Manjummel Boys will get so many issues proper, applauds Arjun Menon.
Manjummel Boys, the directorial outing from Chidambaram of Jaan E Man (2021) fame, is a self-contained friendship story, punched up throughout the trappings of a engrossing survival drama.
The movie relies on an actual life incident that occurred to a bunch of associates a few years in the past within the vacationer vacation spot, Guna Caves, named after the Kamal Haasan starrer Guna.
Manjummel Boys follows the fictionalised model of occasions, involving a bunch of slackers, who spend their time boozing and shedding the native sports activities tournaments, not including a lot worth by the use of their existence to anybody round.
In an early scene, we see them crash a wedding reception and we’re instructed that they’re the kind of crowd who leech onto all social gatherings, within the guise of friendship simply to have an excellent time. We get clearly conceptualised markers that outline every member of the group, all of whom are united by a love for tug of warfare and consuming.
Their private lives are drawn out in an adequately framed setup that skims over the requisite particulars that we have to lock into, for the structural machinations of Chidambaram’s screenplay to work.
We get characters with private tics just like the screamer, whose excessive pitch is a supply of concern for his associates, the neatness freak whose penchant for cleanliness shouldn’t be appreciated by tha group ther such in-built particulars that preserve us knowledgeable concerning the characters.
The financial system in writing small but necessary exchanges between the characters, and fixed setup and repay loop, elevates the movie’s tone and pacing.
The story kicks off when the Manjummel Boys resolve to go for a three-day tour out of spite for his or her opposing sports activities membership, who appear to be doing nicely in life and having sufficient time to get pleasure from with associates. The aspirational high quality of their sudden tour plan is a crucial aspect of their group dynamic, they not often cease to suppose and simply observe their impulses, to no matter finish it brings them.
Manjummel Boys kicks into excessive gear when one of many males by accident falls down into an open pit, contained in the notoriously off limits Guna Caves, the pit curiously named Devil’s Kitchen by the local people. We be taught concerning the lethal fame bestowed upon this facet of the cliff and the movie flips tone from therein to a survival drama.
Manjummel Boys inverts the construction of the routine survival thriller by consistently chopping again to momentary glimpses of the group’s flashbacks as younger youngsters, engaged in key moments which have outlined them in life.
The overcrowded group typically work towards this impact because the movie’s try to deal with the person journeys of two central characters inadvertently spotlight the shallow, by-the-numbers quirks of the remaining boys as only a narrative compromise aimed toward honouring sure logistical necessities of the rescue mission.
Bharathan’s basic Malootty is bound to pop up in your head as soon as the movie settles all the way down to its rescue efforts.
Chidambaram is conscious of the tiresome nature of those sorts of tales which have been rebranded and handed over to us umpteen instances.
He tries to chop via all the tasteless trivialities of survival thrillers by discovering fascinating parallels within the nicely written flashbacks that add worth to the immediacy of the rescue journey, including a layer of urgency to the central plight.
There are not any half measures and the film-making leans into the fantastical and dream-like imagery to assist contextualise the actual predicament via repeated motifs of the kid stranded within the deserted woods and after life-coded goals.
The neatly drawn tug of warfare flourish that comes again in an necessary means within the finale is an instance of the kind of self contained, intelligent design that permeates the whole movie.
The forest guard and police officers are represented as hasty figures consistently interrupte throughout their consuming breaks, who’ve lived via these rescue drills a number of instances over and are detached in the direction of outsiders calling the photographs and their risky outbreaks.
The remainder of the movie offers with how the group of associates navigate an unsympathetic rescue power into submission by the sheer will of their friendship.
As trite as that sounds, the movie by no means comes throughout as heavy handed in the best way it unravels the main points of the drama concerned within the rescue makes an attempt.
Coming to the performances, Sreenath Bhasi and Soubin Shahir get the perfect conceived stretches within the ensemble drama. They get to relish the empathy within the severely underwritten components that makes emotional sense over anything. They are helped by the writing that higher represents their floor stage complexities via their childhood parallels.
Jean Paul Lal makes a mark because the ruffian.
George Maryan is nicely solid because the superstitious native who holds again the group at essential junctures.
Shyju Khalid strikes himself out of the best way and brings an observational high quality to the movie.
Manjemmal Boys shouldn’t be full with out earnest performances by younger actors like Deepak Parambol, Ganapathy, Khalid Rahman, Balu Varghese, Chandu Salimkumar and Arun Kurian, who get brief modified as background noise that hits and misses in between all of the commotion surrounding the rescue.
The writing falls brief in the best way it accommodates their arcs within the bigger image and lets them be emblematic figures relatively than nicely outlined individuals, who additionally occur to be the perfect type of associates one can hope to have in life.
The digicam finds fascinating methods to pierce via valleys, creaks and the pit, framing it as a void slowly consuming the boys of their efforts, and pulling them in one after the other to its bottomless depth.
Sushin Shyam lifts the movie via his synth based mostly rating that’s paying homage to the early 2000S, when the movie is about in. The rating retains the tonal shifts between the gloomy, sludge stuffed rescue to the heightened fantasy of the childhood sequences pretty seamless.
Sushin charts a highway map for the emotional journey of the characters with out being overly showy.
Manjummel Boys is a nicely oiled machine of a screenplay that’s effectively staged with out shedding its momentum.
The movie trades in fascinating conceptual concepts just like the climatic second when the Kanmani Anbodu tune is recontextualized in an entire new mild and you may’t assist however marvel on the tongue-in-cheek brevity of the second, the place the tune takes on an entire new which means.
This would have simply been confined to a passing reference in one other maker’s model however Chidambaram is assured sufficient to lean totally into it and use it as
the only diegetic sound cue within the movie’s pivotal scene.
The movie additionally doesn’t shrink back from representing the aftermath of such a traumatic, life-altering expertise from the vantage level of the survivor, and addresses his gradual ascent, figuratively and actually, again into regular life.
Manjummel Boys will get so many issues proper that the small nitpicks do not quantity to a lot within the bigger image.
Manjummel Boys Review Rediff Rating:
