Chidambaram’s Manjummel Boys, starring Soubin Shahir and Sreenath Bhasi in the lead roles, is now running in theatres. (Image: Manjummel Boys/Instagram)
The recently released Manjummel Boys, written and directed by Chidambaram, is running to packed houses across India. Reports say that it is the highest-grossing Malayalam film till now, unusual for a relatively small-budget film. If you watched the film in a house-full theatre, you know it felt like a big-screen film, not an OTT one. At significant moments, one could almost hear the entire theatre collectively hold their breath at the survival drama playing out. Yet, Manjummel Boys is very different from the usual hyper-masculine spectacle film.
There is a distinct moment in the first half of the film that gives us insight into its style. This is when there is a sharp change in tone. Though there is some build-up to it, the suddenness of that shift feels almost exhilarating, despite it being a sombre moment in the plot. The shift is meant to create excitement and you let yourself be led along the roller coaster. The film innovatively makes use of the impact of big-screen projection at such crucial moments.
Not a masculine rollercoaster
In his well-known essay on the “cinema of attractions”, film scholar Tom Gunning writes that the Russian filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein came up with the term “attraction” from the experience of being on a roller coaster in the fairground. Borrowing the term from him, Gunning argues that attraction cinema was interested in presenting rather than representing. More than the plot, a play with form was the highlight of the then-relatively new medium of cinema. The novelty of the term “attraction” is that it conveys the excitement of cinema and the energy it can generate, which was used creatively by filmmakers. If you watch any of these early films, you find filmmakers having fun with film language. The excitement is contagious.
The contemporary spectacle film, while displaying similarities with attraction cinema as many critics have pointed out, mostly feels manipulative and jaded. It knows we are struggling with our attention spans so it doesn’t expect much from us either. The result is discontinuous set pieces pretending to be a whole film. The biggest of such Indian films across languages (Baahubali, RRR, Jawaan among others) have relied on traditional ideas of masculinity centred on action sequences, forcing us to watch men fighting men in meaningless awe (with some modifications in Jawaan to account for Shah Rukh Khan’s female fans).
Vulnerable men, not superheroes
In contrast, Manjummel Boys has the heart and budget of an indie. Though there is a glaring absence of any developed female characters, there is no male superhero, only vulnerability and courage. There is a nod to cinephilia through a reference to Kamal Haasan’s fandom and his 1991 released film Gunaa.
While not in the tradition of its counterparts in Malayalam cinema that interrogate masculinity in fascinating ways (Anand Ekarshi’s Aatam being a recent example), it does have one unusual feature. Its male friendships rely on intense bonding and not victimhood. This feels refreshing at a time when most male-centric films rely on imagined victimhood to propel their story — from Animal to Veer Savarkar.
Based on a real-life incident that happened in Kodaikanal, Manjummel Boys is not the spectacle of slow-motion action sequences or fast-paced edits within a scene. Despite this, it draws attention to the endless possibilities of film form. This is because even more than the plot, centred on human resilience, the film’s unique feature is how the story is told. The spectacle here is the imaginative storytelling itself. Cinematic language — camera movement and sound, the setting and editing — bring it to life. The energy is life-affirming. At a time when cinema-going is declining, this is an innovative play on the big-screen film. If we must watch a spectacle on-screen, this is a better roller coaster to be on.
The writer is a film scholar and critic based in Delhi
