GT holidays South India’s number one travel brand gooy a vernacular edch brand Skilling everyone everywhere hello and welcome to Galata Plus in this video review episode we are going to be taking a look at chidambaram’s manal boys the film is a solid efficient Survival Story told in Broad Strokes flaws and all the
High moments work now this is based on a real life incident and it is set in 2006 this is the story of a group of friends that went to the Guna caves where the super hit Raja song kman anbodu was shot another snatch of a Kamal Hass Ila song
Anatar plays on Route in par now upon reaching the caves one of this group falls into a deep pit and while the locals say the guy is a goner the friends refused 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 manal boys can be compared to that other smashit 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 sure but they are not narrated casually they are shot in an ultra dramatic manner that hammers home extra layers of the dangers involved in case we miss it it’s not enough that the shell shock 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 fi on them for killing their friend and trying to pass the ACT off as an accident Sushin Shams unabashedly Big Score solo violin and all underlines the bigness of
The telling there are many individual moments that work sain shahir plays kutan one of the oldest men in the group as he descends into the jagged pit we see just how dangerous the fall must have been for the man who actually fell there is an exquisitely poetic stretch
That shows the friends as young boys playing hide and seek which is the very game that will later be played out at the Guna cave as the young boys keep playing the sunlit bright yellow frames of Manuel transformed to the chilly Blues of cord Canal the reason the
Stretch works so well is that it points to two things one the fact that someone is always getting into trouble and the others have to help him out and two we get a psychological portrait of a dream state but when the second childhood flashback occurs it’s redundant it feels
Like the film is being padded out in other words we get a lot of very uneven writing but the high moments really deliver such a high that most people may not care about what doesn’t work I didn’t care for instance for the frequent cutaways to the larger rock
Formations and Hills while these images reinforce the bigness of Nature and our smallness in comparison and also reinforce how dangerous this setting is we keep getting distanced from the claustrophobia of the cave situation the sentimental ending to goes on and on much after the rescue to hammer home the
Heroic nature of the hero it is not enough that the man does a heroic deed until the entire Township acknowledges it and celebrates it but the real heroes of the film are production designer arjan chisi and cinematographer shaiu Khaled you don’t know where the sets end and where the real settings take over
It’s brilliant and the visuals just have that balance of docu drama and cinematic drama if the idea was to convey the fact that this really happened then mission accomplished the screenplay is always playing to the audience it believes in big very obvious setups as opposed to the smaller more invisible setups in
Something like Prolo I’m talking about that unexpected payoff like the bit about the pepper spray in that film but here in this film that is in Manu boys the big setups are calculated to make you anticipate the payoffs as opposed to the payoffs taking us by surprise a man
Sees a piece of news in a torn bit of a newspaper and his face fills up with an expression that makes the audience go what on Earth did he read in that piece piece of newspaper and the payoff happens at the very end another setup involves a very pointed conversation
About God who is described as a light from above and we get this very image a light from above as a payoff why not have a more rambling conversation amongst all the friends a conversation that happens to include God as opposed to a two-line exchange that is
Specifically about God as a setup and that to with the very person who is going to be reminded of God that way we get more interaction between this Bunch we’ also get a setup that’s more disguised and why sentimentalized the rescued man as a God because he has come
Back from the dead this is the kind of bad Gallery pleasing melodrama that you expect in Tamil Cinema not Malayalam Cinema but there’s no denying the mechanical efficiency of the end result of this chain of setups and payoffs when the light from above moment happens when that goose fleshy tgof War moment
Happens when the very specific lines from the GNA song play at the end of the audal no spoiler alert there it works it totally works the rescue operation ends with an image that left me with tears sain Shah is always marvelous and here he has a way of embodying the ordinary
With the minimal fuss even when his character is facing the most extraordinary situations but the other actors don’t register much because they’re presented as a collective with a trait here a trait there for instance at a wedding kutan is the one who serves people their meals he’s the helper while
His friend won’t even serve water because he doesn’t want his clothes to get stained Shad Basi plays The Reckless one we instantly know his fate because of this very pointed one trait per person writing the interpersonal relationships don’t come across well and I was reminded of Sudani from Nigeria
Where the Bromance elements were far more convincing and far more moving I wondered if for narrative Clarity alone the number of people in the group could have been reduced because because at least half this group ends up contributing very little to the proceedings the most moving portion involving this group is the subtext
These are very ordinary men in very ordinary jobs they are House Painters cab drivers assistants in optometrist shops they are single and these occasional trips are the highlights of their lives the inclusion of the Guna song is thus a master stroke it’s not just that the song was shot in the
Location where most of this movie takes place it’s also that the all consuming almost Divine flavor of romance in the song applies to this all consuming almost Divine Bromance between these men that is why despite his many flaws Manuel boys works I saw the film as a larger metaphor for the Malayalam
Film industry if you noticed their movies always have the longest thank you card stretches in Indian Cinema unlike in other Industries where stars and technicians operate on their own the people working in Malayalam Cinema come across Like A brotherhood like their own version of manal boys in this film alone
We see Khalid rman the director of the gorgeous anuraga kinam and taluma un and love he plays a supporting part and his brother is this film cinematographer the director of driving license Lal Jr is another supporting actor here the sense of camaraderie that exists in the manal
Boys that sense seems to exist in the industry too and that’s why whether individual films work or not the industry as a whole is thriving that Guna song Perhaps is an O to this industry which which comes across as a fraternity in the truest sense of the
Word and that’s it about man boys if you like this video review do subscribe to Galata plus and see you soon at the movies GT holidays South India’s number one travel brand gooy a vernacular edch brand Skilling everyone [Applause] Everywhere
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