Suzhal 2: Where Myth, Mystery & Mayhem Collide

Suzhal: The Vortex Season 2 Tightens Its Grip, But Loosens Its Edge

Suzhal S2 amps up the intrigue with a gripping crime, a tighter plot, and compelling leads. But its tendency to over-explain and sidestep political sharpness holds it back from true excellence, writes Aditya Shrikrishna .

AT LEAST TWO TAMIL FILMS that released in 1988 get a namedrop in the second season of Suzhal: The Vortex . They are Senthoora Poove and Agni Natchathiram . One is about a dying man who makes it his mission to save two young star-crossed lovers, which is a throwback to season one of Suzhal that unfolds around the death of one such pair. The second film is about parents and children, warts and all, which points to a theme in Suzhal ’s second season— about father and mother figures, and their adopted sons and daughters. At the centre is the father, pointedly named Chellappa (Lal), a criminal lawyer known for his righteousness and sincerity, a darling of victims and survivors. There is also a mother with a fleeting appearance but otherworldly deeds and influence. It is a curious thing, those namedrops—one vaguely referring to a dance troupe named Senthoora Poove and the other directly invoking Mani Ratnam’s Agni Natchathiram and its unforgettable climax of strobe lights waltz. Later, the series invokes another 1988 Tamil film title.

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Created by Pushkar & Gayathri for Amazon Prime, Suzhal follows sub-inspector Chakravarthy aka Sakkarai (Kathir) and Nandini (Aishwarya Rajesh) in the immediate aftermath of the bloody revenge at the end of season one. Nandini’s trial for murder is on with Chellappa fighting the good fight in court and Sakkarai is awaiting an investigation into his missing revolver on the night of the crime. Sakkarai grew up around Chellappa, a close friend of his father in his early childhood and therefore sees him as the father he never had. As Nandini awaits judgement in women’s judicial jail, we shift focus to coastal Kaalipattinam (probably the Suzhal universe equivalent of Kayalpattinam near Thoothukudi) where the Ashtakaali festival is on, an eight-day cultural and religious carnival that ends with the eight goddesses devouring the arakkan or the demon. If Mayaana Kolai was the backdrop for season 1, Ashtakaali colours season 2. When Sakkarai finds Chellappa’s dead body with a shot to his head and the weapon missing, we encounter eight young women who turn themselves in for the crime at different police stations in nearby districts—Naachi (Samyuktha Vishwanathan), Muthu (Gouri Kishan), Muppi (Monisha Blessy), Gaandhari (Rini), Veera (Shrisha), Senbagam (Abhirami Bose), Sandhanam (Nikhila Sankar) and Ulagu (Kalaivani Bhaskar). They grew up in different parts of the state, have no family, and are not connected in any fashion. Sakkarai, unlike in Season 1, is at the helm of the investigation here, with his bad cop counterpart Moorthy (Saravanan) with Nandini in jail acting as his liaison inside.

The attempt is the same, to marry folk myth and religiosity with crime and intrigue and here too, there are questions of good, evil and what is just and right, and if at all they are one and the same. Nandini and Chellappa grapple with this question with themselves and the court of law. The eight women grapple with this question as an existential crisis and revenge. Sakkarai deals with this question in his line of work. By far, at least in season 2, his character is the most appealing and has a well-written arc. There is a sincere attempt to show his disillusionment with policework, its patterns and pitfalls. At every step, he eschews custodial torture and becomes increasingly weary of extrajudicial procedures. This is new in Tamil pop culture and storytelling and gives the series a fresh perspective. At the beginning of the third episode, a neat tracking shot (the Sarjun KM-directed episodes are more kinetic than Bramma G’s) follows Moorthy as he beats and berates everyone from inmates to common people who are around to lodge complaints to constables. Sakkarai admonishes him but later in the same episode, in a bout of frustration, yells at a woman constable. A fine demarcation of experience and fatigue between the senior and the junior.

What is also new is the series constantly sidestepping sexual crime at its centre. Sure, it deals with human trafficking at large but lesser creators and filmmakers would have gone with what seems to work with the audience, notwithstanding its loud critique. It is obvious early on that the eight women suffered terribly at their young age. Nandini, a survivor herself, naturally gravitates towards them. It is to the writers Pushkar Gayathri and their teams’ credit that Suzhal becomes more about unmasking the criminal kingpin and less about the criminal act itself. The Tamil audience is probably numb to the glut of sexual crimes that gratuitously colour the cinema of the state. What it didn’t require is yet another display of violence though the streaming platform and long format might have allowed greater wriggle room than mainstream cinema. Even the humiliation that the series shows subverts what we usually see; it happens at the hands of the women police officers in prison, which comes a full circle by the end.

Season 2 has none of the bloated romance and distracting subplots of the first season. The women maintain stiff upper lip and let nothing, and no one break that façade of strength and obstinacy. The series, true to its form of written for the binge, offers enough red herrings by way of character and plot but apart from the central crime, rarely is any of it predictable. But writing in many places is expository making the lines sound rehearsed and unnatural. At one point, Nandini says something to the tune of “We can get up only if we fall down, what if there is no floor to pick ourselves up?” It's such a non-sequitur that means nothing when one sits with it for more than ten seconds. Sakkarai falls into the sea and as he climbs up on the boardwalk, his phone rings. He thinks aloud “Oh waterproof phone ah”, as if to preempt a question from the viewer. The series makes this mistake repeatedly. In several instances, the writing is such that an assumed question from the audience is answered. More than considering the viewer dumb, it also makes characters look dumb. In the early episodes, Sakkarai explains everything to other police officers and the forensics team, making everyone apart from him look like an idiot. Sure, it could point to inefficiency or their conspiratory nature, but these scenes are staged such that the conversations sound like repeating what has already been conveyed to the audience.

The combination of the folk goddesses and the bustle of the festival with the very human nature of the crime and investigation becomes forced after a point. There is imagery of the festival, which is used metaphorically, but it feels like a lost opportunity when the atmosphere of chaos never becomes part of the narrative itself. The series introduces a triangular tussle early on in Kaalipattinam amidst three town elders, one of them Fernandez, a leader in the fishermen's community. This goes nowhere as the series progresses only for it to bring Fernandez into the events later in a cursory fashion. The dialogues here are suggestive of the caste status of Fernandez and his community. He fights for their cause and makes sure that his community isn’t sacrificed in the larger game but the constant refrain we hear is “ enga allunga ” (our people). There isn’t a mention of caste by Sakkarai or any other main character (because otherwise, he loudly philosophises about all the questions in his head), almost as if this is the situation in the Indian streaming ecosystem post the clash with the political dispensation. As good as the second season of Paatal Lok was, its themes and critique were blunt compared to the politically pointed first season. Suzhal suffers from this, a form of self-censorship swirling in every writer’s mind.

Kathir, Aishwarya Rajesh, Saravanan and Lal are great to watch, the two leads especially, which makes us wonder why they don’t appear more often on our screens in roles and films that deserve their talent. Even here, Aishwarya is relegated, she is mostly an observer for most of its run. Among the eight suspects, Samyuktha as Naachi and Gouri Kishan as Muthu are the most impactful as performers though none of them gets comprehensive individual arcs. Suzhal ’s second season is a clear improvement over the first season. There is a propelling force to it, and the plot is tighter, but I wish the writing and direction matched up to the talents of what we’ve seen from Pushkar and Gayathri in films. The pandemonium of the anarchist climax deserved better staging than just being equated to the capstone of the festival— Soora Samharam , which is of course the title of another 1988 Tamil film.

Suzhal: The Vortex Season 2 is currently streaming on Prime Video.

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