Interprete Me

Selection Day (Manju) is a story about hope. However, in order to achieve it, we must go a long way. The series, which now comes to the catalog of Netflix, provokes reactions of repulsion, at the same time that makes us reflect. It is the story of how one person can project their failed dreams into others, who just want to go on with their normal lives, treading their own path.

Based on a very successful book by the writer Aravind Adiga called Selection Day, the series is another adaptation that ends up surpassing the work that inspired it. While in the book the characters have a madness, even non-sense bias, here they are more realistic, in addition to really focusing on the moving drama of two boys who only want to follow their own destinies, without depending on anyone.

Projection

Selection Day tells the story of two boys who have been raised by their father to become great cricket players. This sport is quite popular in India – where the story takes place. However, the two never wanted to pursue this career. They are only in it because the father – an authoritarian, violent and aggressive guy – wants it. Fearing for his reaction and also for being expelled from their already humble home, they submit. The series therefore brings us closer to these two boys, so we can understand what the real dreams and longings they have for their own futures are. At the same time, we follow the father’s journey, that acts behind the scenes to get the boys to shine in the sport.

So this is a production focused on sadness. The two protagonists of the story are not happy, on the contrary: they are young people who live with their heads low, having to obey the commands of the father, who controls their lives in the smallest details. There is even a psychological element to this relationship: the father projects his own failure as a person and sportsman to his children, trying to get them to achieve success that he himself has failed. We’ve seen this story before. And we know how it ends.

In Selection Day, however, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Upon receiving a sports scholarship offer, the boys begin to glimpse a way out of this torment they live. Of course this will not be easy. There are several interests involved, and especially: the figure of the father, who always shades the pretensions that any of them may have. We follow this story with distress, since every little victory they get there is a sea of ​​other problems to solve. And they, too, in this period of time, are evolving as people, maturing and making their souls free – even with the impositions they suffer.

Touching story

Selection Day is, therefore, a touching story that comes to the catalog to make us apprehensive about the destinies of these two boys. The actors who interpret them (Yash Dholye and Mohammad Samad) act in the right measure by showing the vulnerability they have to the overwhelming authority of their father.

This, incidentally, is one of the great highlights of the show: actor Rajesh Tailang delivers an intense and frightening performance, as a man who is capable of everything – even sacrificing his children – to achieve his goals.

Having a season finale to fill everybody’s eyes (with tears), Selection Day is a series recommended for those who like heavy melodrama, which causes tears of anger, emotion and sadness. However, always maintaining an edge of hope, which in the end ends up shining stronger, as it should be.

You can also like Alexa & Katie, Derry Girls, Hymn of Death and Bad Seeds.

Trailer and additional information about Selection Day Netflix

Synopsis: Two teen cricket prodigies struggle against their overbearing father and a system stacked against them to realize their own ambitions and identities.

Age rating: 14;

Release year: 2018.