Richie Mehta’s new drama series backed by Alia Bhatt is a humbling look at India’s eroding ecology, as elegiac as it is hopeful

othing exists without a reason in Chidambaram’s sophomore film Manjummel Boys, not even the habit of one character to scream loudly whenever he is excited. Or, even a tugofwar competition that the hotheaded principals indulge in. Each of these elements comes back into the picture, when you least expect it, delivering satisfying pay offs.

With his debut Jan-E-Man, Chidambaram proved what he is capable of, deftly balancing the tonal shifts from the humorous to the morbid. In Manjummel Boys, inspired from a reallife incident, he is not required to do such balancing acts, but no less are the challenges. Especially so when the audience is aware of how the events will turn out in the end.

Things take off rather casually in Manjummel Boys, with the gang having fun as uninvited guests at a wedding party and getting into tiffs with a rival gang. The easygoing mood is maintained right till the moment one of them falls into a ravine. But, by this time, a good number of the 11 friends get registered in our head, thanks to the standout traits written for them.

As one of them lies precariously perched on the edge of a rock, unseen to the anxious friends peering down from the top of the ravine, the scene cuts to their childhood, to a hideandseek game and of them swimming in a river.

These are not just random memories; the actions of the little ones back then inform the events in the present.

Ajayan Chalissery’s production design, especially of the batfilled ravine where much of the action takes place and Shyju Khalid’s visuals of the rescue, combined with

Sushin Shyam’s immersive but understated background score, give one the feeling of being there at that point of time. But, at a key moment, Sushin takes a step back, and lets Ilayaraja’s classic ‘Kanmani Anbodu Kathalan’ from Gunaa take centrestage. That sequence, which also works as a tribute, is so elegantly pulled off that it almost manages to rewrite the memory of the scene in the original starring Kamal Haasan.

The references to the original event in the epilogue, with snapshots of the real people involved, adds to the impact of the film. The casting really does play a part in the success of the film, as most of them deliver exactly what was required. With Manjummel Boys, Chidambaram pulls off an immaculatelycrafted survival thriller. Clearly, he is here to stay.

NSoubin Shahir, Sreenath Bhasi, Balu Varghese, Ganapathi, Jean Paul Lal, Chandu Salimkumar, Deepak Parambol, Abhiram Radhakrishnan, Arun Kurien, Khalid Rahman

A group of 11 friends head to Kodaikanal for a trip, but things unexpectedly go wrong when one of them falls into a ravine

Manjummel Boys is currently playing in theatres aruvu thagginchu (reduce your weight), an elderly man tells Sundaram (Harsha Chemudu), who enters the remote village of Miriyalametta that has not seen an outsider in about 90 years. The casting of Harsha as Sundaram master is spot on. Actors like Harsha are often subject to body shaming. This film turns the physical attributes of weight and skin colour on its head to narrate a heartwarming, fablelike story. Not everything about Sundaram Master hits the sweet spot. Some stretches call for some patient viewing but towards the end, the director ties up the different threads beautifully.

It takes conviction to make a film like Sundaram Master, moving away from mainstream trappings. On paper, it must have looked like a story that a grandparent would narrate, with leaps of imagination,

Band ultimately arriving at a few lessons for life. Kalyan Santhosh dresses up such a story with some humour and little else.

Imagine a village that is so cut off from the outside world that its people continue to live in a way we consider primitive — they live in tune with Nature, cook and eat what the forest and its surroundings provide, work through the day and retire to their bamboowalled homes at dusk.

A voiceover informs us that the villagers realised they were selfsufficient, but the outside world eyed their natural riches and came to plunder them, so they severed connections so that no outsider would reach them.

Sundaram is a Social Studies teacher in a Government school who is deputed to this remote village since the villagers requested for an English teacher. A calculative MLA

Nimisha Sajayan, Roshan Mathew, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Kani Kusruti, Sooraj Pops unsavoury crimes put food on the table. Mala values nothing more than preserving the ecology and bringing the evil poachers and their buyers in. So does Alan, Neel and most of the other crimefighters in the show. They keep late hours, ignoring their personal lives and wellbeing. Mehta has based these characters on reallife heroes; this reverence, however, comes at the cost of drama. There are no conflicting philosophies to animate the chase. The rangers are painfully synchronised in their goodness; it’s the occasional cop, instead, who is shallow and shortsighted.

