Lost in shadows

Raveena Tandon-starrer ‘Maatr’ deserved much better numbers!

All the limelight is on ‘Baahubali’ and rightly so. The movie is all about how you present a well-thought content with conviction and audience will arrive in droves. Today, however, I wish to focus on a movie that had an equal amount of conviction and sincerity in its presentation yet it did not get the kind of attention it deserved both at the box office and to an extent in the media.

Lets first start with the first point on ‘Maatr’, which is most remarkable. Of all the superstar comeback movies, simply put ‘Maatr’ is the strongest. Look at some of our biggest comeback movies from our biggest stars they have been boring duds like ‘Gulab Gang’ or ‘Mrityudata’.

‘Maatr’ did not work huge numbers at the box office. But the fact remains that all those who did walk into watch the movie loved its content. Therefore we can safely assume that the only star post-Rekha in the 1980s who has managed to work in some quality cinema, which deserves some attention, is Raveena Tandon.

Else, with due respect just look at what Govinda did to himself in his comeback scrap called ‘Aa Gaya Hero’. ‘Maatr’ drove itself totally on the capable shoulders of Raveena and for that she deserves kudos. It would have been better had it come from the feminist battalion, guess they were sharpening claws on what they could criticise in ‘Baahubali’ and its female characters.

‘Maatr’ at some levels is no less than ‘Pink’ or ‘NH10’. It brings a very big dark point about our national capital and its surrounding areas. The law and order have gone to the dogs. Women have taken to being targeted as normal part of life as probably breathing. ‘Maatr’ is the story of two women, a mother and daughter for whom a happy evening turns into the darkest thing that a woman can imagine. The daughter and mother are left for dead and the mother survives.

The system does not come to her aid and then the mother takes it to herself to wreak a brutal revenge on her victimisers. The beauty of ‘Maatr’, however, was not in its revenge story but the finer moments that the director brought out, which can leave you unhappy, sick in the gut or at times proud.

The movie does not get preachy but the insensitivity towards women in cases like rape was beautifully captured by the director in the scenes where the husband, a total selfish moron, blames the wife for taking a deserted turn. The man is so self-obsessed that he feels he is actually entitled to separation from his wife. It does not end there when the mother is out to seek revenge he even tries to stop her from that.

The other point, which ‘Maatr’ brought out, was how those who would want to do something are either stunted by the system or are helpless. The character of Raveena's female friend who even gets subjected to ruthless violence and the helpless investigating cop who knows who are the real criminals and yet cannot do anything to stop the flow of violence, neither from the rapists nor from the vigilante mother. He just remains a mute spectator - that is the saddest and scariest part of ‘Maatr’.

‘Maatr’ did not have a very different story if you look at it on the surface but it did have a very raw treatment of its moments. Having suffered the plastic ‘OK Jaanu’ and ‘Noor’ kind of boring drag movies, ‘Maatr’ actually felt far fresh and better.

Maybe the audiences are also getting used to looking at movies, which are promoted and claim at huge numbers at the box office in initials. Probably the audiences who would try out movies on gut feel are going down.

Too bad because Bollywood is very scared to look at the conviction based content it is happy to hide behind hype driven superstars who are rehashing content again and again. ‘Maatr’ deserved much better attention from all of us not for the producer’s pocket sake but for the sake of those who wanted Bollywood to improve. ‘Maatr’ did not deserve to fail like this!