Autorsha

You have a very basic idea of a revenge thriller. What would be your next step to develop that idea into a good script? Well, most people would opt for building good back stories and necessary character layers. Well, what Sujith Vaassuddev and his writer Jayaraj Mithra have done here with the movie Autorsha is a mere stuffing of plenty of political opinions so that they can make the movie feel like a 2-hour long package. I still don’t even understand why this Autorsha background was necessary. With the pointlessness of each deviating subplot annoying you to the fullest, Autorsha is that bumpy ride which never reached its destination.

The story is set in Kannur. So a female auto driver named Anitha joins the local auto stand and the movie shows us how she starts this new journey in life. By making us sit through almost every day in Anitha’s autorsha life, the movie Autorsha ultimately unveils some mysteries behind the female lead.

Sujith Vaassudev as a technician is a veteran in this industry. It is really frustrating to see someone like him who has handled the cinematography of gems like Lijo Jose Pellissery’s City Of God, Jeethu Joseph’s Drishyam etc. deciding to make movies like Autorsha that looks pathetic on a screenplay level. The screenplay here has no sense of blending into the core conflict. It is just random comedies and glorification auto drivers that are happening here. I am not against showing the goodness of auto drivers. But you need some sort of flare in telling those things visually. Initially, there are random scenes showing Anitha’s struggle in the job. Post that they are focusing on her goodness. Then there are comedy set pieces. And one of the comedy deals with a girl and boy traveling in an auto for privacy and the disgusting way it has been constructed shows how regressive this movie is. All these subplots are happening just to elongate the movie and add literally nothing to the evolvement of the script.

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The only smart move here was the idea to make someone else dub for Anusree (correct me if I am wrong). Anusree in her typical style is an okay choice to play that role. Rahul Madhav is convincing in his role. God knows the relevance of Tini Tom in this film. A lot of actors who have spoken convincing Kannur slang in other films have managed to get a role that gets featured in the majority of the runtime that has no significance.

The script is almost like let’s make fun of everything in the society. One scene has Anitha arguing with a government officer, then comes a scene where a US NRI is blaming the country, after that you have the slut-shaming of the lover girl, then you will have the auto drivers teaching the bus operators manners, after that auto drivers are helping a fellow auto driver, then something else and something else etc. This filling up of scenes with random subplots that will never get addressed again anywhere in the movie is just making the craft of filmmaking look ridiculous. At one point the flashback scene’s trigger is Anitha looking at the bangles of a lady who is having a ridiculous argument with her husband. Trying to articulate the pointless scenes in this movie can eat up an entire paragraph. So I don’t wish to do that. The cinematography tries to do experiments with custom-made rigs and yet fails to produce appreciable outputs. Edits are way too messy as the screenplay has no empathy towards the editor. Sharreth’s quirky music doesn’t really have a catchy feel to them, mainly because of the awkward positioning of those songs. Loud background score was also making the movie amateurish.

Autorsha is a good example of the scarcity of ideas. Sujith Vaassudev has made a severely underdeveloped movie that will test your patience with its sheer hollowness. If the refund option is still there, this is my UPI ID: aswinbs@icici.

Rating: 1.5/5