Sethurama Iyer
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This article is about the character.
CBI film series character
Sethurama Iyer (Malayalam: സേതുരാമയ്യര്,
alternate spelling Sethuramayyar) is a fictional character, and the protagonist
of the CBI investigative thriller series of films in Malayalam directed by K.
Madhu. The character was played by Mammootty in four films so far.
Sethurama Iyer is an investigative officer of the
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Indian equivalent of the American
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Iyer's popularity is attributed to the fact
that he uses his brain rather than brawn to solve cases. The suspense-filled
narration of the movies and the novely of the investigative thriller genre also
contributed to its success and becoming a household name among the moviegoers
of Kerala. The character is said to have been inspired by a police officer named
Radhavinod Raju, who in 2009 was appointed as the first chief of India's
National Investigation Agency.[The four time portrayal of the same
character (Sethurama Iyer) by the same actor (Mammootty) under the same director-writer
team (K. Madhu and S. N. Swamy) is a first in Indian cinema.
Inspiration
for the character of Sethurama Iyer
The
character is said to have been inspired by a police officer named Radhavinod
Raju, who in 2009 was appointed as the first chief of India's National
Investigation Agency. Raju's excellence while probing the Polakulam
Peethambaran murder case and SI Soman murder case, when he was acting as
Superintend of CBI Kochi, attracted the attention of many. His
"Dummy-to-Dummy" experiment in Polakulam Peethambaran murder case was
used in Oru CBI Diary Kurippu. When Oru CBI Diary Kurippu became a hit,
Mammootty became more famous in films and Raju in his services. Incidentally,
Raju was Mammootty's senior in Maharajas College.
Radhavinod Raju was also associated with the probes
into Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and hijacking of Indian Airlines plane to
Kandahar. The films Mission 90 Days (which starred Mammootty) and Kandahar were
respectively inspired by the operations of Raju in these cases.
Characterisation
Sethurama Iyer is depicted with a distinctive style
in the films. The most charactertistic mannerism associated with him is his
peculiar gait, as he folds both his arms behind his back while walking. In the
first movie Oru CBI Diarykkurippu, he was shown as chewing betel, but this was
dropped in the later films. His entries and exits in most scenes of the movies
are punctuated by the signature background score of the series, composed by
Shyam. He is always shown as wearing a kumkum stripe on his forehead. He
usually wears plain light coloured half sleeve shirt and dark plain trousers,
without tucking in. He is mostly cool even under intense provocation and
displays his subtle sense of humour and extreme foresight from time to time.
Originally K. Madhu, the director of the film series
had visualised the pratagonist of the first film in the series as a tough cop
named Ali Imran. It was Mammootty who convinced him that a pious intelligent Tamil
Brahmin would be better. Mammootty in an interview with The Indian Express in
July 2005 said that "He (Sethurama Iyer) is brilliant. He is brave. He is
bold. He is wise. He is intelligent. He is strong. He is good. He is...".
The interviewer reportedly had to cut him short. However in the same interview,
he expressed his slight displeasure in playing the same character again and
again: "Personally, I prefer to get rid of a particular character after
the movie is over. But this bloody thing is following me again and again. It is
a lot limiting too. I cannot give a new dimension or nuance to the fellow. He
is static."
Investigation
method
Sethurama Iyer is an expert detective and mostly
follows conventional methods of investigation. This can be attributed to the
fact that unlike the FBI, the CBI do not usually get first-hand cases. Cases
are handed over to the CBI when the local police is found ineffective in
investigation or if the case is of national importance. In all his four
appearances, Sethurama Iyer is allotted murder cases which were previously
under investigation by the Kerala Police, so he and his team are not able to
perform comprehensive crime scene investigation. He mostly has to refer to the
reports made by the local police for information and they form the base of his
investigation, though he doesn't trust them. He always conducts crime scene
inspection for missing points in the reports and tries to collect further
information from the scene as well as from witnesses by himself or using his
associates. He usually asks his associates to mingle with the local people
under cover, to collect various viewpoints including rumours surrounding the
case. For cases in which the victim is suspected to have killed by falling from
a height, he usually makes use of life-size dummies with the same weight as the
victim to assess the position of the corpse under different circumstances. He
almost always does extensive research on various details of the witnesses he is
going to interview and overwhelms them with his information in case they tend
to lie. He declares the results of his investigation in a meeting of all people
related to the case, vis-à-vis Hercule Poirot.
Family
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the character.
