Oliver Twist is a gently insightful drama about a technologically challenged, sixty-year-old father who still cherishes family above all else. He and his wife, Kuttiyamma, a retired nurse who runs the household, live a life centered on care and routine. Their home holds an aquarium with a fish named Mickey, a small detail that underscores the couple’s quiet domestic world. Their two sons, the elder Anthony and the younger Charles, sit at the heart of the family’s tension and tenderness. Anthony is a once-promising architect turned aspiring scriptwriter whose career stalled after a dazzling first success two years ago. He now juggles the nonstop buzz of notifications from social media with the pressures of a looming deadline and a fraught relationship with his girlfriend, Priya. Charles, meanwhile, is a lively but lazy teenager who streams his days away as a YouTuber, often leaving his parents to pick up the pieces of his ambition and energy.
Anthony’s return to the family home becomes the central hinge of the story. On his first day back, he is as distractible as ever, unable to conjure a meaningful idea for a script. A video call from Charles during a shopping trip for a new tank brings Oliver a bright, if embarrassing, moment of pride, which quickly backfires as Charles pulls his father away in mortification. The moment crystallizes a divide: Anthony views his father’s struggles with a blunt honesty that borders on disdain, while Oliver longs to be seen as capable and supportive. Anthony’s habit of comparing Oliver to Priya’s father, Joseph, who he respects, fuels a quiet heartbreak in Oliver, who leaves the house in sorrow, trying to hide his tears at the gate.
That night, Oliver awakens with a memory—an extraordinary episode from his past—that he keeps trying to share with Anthony, only to be met with silence. The next day, Anthony seeks feedback from a superstar named Vishal, only to be dismissed as unrelatable. When Anthony returns home frustrated, he vents his anger in a rant that Oliver accidentally records and posts as a live video on Facebook, drawing a chorus of online hate. This misstep shakes Oliver deeply and prompts him to seek help through therapy and Tai chi, a course of action that earns sharp criticism from his family but gradually helps him regain confidence with smartphones and other digital tools.
On Joseph’s advice, Anthony drafts a handwritten apology to Vishal, with Oliver’s support. In the meantime, Oliver unfolds a story of his own: a time when he encountered a woman facing the potential loss of her child to an unknown illness. Accompanied by his best friend Suryan, he crosses a river crowded with wild elephants, carrying the woman and child on a large cooking vessel they had arranged. They race to a car owner’s home and then toward the hospital, only to face a perilous moment when the car begins to roll backward toward a cliff. A rock stops the vehicle, and the child is saved by the doctors’ timely care. Anthony remains unimpressed by the tale, and Kuttiyamma’s patience wears thin as she watches her sons turn their frustrations toward Oliver and each other.
In a turning moment, Joseph’s mother shares the same story that Oliver told Anthony on Joseph’s 50th birthday, revealing that the cover photo of a book carries the deeper truth of sacrifice and courage. That revelation nudges Anthony toward a more emotionally honest stance: the realization that seeking validation through social media can distort who he is, and that he can be perfectly imperfect in the presence of his family. The film closes on a note of reconciliation and gratitude, with Joseph’s mother visiting Oliver’s home to thank him and Suryan for saving her son’s life after learning the truth through Anthony, underscoring the enduring power of love, memory, and ordinary acts of courage in a modern, connected world.
