Witness review: The film has strong content but fails to connect emotionally

Even as the country continues to witness deaths in sewers, despite a ban on manual scavenging in 2013, Deepak’s latest directorial venture Witness discusses in depth the issues faced by manual scavengers.

The film’s story, written by Muthuvel and JP Sanakya, revolves around a mother — a sanitation worker — and her manual scavenger son.

The mother, played by Rohini, seeks justice for her son who died while cleaning sewers. The system plays the antagonist in the movie.

Witness is not an easy film to watch, for it talks about the struggles manual scavengers face while living/growing up in the marginalised neighbourhoods. For them, it’s survival every day.

The best part of the film is its content. It is not exactly about a specific case, rather it’s a commentary on how such cases are treated in India.

Narrative stumbles

The content deserves a much stronger narration. The film presents themes but doesn’t deal with them.

There was nothing gripping and remotely interesting, other than the basic plot.

There are scenes just for the sake of a punch dialogue. The uneven and dreadfully-written script washed out the intensity of the content.

You can guess what the following line will be at times, which is reinforced by the camera and music.

The narrative stumbles slightly under the weight of its own socio-economic and political messaging.

Shraddha & Rohini are impressive

The performances by the actors, especially Shraddha Srinath as Parvathi and Rohini as Indrani Amma, are really impressive.

The actors who played Thozhar and his wife Kalpana’s roles did a good job. Kalpana comes only in a couple of scenes but leaves an impact.

It’s good to see Shanmugarajan back in a noticeable role after a long time.

தீபக்-ன் இயக்கத்தில் ஷ்ரத்தா ஸ்ரீநாத் மற்றும் ரோகிணியின் நடிப்பில் உண்மைக்கு நெருக்கமான #Witness 🔥

காணுங்கள் உங்கள் Sony LIV ல் மட்டும்#SonyLIV #WitnessOnSonyLIV @shraddhasrinath @rohinimolleti @vishwaprasadtg @vivekkuchibotla @peoplemediafcy @negativespace04 #Muthuvel pic.twitter.com/OsedFkcCPK

— Sony LIV (@SonyLIV) December 8, 2022

Even with uneven scenes and dialogues, these actors try hard to embody the respective characters with the restored telecast’s emotion and realism.

The rest of the cast is stereotypical, insistent, and uninteresting. That showed a complete lack of attention to casting.

Character development is important in a slow-moving drama like this. But it wasn’t. A sensitive subject alone does not make a film good.

Clever music, good cinematography

On the technical front, the music is cleverly mixed and is haunting and fluid.

Deepak’s cinematography allows us to ponder the surroundings. The artwork and the costume designs are perfect.

The meaning of a film needn’t always be significant, but if it’s advertised as having an emotional impact, the audience will expect more than what Witness provides.

Unfortunately, the film sounds better than it is. The screenplay is underdeveloped. In short, Witness is a poorly narrated strong subject that sounds profound.

In a nutshell, its content is strong like Ammu and Jai Bhim. But movies like these work on an emotional level and that’s where Witness falls flat!