Adapted from a novel of the same name written by Manu Joseph, Serious Men is a satire that touches on casteism, endemic problems in the education sector and how ordinary people thrust the weight of the world onto their children because they wanted ‘the best’ for them. Directed by Sudhir Mishra, it’s a clever story of a con that starts to unravel upon closer scrutiny.
Ayyan Mani (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is a Tamil Dalit living with his wife and son in a Mumbai slum. He keeps a close eye on his superior, a Brahmin scientist named Aravind Acharya (Nassar), who’s busy overseeing a costly project focused on finding space microbes in the stratosphere. Ayyan believes that it takes four generations for people to reach a safe and secure status. Ayyan himself is second generation (or 2G, as he calls it), and he’s putting all his chips in on his son, Adi (Aaksath Das) to lift his family out of poverty. You see, Adi appears to be a genius, talking about injecting chlorophyll into humans and complex matrices in a math class. He soon gets mainstream attention, from TV interviews to ex-politicians seeking endorsements from him to build a new apartment complex in place of the chawl where Adi’s family and 15000 other people live. But then he ends up spilling an important secret to his classmate, Sayali, and things take a turn for the worse.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui slips into the role of Ayyan Mani effortlessly, conveying his smarts, ambition and his love for his family.
It’s a departure from his recent roles in Raat Akeli Hain and Sacred Games. Ayyan is crafty, just like Ganesh Gaitonde, but it’s a different kind of cleverness. At times, he is also vain, proud of his relative status as a PA over his contemporaries who are just clerks. Aaksath Das also gives a star-making turn, showing a confused kid who just wants to make his father proud despite the cascade of collapsing lies. The supporting cast, which include Indira Tiwari, Sanjay Narvekar and Shweta Basu Prasad also do well in their roles.
Although the film raises valid points about casteism, the way it tells its story, it seems to chide Ayyan for daring to rise up the social ladder through morally dubious means. The Brahmin character, Acharya, is also reinstated in his position despite committing fraud and he even saves Adi from the fallout of Ayyan’s lies. Nevertheless, the film culminates during a scene set in a gallery, where a vulnerable Ayyan reveals a personal story about his mother and how differently people view and interact with poverty.
Serious Men isn’t a perfect allegory for the evils of casteism and classism, but it’s still an entertaining film anchored by strong core performances.
It does make a good point about parents who are too hard on their children, and that they should be given the space to learn and grow up at their own pace. It’s another win in Netflix’s column for original Indian content, although now it has a lot of challengers in that space, from Amazon Prime and Disney+ Hotstar to smaller web series platforms. Let’s hope we can continue to see good Bollywood content from all of them.
