Chidambaram’s ‘Manjummel Boys’ is a solid, efficient survival story told in broad strokes – flaws and all, the ‘high moments’ work
- Trinity Auditorium
- Mar 7, 2024
- 2 min read
The film stars an excellent Soubin Shahir, Sreenath Bhasi and a bunch of others. The real heroes are production designer Ajayan Chalissery and cinematographer Shyju Khalid.
Based on a real-life incident, Chidambaram’s Manjummel Boys – set in 2006 – tells the story of a group of friends that went to the Guna caves, where the superhit Ilayaraja song, ‘Kanmani anbodu’ was shot. (Another snatch of a Kamal Haasan-Ilayaraja song, Annatha aadurar, plays en route, in Palani.) One of this group falls into a deep pit, and while the locals say the guy is a goner, the friends refuse to lose faith. They came as a group. They will leave as a group. This is, thus, as much a survival drama as the story of undying friendship. The film can be compared to that other smash-hit survival drama, 2018. It is written in very broad strokes. For instance, it is not enough that a man is trapped in a pit. We also get horror stories about local beliefs about the pit, nicknamed Devil’s Kitchen. These stories are necessary – but they are not narrated casually. They are shot in an ultra-dramatic manner that hammers home extra layers of the dangers involved. It’s not enough that the shell-shocked friends rush to a police station for help. There has to be a cop in there who brandishes a stick and threatens to file an FIR on them for killing their friend and trying to pass the act off as an accident. Sushin Shyam’s unabashedly big score – solo violin and all – underlines the bigness of the telling.
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