Rahul Desai
Does the intent come first or the craft? In other words, is it enough for a narrative to be ‘important’ or technically sound? Ideally, it should be both.
Marketed as India’s first “Cli-fi” (climate-fiction) show, the seven-episode series finds the right land to dig. Set in the fertile world of illegal mining, tribal displacement and Naxal violence, it inflates an industrial-apathy tale into a global nuclear thriller activated by a missing-father story.
I like the real-world specificity of the characters. There’s a guilt-ridden IAS officer, who seems to be waging a lone battle in a broken system. A local doctor and his wife keep the rebel movement alive in the face of dwindling resources and government surveillance.
But that’s where the (green) cookie crumbles. The Jengaburu Curse falters at the strangest hurdles. The chase sequences – and there are many, across jungles and cities – lack the timing and finishing touch, both in terms of performance and colour correction.
A series of this scale can’t afford to look tacky. The dubbing can’t afford to look so incidental – Nassar’s character, in particular, seems to have had much of his dialogue added in post production. A phone call can’t afford to sound like an in-person chat.