recognisable conviction gets to work in Dhoomam, the new thriller that marks his return to feature filmmaking after a gap of more than five years. Much like his previous outing U-Turn, which he made in both Kannada and Telugu over a period of two years, he attempts to take an incisive look at everyday misdemeanours - cigarette smoking, this time around - while valiantly presenting a case for its larger cultural implications on society. And just as in U-Turn, Dhoomam, too, has a temporal quality about how it unfolds with the protagonist(s) maintaining a firm eye on the time that's ticking away towards obliteration. 

Fahadh Faasil and Aparna Balamurali, in essence, lead this cause with Roshan Mathew, Vineeth Radhakrishnan, Anu Mohan, Achyuth Kumar and Joy Mathew forming the rest of the cast. 

Dhoomam isn't the first film made on cigarettes and nor will it be the final one, but considering that its maker had set out to bring his version to life as a follow-up to his breakthrough film Lucia, the scrutiny seems inevitable. Aside from the fact that the idea, earlier titled C10H14N2, has been in gestation for over a decade (Pawan first dabbled with the idea back in 2008), the film has taken its own legacy course during this period. Kannada superstars were attached to it and later dropped out until Hombale Films and Fahadh Faasil chose to flank on this mission. 

Pawan Kumar himself confesses that, in an unwitted way, it's great that his film took all this time because he could not only let the subject matter evolve but also cast the right people for the job. 

So, it mightn't be unfair in saying that the stage is finally set the way the writer-director always desired. His admirers and well-wishers, along with him, have endured the wait in hopes of him delivering the film that it was always meant to be. Does he deliver, after all? Let's see what works and what doesn't in the case of Dhoomam.

The Gist

Hell breaks loose when Avinash, the chief brain force behind the recent success of Tobacco Company TTL, decides to quit his job. It's a call that he takes to ensure his conscience wasn't compromised after having headed the marketing division of the company and sold countless cigarettes to new and veteran smokers. But turns out his past has forged an antagonist who, remaining anonymous, not only kidnaps Avinash and his wife Dia but also instructs them on a series of time-bound tasks. Should they fail, well, a bomb sits perched inside Dia which will go off if not adhered to the caller's assignment. As simple as that. 

The Writing

One of the main highlights of Dhoomam is that Pawan Kumar jumps right into the action and sets the tone of his film with immediate effect. He keeps the narrative familiarly non-linear and sticks to a rhythm that has come to define his approach as a filmmaker - a blend of mild chaos that is guided by the mystery that the protagonist isn't able to wrap his or her head around. The chaos is amplified by the use of the editing pattern which takes her back and forth as it pleases and offers us flashes of information. The technique is particularly effective because the setup is inventive and eventful - we first learn of the kidnapping of the married couple and then gather the cause of it all, as though it's a jigsaw puzzle that needs to be solved. 

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But the writing meanders and starts to fizzle out once the story reaches its heart. What we experienced in the first thirty minutes in terms of novelty soon becomes a necessity to keep the curiosity alive, though it is likely that you will see through the embellishments and start spotting the inadequacies. The information relayed to us by the flashbacks doesn't pack the punch anymore because it starts to feel redundant and the idea that the protagonist is largely conveying what we already know, too, initiates to settle in our heads. I wanted the film to invest itself completely in the unravelling of the present mystery but it would insist, instead, that the past is as significant. This insistence or declaration comes at the cost of almost foregoing the rhythm that was referred to earlier, which means that a sense of unrest has begun to seep in towards the end of the first half. 

A strong and relatable emotional core, which both guided and defined the ethos of Lucia, seems lacking and this becomes more and more apparent as we near the climax. Pawan Kumar's skills as a writer do keep us invested all along but there's a void that keeps prodding at you, regardless of how much try to ignore it.

The Execution

Preciseness has been Pawan Kumar's strong suit throughout his career and a lot of that stems from his employment of highly skilled technicians. As a director, he manoeuvres through the complicated structure with finesse and doesn't drop the ball, so to speak, at any point. Sure, this aspect of his craft may not suffice for the shortcomings of the script but it doesn't let the film be completely derailed either. 

Poornachandra Tejaswi's score is the film's main highlight and so is the sound design handled by Renganath Ravee. Preetha Jayaraman's cinematography is slick and very non-intrusive.

Dubbing

It's no secret that Dhoomam was shot entirely in Malayalam with a predominantly local cast in place. However, with the film boasting a Kannada director and a production house that has earned its name for its Kannada content, the dubbed version commanded as much attention as the original one. There were reservations about the quality of the dubbing prior to the release which the director himself addressed in his recent social media post, confessing that he has often chosen to watch films in their original form with the help of subtitles.

But it is safe to say that Dhoomam works incredibly well in its Kannada dubbed form and one must congratulate the entire team of dubbing artists involved. Each character is intoned with the help of a perfectly fitting voice which allows the viewer to fully focus on the plot and forget about the lack of lip-sync that they feared.

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The Motif of Smoking

As much as smoking is a controversial and polarizing topic, one expects a film of this kind to use it as a broad concept or as a vehicle to communicate something larger. Does Dhoomam do that? To an extent, yes, but maybe not in the allegorical manner that we expect it to work. Smoking is employed as a tool, no doubt, which vilifies the lobbyists and the industry at large for the tactics they use to attract consumers. But what would have helped is if the absurdity and the greed of this world is retained as subtext instead of being pronounced out loud.