Daily Recco, December 7: Serious Men is some serious satire

The narrative of caste discrimination is often fraught with injustice and anger against the society and sympathy for the downtrodden. But what if the downtrodden channelise their anger against the system by conning it? Meet Ayyan Mani: the protagonist of Manu Joseph’s masterpiece — Serious Men, portrayed brilliantly on-screen by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, in the eponymous movie released on Netflix on October 2, 2020.

Ayyan Mani is a Dalit personal assistant to a Brahmin scientist — Dr Arvind Acharya (essayed by Nassar). He is not keen on the hollow pity on his social standing, instead is angry at the society for short-changing him. He channelises his anger towards developing a brilliant ruse that would accelerate his and his family’s upward social mobility. And this is by tapping into the aspiration every Indian parent has — to see their child recognised as a prodigy. Only, that Ayyan convinces everyone about his 10-year-old son’s intellect and milks the fame for all its worth.

Ayyan is a classic example of a resentful Dalit middle-aged man who decides that his channelling his resentment towards his life’s maxim: the present generations should set things up in a way that his future generations should not have to struggle for anything. He sermonises this to his wife, Oja (played by Indira Tiwari) saying that Ayyan’s father (the first generation) never went to school. He himself is the second generation (2G Dalit) as the first in the family to get access to education. However, his is the generation that can never enjoy itself and despite the access to education, will remain unknown and unaccounted for.

His 10-year-old son, Adi (played by Aakshath Das) is the third generation (3G Dalit). According to Ayyan, 3G will be able to hold a job that will explain the bigger questions of life like “why should condoms be dotted?” And the fourth generation — Ayyan’s grandchild — (the 4G Dalit) will have everything by the time he is 18-20 years old and will not need to work for anything.

The story gets inextricably woven with that of Dr Acharya and how Ayyan, Adi and Dr Acharya (with Oporna) work it out. 

Being a nonentity in a dinghy chawl of ever-bustling Mumbai does nothing to break Ayyan’s spirit who detests being invisible in the ocean of humanity. He is observant (absorbing every tiny detail like a sponge) and smart enough to know when, where and how to use the information he has absorbed.

While paeans have been sung about the plot and the brilliant narration by Manu Joseph when the book was published a decade ago in 2010, the filmmaking by Sudhir Mishra deserves a special pat on the back. The screenplay is tight without losing the plot and the intrigue and the editing is crisp. The casting in the film is outstanding. Nawaz effortlessly slips into the character and Indira Tiwari’s expressions speak way more than the words assigned to her in the script. Each of the cast members — from Nassar to Aakshath Das — delivers their respective performance with absolute élan. Especially Aakshath Das, who imparts the innocence of his age to the character of Adi. Despite the heavy dialogues, he never makes it feel like he is trying too hard to be what he is not. While the characters are supposed to be Tamils settled in Mumbai, we do not feel their lack of Tamil-ness out of place.

With all the spices in the right quantities at their proper places, Sudhir Mishra’s Serious Men is a film that does perfect justice to the remarkable piece of literary fiction by Manu Joseph.

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