Throughout Poacher, there’s talk of a nefarious transnational syndicate. We’re told how the illegal ivory trade funds global terrorism. Mehta attempts to tie in wider realities — Neel, who is exRAW, is chided at one point for using his

‘Kashmir’ tactics in the wild — yet the show begins to really sing in the latter episodes, while unearthing home truths on the ground. Though the killing of wildlife was banned in the country, the locals continued to view the hunters with a mix of fascination and respect. Mala asks her mum if her late father would have reformed with time. “Reformed?

Like Jim Corbett?” comes the response. There is also the sad everyday reality of captive elephants, held in large estates and used for religious processions and public entertainment, tips of their tusks pruned for ivory. (Harshavardhan) sees this as an opportunity to make political and financial gains and sends Sundaram with a plan. Sundaram is no saint either.

Early on, we see him crudely discussing dowry at a pelli choopulu. Everything boils down to money for him. What happens when he sets off into Miriyalametta with his own assumptions of the gullible people forms the rest of the story.

Kalyan Santhosh pulls a few fun tricks out of his bag in the initial hour. The spelling error in the disclaimer at the beginning of the film, stating that the film bears (spelt as ‘bare’) no resemblance to real person, is a hint of things to come. It turns out that the spoken English of the villagers is impeccable since they learnt it during the colonial era but their spellings are all over the place.

The film acquires a docudramalike tone when it tries to address issues related to the environment, how we attach value to the rupee note and gold versus what the villagers hold in great value. The story also looks at life and death, and presents an idealistic notion of the final journey bereft of ritualistic norms.

Just when you begin to wonder where the film is headed, it gets its act together towards the final stretch. In the preclimax portion, we, the audience, are similar to Sundaram, watching the villagers get emotional watching something on a makeshift screen. Sundaram is perplexed, then amused and finally gives into the emotional outpourings and realises that his transformative

A Government school teacher is sent to a farflung village to teach English but nothing prepares him for what lies ahead.

Malayalam actor Nimisha Sajayan is engaging as Mala. Through a tough exterior, she conveys the disgust and mortification of someone who routinely bruises against hard truths. Mathew is always less involving when playing cleancut, morally upright characters, though he finds moments of lightness and humour (like asking a suspect if he attends church on Sundays and later presenting the same reasoning to draw his trust). As the hardshelled Neel, obsessed with turtles, Bhattacharya is the most wise and fascinating presence, watchful and always on the move, too pressed for time for sympathy.

Unlike Sherni, which drove home its big ecological points through satire and black humour, Poacher isn’t immune to platitudes: “Elephants are the engineers of the forest”, “We citydwellers don’t care about wildlife”, “The chain of command is nonfunctioning.” The series is primarily in Malayalam with a smattering of Hindi, English and Bengali, but some of the writing, especially in the Delhi portions, falls noticeably flat. The narrative unfolds as a series of raids and arrests, most of them filmed at night or in the bluegrey of dusk and dawn. Mehta and cinematographer Johan Heurlin Aidt come up with the interesting visual idea of having CG animals casually cross the frame, wordlessly indicating their lost habitats. The symbolism is cleverly picked: shelves of Ganesha idols, carved from ivory; Alan sending a ‘Trojan Horse’ to hack a computer.

“If we observe the patterns, we can develop a plausible story,” Alan tells Mala early on. He’s explaining the dry art of parsing Call Detail Records (CDRs), but the idea extends to Mehta’s filmmaking approach, which is clinical, timeconsuming and rooted in research. His new series is a restrained yet sobering look at the mananimal conflict, as elegiac as it is hopeful. In one scene, addressing the plight of captive elephants, a character calls it their punishment for “being on the same planet as us”. It is a numbing line, yet it also rings true.

Poacher is streaming on Prime Video journey is complete. He realises what shedding weight actually stands for and there is also an explanation as to why the villagers prefer darkskinned people and look at fair skin with distrust.

Making the transition from a comedy and supporting actor to the main lead, Harsha is effective as Sundaram, portraying the conniving nature and the transformation with sincerity. Divya Sripada’s role could have been fleshed out better but the actor makes it worthwhile and gives it more depth. Chaitanya as Oja also makes an impression, along with several others cast as village folks, including Balakrishna Neelakantapuram as the village head.

Kalyan Santhosh also tips his hat to his favourite icons — from Mahatma Gandhi and Brahmanandam to cricketer Yuvraj Singh through different threads of the story. It is not perfect but an earnest indie film that makes a plea to live a little more consciously.

Sundaram Master is currently playing in theatres