Not all heroes wear capes or carry guns. Some are just normal people who we encounter in our day-to-day lives. Debutante director Shiv Rawail chose a rather interesting subject for his first project titled The Railway Men. The four-episode series is a thriller set in one night about the courageous men who saved many lives on December 2, 1984, the night of the Union Carbide industrial gas leak in Bhopal which is also known to the world as the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.
Inspired by genuine incidents, the show uses composite characters created from anecdotes and newspaper clippings to educate audiences about the lesser-known heroic achievements while re-enacting the chaos and devastation of that awful night. They include Kay Kay Menon as a compassionate station master; Divyenndu as a bandit whose morality is tested in crisis; Babil Khan as a diligent loco pilot on the first day of his job; R. Madhavan as general manager of Central Railways who leads the rescue operations.
The most remarkable thing about The Railway Men is the reconstruction of the deadly disaster that brought an entire city to its knees, that there are no heroes in the show. No one individual makes or breaks a day. The show does not immediately characterize a particular set of people as underdogs or demonise them. There are moments when picking a side is impossible. Any fictional portrayal of a catastrophe that is so deeply entwined with the moral fabric of a city is inevitably going to become overly emotional, frequently at the expense of ignoring the stupidities of people and the errors of bureaucracy. The Railway Men is passionate, emotionally resonant, and incredibly moving.
But what the show isn’t, is a sugar-coated tribute for the sake of being one. That said, the show is nothing short of an achievement for Rawail given that it recounts a heroic tale from the perspective of perennially underappreciated heroes. The show does deliver a rigorous account of the night of terror when things go horribly wrong. A lot of what happened on that fateful night is covered relentlessly and some of it does land with conviction.
It’s anyway a tall order to do justice to such a highly action-packed event, which the series only manages to do in parts. The show has its heart in the right place but the execution goes haywire at multiple places. The director chooses to selectively fictionalise the account. In the way it melds fact and fiction, you don’t quite know whether what you are watching happened, or whether it is a figment of the imagination of the writers of the series’, even if several moments look manufactured to heighten drama and suspense. It’s a slightly bewildering fictional docu-series. You can chalk all the confusing khichdi done with the historical facts down to creative license and get on with the viewing. You know you are being played, but you let it be, because the rest of it works. And no, this is not India’s ‘Chernobyl’, even though we spend a significant amount of time on what happened at the factory and the people who are affected by it.
The show is also busy trying to juggle too many subplots and backstories. Most of them never come across as wholesome or convincing. All they do is drag a chaotic and busy narrative, putting it in an endless loop of multiple characters, their relationships, and problems that it is hard to keep track of or even care for, after a point. Some events are heightened to such an extent just to give the viewers a palpable feeling but they end up looking unrealistic.
But for the most part, the series stays focused on the topic. Set largely at the Bhopal Junction railway station, the show is held together by towering performances and incredibly sharp filmmaking. The camera movements are a thing of synchronised beauty that gets deep into the troubled minds of the protagonists, and the long takes are a cinematic equivalent of graceful ballet movements.
The cast is led by the ever-dependable Kay Kay Menon who does a fairly masterful job as a station master whose past horrors continue to haunt him. He carries this show with complete confidence. Madhavan is top-notch. He plays a character who thrives on challenges but has the tendency to flout rules and regulations in the line of duty with finesse. After Qala and Friday Night Plan, Babil Khan yet again impresses with his acting abilities. The nuance and stillness he brings to her already well-written character deserve applause. ; Divyenndu is earnest. His dilemma between the right and the wrong is completely relatable.
All in all, it’s a hard-hitting show alright, made with a lot of blood and sweat too, which shows onscreen, but in a bid to pack in too much action and drama, the show ends up becoming a never-ending saga of insipid characters rather than a taut thriller of a life-altering real event.
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