Setting a murder mystery in the hills is more than half the battle won. The atmospherics are organically built in and the sense of foreboding doesn’t need too many narrative crutches to make its impact felt. A wispy shadow here, a murky alley there... a rustling leaf here, a cloud of cascading mist there... all these elements lend both edge and thrill to a whodunit. These, however, are externals in service of the one important ingredient that is non-negotiable in a quality whodunit — a compelling story.
Rautu Ka Raaz on Zee5, which was titled ‘Rautu Ki Beli’ (after the tiny hamlet in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand in which it is set and shot) when I first watched it at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa last year, is quite unlike a regular murder mystery. Which is a good and a bad thing.
An almost meditative thriller, Rautu Ka Raaz has the sleepy town jolted out of its state of ennui by a murder. The warden of the local school, played by Narayani Shastri, is found dead in bed one morning by her assistants. What initially seems to be a case of a severe heart attack is quickly classified as a murder when certain circumstances, suspects and motives make their way into the picture.
That causes Deepak Negi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), the top cop of the area, aided by his rotund deputy Dimri (Rajesh Kumar) to swing into action. But the action in Rautu Ka Raaz is anything but pacy. Director Anand Surapur — the man behind the Farhan Akhtar starrer The Fakir of Venice made more than a decade ago— fashions a thriller which is the slowest of slow-burns.
Deriving much of its fabric from the topography of the region and focusing as much of the human side of Negi — an insomniac whose nightmares often make him break out into a cold sweat — Negi is unassuming, almost to the point of being mousy, but knows how to step up and take charge when he needs to. Rautu hasn’t witnessed a murder in the last decade-and-a-half and almost everyone seems to be playing both suspect and detective. That the victim was involved in more than one nefarious deal herself makes the case even more murky and sets Negi and his team on a chase — which isn’t really a chase in the true sense of the word — to track down the killer.
Rautu Ka Raaz is painstakingly built with the police procedural forming the core of the story. Nawaz inhabits Negi like second skin, giving us a character who is fighting demons both within and outside himself. It is a fascinating character study that only an astute actor like Nawaz could have pulled off with both art and attitude. His deadpan humour, which extends to Negi, also makes the character interesting. That one scene in which he smartly entraps Kesari, the school’s trustee, even while keeping the subtle humour of the scene intact, is a masterclass.
Rautu Ka Raaz, however, has sparkling moments like these too few and far between. The film lumbers on till its all-important ‘raaz’ is revealed. Alas, it is much too dull to justify the 110-odd minutes one would have spent in arriving at it. Watch it, if you will, for Nawaz’s solid act and the bittersweetness of what Rautu Ka Raaz could have been.
