Spirituality Of Manjummel Boys
Manjummel Boys catapults you into an energized world of vibrant masculine spirit against the backdrop of the millennial decade, peopled with such electrifying characters as you would rarely find in Malayalam cinema. They embody the the animating ethos of the movie so much so that they remind you of those millennial boys in their twenties with devil-may-care attitude and an adventurous streak in 2000s. The story follows a bunch of millennialis on a excursion to Kodekkanal and how in the face of adversity when a tragedy strikes them, they wade over it with sheer force of brotherhood.
The themes explored or rather touched upon in the movie are not few, but most are obvious and are not in need of bringing light upon. The stunning visuals and background score have been praised threadbare and one of the dimensions least discussed in the reviews is the underlying spiritual side of the movie. So be forewarned, I am going to focus on this least talked about avenue of the movie: the spirituality of Manjummel Boys.
Sometimes when you watch a movie, it’s not the story or the character arcs or the characters for that matter, that moves you but the themes explored, as best illustrates in Manjummel Boys; how the thematic focus meanders amongst hope, tragedy, survival and friendship and how they are dovetailed and undergirded by a deep yet nuanced spirituality. I know, you could be asking ‘what spirituality? It’s a survival drama, for god’s sake.’
‘But is there a better genre for depicting spiritual struggle?’ If you would observe a casual exchange between two characters, perhaps it best captures the latent spiritual undertone of the movie which slowly permeated my whole movie experience. It is the only instance where I can put a finger on, where it pokes through; when they reach Palani, Bhasi’s character is reluctant to go to the temple and the driver asks him something along the lines of “why don’t you go to the temple? Don’t you believe in God?”
Bhasi mockingly asks him, “what’s God, dude?”
To which the fumbling driver ventures in response, “isn’t God that light shines down on us when all hope is lost?”
It could be passed over as just a peripheral glance into the attitude of Bhasi’s character then, but when you get to the rescue sequence, it grows in significance to have been foreshadowing of what is to come.
Another scene where it’s made obvious is towards the climax when the local women touches the rescued one’s feet, seeking blessings as if only a divine intervention must have brought him back to life and they are touching that divinity brushed off on him.
At a time when any positive depiction of spirituality or God is so out of line with the sensibility of the dominating trends of our current popular culture and bound to make eyes roll on account of it being done in so tastelessly overt a manner, Manjummel Boys cuts its own niche.
JJR