Sambhava Vivaranam Nalara Sangham Review

In an interview after the screening of his last feature film Sagharsha Ghadana, Krishand had said that he has often found it unrealistic and funny how some filmmakers make the characters say certain quotes by some of the writers or thinkers, just to show off to the audience that the writer or maker of the particular movie has read a lot. If you look at most of Krishand’s creations, you will see that they have that satiric approach towards how we sort of dramatize many things in real life to be compatible with a proven structure. His first attempt at creating a series, the latest SonyLIV original, The Chronicles of the 4.5 Gang, aka Sambhava Vivaranam Nalara Sangham, is actually one more addition to the spoofy satiric storytelling of Krishand. He is basically mocking the way biopics and autobiographies whitewash central characters as flawless people. With a deliberate attempt to keep things grounded and make fun of all the used-out tropes, Nalara Sangham is character-rich and fun to watch.

Arikuttan, Kanji, Althaf, Maniyan, and Moonga are close friends from school time onwards, and they all belonged to this slum area of Thiruvanchipuram (Thiruvananthapuram). The life circumstances obviously made them aspire for a better life, and long Story short, they managed to achieve that by going through a lot of ups and downs. What we see is the journey as they try to document their life by hiring a writer named Maitreyan.

Remember the character played by VK Sreeraman in Pranchiyettan and the Saint? Well, what if the Story of Gangs of Wasseypur was rewritten by him? In a nutshell, you can call Nalara Sangham the result of that thought. In Gangs of Wasseypur, there is violence and revenge. However, the characters were pretty real and flawed. The heroes never looked like our conventional heroes in terms of facial features and physicality, and there are these extremely comical moments happening in between several exchanges. Even though Anurag Kashyap wasn’t emphasizing the satirical aspect of it, the two-part movie had a very different approach to telling gangster stories. Similar to Kashyap, who took almost 6 hours to build that iconic world, Krishand has also taken 6 episodes with an approximate one-hour duration to establish his world. And what is interesting about this series is the fact that they have managed to create some memorable characters.

While a social commentary has always been a part of Krishand’s movies, this one feels more like a critique of the writing formats. The character played by Jagadish, Maithreyan, is at one point telling Arikkuttan that things would look more dramatic if they could include something like a Shakespearean dilemma in the Story. It’s like, within the series, we are sort of experiencing how people usually do the writing process to build a character. There are occasions where we first see what actually happened, and then they show us the exaggerated version of the writer. The kind of business our “gangsters” do is with stuff like milk, flowers, etc, which are less macho. There is even a scene in the film where Althaf says that if they can venture into the Mattress business, they can be a First Night lobby. And some of the scenes that are sort of making fun of the desperate situations of the characters are getting the backing of a genuine background score. Usually, we will see filmmakers giving these comical background scores to give us a cue that what is happening on screen is funny. But Krishand is confident enough to go with a serious background score.

The edit pattern in the movie doesn’t seem to be something that they created in post-production. The character played by Jagadish is from the present, and there are shots in the series where he is sort of present at all the key points in the rise of these characters. So, the scripting seems to be very meticulous. The rise of the gang has a direct link with the kind of comical tone given to the antagonists in the Story. Bruce Lee and Pyelakuttan are very much on the comical side of things. But when it comes to the track of Senthil, there is humor, but there is an element of serious revenge. But when the gang decided to go against their biggest rival, the tone of the storytelling is raw and not that spoofy. The series has this way of shuttling between real scenarios and imagined, heightened realities, and Krishand uses his love for saturated colors and wide-angle closeups according to his own set of rules.

Sanju Sivram plays the main lead of the series, the gang leader, Arikuttan. The character goes through a transition in this coming-of-age gangster Story, and he is able to show that shift in attitude in a believable way. The character of Kanji initially felt like a mere comic relief. But Krishand uses that character to critique the impulsiveness. Sreenath Babu is able to portray that character’s unpredictable shades hilariously on screen. Niranj Maniyan Pilla Raju gets to be a part of something that is fun and unique, and he was able to pull off Althaf in an effortless manner. The character of Maniyan is perhaps the most realistic one in the whole series, and the conflicts in his life are more grounded. Shambhu manages to portray that convincingly on screen. Sachin Joseph plays the role of the vertically challenged Moonga, and he, as the tough dude, was fun to watch. Jagadish, as the pseudo-intellectual writer, was hilarious with all those mood swings. Alexandar Prashanth, as the rugged Bruce Lee, was fun to watch. Vishnu Agasthya gets a role that wasn’t something we anticipated him to do. And he performed that character with excessive sidekick energy really nicely. Rahul Rajagopal gets an extensive role as SI Suresh, and this time, it was a character that matched his physique, even though there are humorous tweaks. Krishand has managed to rope in some really good actors for characters with minimal screentime, and that includes names like Vijayaraghavan, Indrans, Hakkim Shajahan, Darshana Rajendran, Santhy Balachandran, and Zarin Shihab. Some of the other memorable performances came from Tamil actor Vigneshwar Suresh and Anoop Jameela Mohandas.

I think this is becoming a cliche for reviewers in general to give this heads-up, saying that if you have liked the other works of Krishand, you will like this one too. A filmmaker having a signature style can feel like a pattern if he or she is not diversifying the kind of stories they tell. I can see the beginning of finding a pattern in Krishand’s storytelling method, and it is something that can reduce the amusement as things go forward. Having said that, The Chronicles of the 4.5 Gang still has the advantage of being unique in the series space, and hence it rarely feels like content where you would constantly check the duration of episodes.