‘Now people know what a production designer does’—The real star of Manjummel Boys is the crew

‘Now people know what a production designer does’—The real star of Manjummel Boys is the crew

Director Chidambaram’s 2024 survival thriller Manjummel Boys is the biggest Malayalam grosser of all time, earning Rs 200 crore at the box office a month since its release. But the film has shaken up the narrative beyond numbers—spotlighting the technical crew and how indispensable their work is even when we chose to focus on stars and the director, in a practice prevalent from Bollywood to Mollywood.

The film recreates not just the scenery but also the soundscape of the iconic Guna caves in an abandoned building in the industrial town of Perumbavoor in Kerala. The crew paid attention to everything from the garbage accumulated in the caves to the way the water flows with such accuracy that the audience found it difficult to believe that it wasn’t filmed on location in the hills of Kodaikanal.

The film is based on a real event from 2006 that brought horror to a bunch of friends who were out to have some fun in the hill station.

“Usually, when a movie is out, the audience connects with the actors, director and to an extent the cinematographer. But this connection with the art director and production designer is something unique in this film. I count myself lucky to be able to do a film like this,” says Ajayan Chalissery, production designer of Manjummel Boys.

Manjummel Boys’ success has propelled not just the cast of crew of this film further, but also generated interest in the industry’s upcoming releases.

“Why is there a sudden spike in interest in The Goat Life? I owe that to Manjummel Boys, Premalu, and Bramayugam. I know their success could potentially pave the way for my success,”  says actor Prithviraj Sukumaran, who was promoting his now-released film Aadujeevitham (The Goat Life).

The real-to-reel Guna caves 

The incident at Guna caves made for a good story, but the real challenge for Chidambaram was finding the perfect team of technical wizards. “We have spent 70 per cent of the budget on the technical crew. All my technicians are seniors and experts in their respective fields, and I hand-picked them,” says Chidambaram to ThePrint.

In fact, the film became the platform for the technical team to emerge as the star. “Manjummel Boys really showed the public what role a production designer plays in a film. That’s why people are looking me up on social media and praising my work,” says Chalissery.

Manjummel Boys’ budget of Rs 20 crore, when compared to films in nearby Tamil Nadu, is next to nothing. But a ‘big budget’ film in the Malayalam industry means anything upwards of Rs 10 crore. The biggest ‘star’ of the film is the set created by Chalissery, where the entirety of the second act was shot.

As part of the research, Chalissery and his team were only allowed two 10-minute visits inside the infamous caves located in Tamil Nadu’s Kodaikanal by the forest department. “They stuffed lemon into our pockets and the officers in front carried iron rods [to look out for pits]. The fear is ever-present,” Chalissery says, adding that after the first visit, he had nightmares for five days.

The creation of a space with every detail mimicking the real site cost about Rs 4.5 crore — a massive sum in the industry to be spent only on production design.

“Many of the actors came into the set only after it was complete. They lost their minds at the sheer scale of it. It’s a five-floor-high set of rocks, moss, mold set up with plumbing that would imitate rain, mist, you name it,” says Chalissery. And that’s just above the surface, Chalissery dug a smaller pit 17ft deep to shoot certain sequences. Apart from this, he also created three 50ft ‘pit’ sets.

The final sequence of rescue was completed in a single take, and Soubin was hanging in reality, from a rope 40 ft in the air, says Shyju Khalid, the film’s cinematographer, who had to use every trick in his book to show the set in a way that matched the depth of the actual Guna caves. “It was complete teamwork. Now we see that if given budget, we can pull off a film like this,” adds Khalid.

Plotting the story

The recognition for Chidambaram’s art is coming from Bollywood too.

Anurag Kashyap could not stop raving about the film. “Such confidence, such impossible storytelling. I was wondering how one even sells this idea to a producer. In Hindi, they can only do remakes of such ideas,” says the Gangs of Wasseypur director.

And Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions is reportedly interested in a Hindi remake.

For Chidambaram, the story was already a winner, because it looked at the lives of Kerala’s workers. “We are a communist state after all. The fact that the boys are proletariat also gave them the physical and mental strength to save one of their own” he says.

And Malayalam cinema lovers have shown in the past their taste for similar content that explores human resilience. Manjummel Boys broke the record of the highest-grossing film in Malayalam, earlier held by Jude Anthany Joseph’s 2018, which collected over Rs 150 crore. India’s official entry for the Oscars last year, the film looked at how Kerala came together to overcome the 2018 floods that ravaged the state. Manjummel Boys zooms into an 11-member friend group but explores a similar thread of how their deep bond and perseverance helped them overcome a tragedy.

Their friendship is what drew Chidambaram to the film but his challenge was to take a story that had been widely reported and turn it into compelling cinema. He spent an extensive amount of time with the real boys to discover what makes them tick. It allowed him to add layers to the film—of how Subhash who was an atheist before the incident is turned into a ‘god’ by the local residents after he survives the fall, of the role tug-of-war plays in the lives of the men and how it factored into the rescue. These nuances and callback moments added an emotional dimension to the film beyond the tension of a rescue.

It was a conscious choice for Chidambaram to look at the lives of the working class, their dreams and everyday joys. “Everyone talks about God’s own country and its backwaters. But what about its industrial towns and the lives of its labourers? I wanted to bring to screen both the browns of an industrial town of Manjummel and the appeal of the green of Kodaikanal,” says Chidambaram.

The reel Manjummel Boys

The cast of the film has no stars, except Soubin Shahir, who has proved his mettle in films like Parava (2017), Sudani From Nigeria (2018), Kumbalangi Nights (2019) and Virus (2019). “Soubin is also the producer, so we also saved money there,” laughed Ganapathi, the film’s casting director.

Billed just below Shahir is Sreenath Bhasi. For him, the film was a godsend. It came at a difficult professional and personal period when he was arrested for allegedly verbally abusing a female reporter and was removed from a film due to complaints about his acting.

Ganapathi, Chidambaram and the producers met with the real Manjummel boys before the casting process began. They even made a documentary, which was later shared with the actors, to prepare for their respective roles.

“Each one of them shared their experiences separately, they spoke about themselves, and their lives beyond just this incident, their childhood, and their insights about the other boys. It gave us a window into their mannerisms. This was the first criterion to begin casting,” says Ganapathi, who played the role of Krishnankutty on the recommendation of Chidambaram, who is his brother.

Another important factor was how well the actors “vibed” with each other. “You’re thrown into their friendship in the middle of the chaos of a wedding. But this shouldn’t prevent the audience from connecting with them individually and from feeling their camaraderie,” Ganapathi says.

But all the effort by actors hinged on the technicians’ art.

Chidambaram admits actors are helpless without good technicians behind the camera. That is why, in nearly every interview for the film, his technical team—the A-team being Chaliserry, Khalid, music director Sushin Shyam and editor Vivek Harshan—has had equal, if not more appearances before the media.

“We can make things work even with a restrictive budget. But this film shows that if you spend money on production, we can achieve big things,” says Khalid.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)