Sadayam 1992

Sathyanathan, Mohanlal is condemned to death for brutally murdering four persons – two adults and two young girls – and is awaiting his final call. He shows no remorse and is just as cheerful as a man who knows he has done no wrong. The prison doctor Dr. Nambiar’s son Vijayan, Mahesh, is one of Sathyan’s victims; he wants to sign his death certificate and see the fear in his eyes as he is led up the gallows, but Dr. Nambiar, Thilakan, is puzzled about why the crime was committed.

Appeals in lower courts and petitions for pardons by the cops as a matter of routine become a backdrop to Sathyan’s grim fate, but he has little interest in living. When, after years of waiting, he suddenly expresses a desire to start life anew on a clean slate, a cruel twist of fate berths him in a moment of O. Henry-like irony: a pardon is denied. On September 29, 1991, two years after his conviction, he is hanged at 5 AM. The narrative slices through his life in a sequence of flashbacks, retracing the chilling crime scene and the forces that shaped his actions, while the present-day drama lingers over the inevitability of the punishment.

In those flashbacks, Sathyanathan is introduced as a fatherless child who endures years of bullying and abuse before a compassionate priest steps in. The priest helps him discover a remarkable artistic talent, and under his guidance Sathyan becomes a painter who earns a living painting sign boards and hoardings. As part of one such commission, he moves into a rented house in Kozhikode beside a house of ill-repute where Jaya and her two young sisters live with their stepmother. The sisters have little future ahead of them, and the stepmother pushes them toward prostitution.

Sathyanathan quietly invests in their education and even secures a job for Jaya at the company where he works. He grows fond of Jaya and envisions marriage and a quiet life together, but cruel circumstances pull her toward prostitution, with signs that her sisters may follow. In a moment of extreme paranoia, Sathyanathan kills the two girls in a bid to shield them from prostitution and to punish those who profited from their misery. These events unfold through Sathyanathan’s memories, shaping the narrative that leads to the present.

As the story returns to present time, Sathyanathan longs to abandon his past and start over, only to find the path to redemption blocked by the inexorable machinery of justice. The climactic sequence tracks his last steps to the gallows, wrists bound and his head hooded, as the dawn breaks on a morning when the world seems to move on without him. The film closes on a sorrowful note, with Jaya weeping beside Sathyanathan’s lifeless body, a stark testament to the human costs of anger and desperation.