Maat: Agonisingly Ineffective

By Praveen Lulekar

Cinematic clichés is a very funny thing. They are certainly an indication of lack of originality, but if used properly they can actually give birth to something seemingly original. Maat’s originality is limited to its casting. Its original story also has that quality (Setu by Tejaswini Dinesh Pandit), but that is a different piece of art altogether. In a complex arrangement of characters and narrative, Setu is probably as heart-wrenching as some of the dialogues in Maat. A lousy screenplay, a plain-faced leading lady and characters and scenes that give a déjà vu feeling make Maat agonisingly ineffective – agonising, because it could have been much better.

Maat tells the story of Rima Deshmukh (Isha Koppikar) and her deaf and mute daughter Mini (Tejashree Walawalkar). Rima is a model (she wins a beauty pageant named ‘Lovely Woman of India’) and Ajay (Sameer Dharmadhikari), her husband, is an ambitious architect. Ajay wants his daughter to be an engineer like him. As Mini’s disability is discovered, the couple shatters – Rima tries to cope up but Ajay distances himself from the family. With the help of her mother-in-law and a bunch of family friends, Rima tries to raise her daughter, sacrificing her career in the process. At a certain point, she discovers that Mini has a special talent for Chess and with the help of a reclusive grandmaster Raodatt Palkar (Suhas Palshikar) she takes Mini to new heights in the sport.

The story looks great on paper, doesn’t it? Well, on screen you see a father proud of his daughter’s drawing skills in an early age but thinks that Chess is not an intelligent person’s game. You see a model in an ad saying use ‘this’ face cream and the shot is Okayed without the name of the product. You meet supporting characters whose names you hardly remember when they appear in the next scene. As for their back-stories, one of them tells Rima that his wife is pained as they do not have a child and she pampers the husband sometimes to fill up the void; all this while the poor wife is sitting right there! Sensitivity anyone?  America represented by a single shot of the Statue of Liberty, Rima’s elbow fracture referred to as wrist fracture by the doctor, misplaced songs…the list can go on.

An important and potentially interesting part of the film is the Chess games. Palshikar in a suspender suit, a George cap, a beard and a Nana Patekar-ish madness breathes life into some scenes. His strong voice throw breaks the monotony of Koppikar’s plain expressions and Walawalkar’s repetitive loop of joy and disappointments (provided respectively by her mother and her father’s absence). The latter is a great talent with natural ease on camera; the director (Manohar Sarvankar) fails to tap it. In spite of the help of many actual grandmasters, we do not see any detailing in the chess games. Consequence – we do not enjoy Mini’s victory. The director’s failure comes to fore when Ajay transforms in the last scene after Mini defeats a robot (who enters the stage like a WWF star!). We do not get even one close-up of Ajay that shows his emotional turmoil during the game. 

Koppikar tries hard to look like a mother and moreover, to act like one. Her emotions never come full fledge and if she has purposely chosen to be silent, the pain she is suppressing is never conveyed. Some dialogues that had punch on paper are watered down by her language problems. We hear an effort in every word, every sentence that compounds her acting problems. Maat is an epic failure on the execution level. Neither the beauty of Koppikar nor the music of Dr. Salil Kulkarni could save it.

m4m Says: Watch at your own risk

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