Movie Review - Mom by Suhel Johar

 

This Mom Is Flawed, Illogical & Unconvincing.

In the days gone by a Bollywood mother was shown as a dedicated housewife and a woman who did not have a life of her own. She stood on the sidelines helpless to help her family or perpetually in need of rescue. We often saw her in a state of despair while trying hard to maintain dignity. From submissive and regressive, such characters have moved to someone having their own voice and a multi-faceted personality. Off late, the Bollywood Mother has gone through a lot of transformation and is now the avenging angel who goes after rapists and kills them one by one because that's another thing mammas got to do if they love their family. Sridevi plays one such mother in Mom, a revenge thriller that follows a predictable although still disconcerting route. The topic of the film is relevant but the same can’t be said about its plot which is hackneyed.  Interestingly, Mom is Sridevi's 300th film coming in the 50^th year of her film career.

The story of Mom begins with a school where Devaki Sabharwal (Sridevi) is a biology teacher in a Delhi school, and even though she’s older than her students by a few decades, she connects with them easily. She asks them whether they’ve seen the latest sci-fi release. She talks about the different muscles in the human body by pointing them out on a picture of bare-chested Salman Khan. She shuts up a creep by throwing his cell-phone out of the class. But back home, a quiet disappointment hovers in the air. Her 18-year-old daughter, Arya (Sajal Ali), also her student in school, often snaps at her, treating her unfairly. Devaki, we soon come to understand, is Arya’s stepmother. And the teenager frequently reminds her of this by calling her “ma’am”.

The story takes a dark turn when Arya’s classmate Mohit (Adarsh Gaurav), his cousin Charles (Vikas Varma), his underling Jagan (Abhimanyu Singh) and security guard Baburam (Pitobash Tripathy) abduct her from a school party, rape her and dump her in a sewer. A police case is filed, a court trial ensues, but justice isn’t served despite the best efforts of Crime Branch cop Matthew Francis (Akshaye Khanna). It is then that Devki decides to seek the help of a small time Darya Ganj investigator DK (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) to extract revenge. (None of this is a spoiler; we get to know this in less than 30 minutes.) The rest of the film revolves around Devaki’s quest for justice.

Directed by Ravi Udyawar, Mom has some intense sequences that stand out, particularly the actual staging of the crime around which the plot revolves. But overall Mom comes off as a peculiar film. Unlike what its posters or trailer to suggest, it’s not a thriller. The film doesn’t hide the identity of its perpetrators or their crime (neither from its characters nor from the audience). The film follows a structured, albeit predictable narrative, and even at 147 minutes, the film meanders a fair bit, especially in the latter part of the second half.

It finds the crux of its story only near the halfway mark. Mom, to put it simply and mildly, is a hot mess. We've heard of it way too many times by now - a young woman gangraped in a moving vehicle and thrown out of it like a piece of used tissue paper. We already know what's going on in the vehicle and the camera understands that we don't need to see it. The horror lies in what we can imagine, put together with scraps we've seen and read in the media day after day.

Mom doesn’t entrust hope in a judicial system; it shows quite early how the court fails Arya. This plot point, though, like several others, is a trick designed to propel the film towards a convenient climax, justifying its ultimate message.

Sridevi’s  transformation from a simple school teacher to an avenging mother is all too easy - Jazbaa, Kaahani 2, Maatr...all of them offer vigilante justice as the only solution to combat rape and while it may satisfy some of our bloodthirstiness, it unfortunately lands the film in the realm of fantasy even as the characters struggle hard to stay real.

The film would have been less disconcerting had it been a straightforward thriller, using violence in different ways to suit its ends (as films often do), but Mom is problematic, because it pretends to be significant and then suggests a quick-fix solution to a complex problem.

Post interval the film gets a little over-the-top to achieve its climax, which is thoroughly unconvincing. Everything happens quickly, easily and conveniently in the film. Mom, in that case, fails both as a genre piece and as a social commentary trying to understand the pervasive misogyny in the country.

The main problem with Mom is that it plays to the gallery, falsely empowering and misleading them. Sure, at some level, a case can be made that this is just a film where some characters are responding to their circumstances, but Mom’s calculated indifference to logic, crass manipulation of mother-daughter bond and single-minded pursuit of climax suggest an inflammable ideology. An ideology that favours actions over thoughts, short-term victories over long-term effects.

Ravi Udaywar’s makes an average directorial debut with this film. His ‘no nonsense’ approach with no lengthy dialogues, no long chases, and no long legal scenes is good. But he erred in the basics by going ahead with a film based on a thin plotline and a predictable script. Ravi Udaywar, Girish Kohli and Kona Venkat Rao’s work as the writers of the film is ordinary and predictable with a handful of sequences that shine. If there is one person who proves his brilliance with Mom, than that has to be Anay Goswamy. The compelling visuals, the play of light and shadow, and the overall mood and atmosphere he is able to create with his camerawork is superlative. A tighter editing by Monisha R Baldawa could have helped the cause of the film which drags in the first half and seems to stretch in the second half.  The songs composed by AR Rahman are unnecessary. His background score nevertheless blends in with the action and add to the film’s narrative.

Performancewise, Sridevi  stands tall, lending her part much credence and conviction. However what takes away from her performance is her irksome accent, even though this is her 68th Hindi film in 50 years she needs to improve on her diction. Akshaye Khanna’s role doesn’t have much to offer other than serve as a distraction. His role is weakly written and proves ineffective and unnecessary to the story.

Pakistani actors Adnan Siddiqui and Sajal Ali, both of who make their Bollywood debut with Mom, perform admirably as father and daughter.In fact, Sridevi’s portrayal is only outdone by Sajal Ali. As the disgruntled daughter, as an assault victim found in a ditch, as a woman trying to physically and emotionally recover from the unthinkable, the actress manages to steal some of Sridevi’s thunder. Adnan Siddiqui is brilliant as a grief-stricken father desperate to get justice for his daughter who is a piece of his heart. Despite his limited screen time, Nawazuddin Siddiqui manages to impress you with his act yet another time. He pulls the carpet from right under Sridevi’s feet and demonstrates why he is such a scene- stealer. Abhimanyu Singh and Pitobash Tripathy along with the rest of the supporting cast  impress you but performances alone can’t salvage this film.

On the whole, go watch Mom if you’re a diehard fan of Sridevi.