Mahaan movie review: Dhruv, Vikram in an unmemorable, pointless film on ideology

Karthik Subbaraj’s latest film Mahaan, starring Vikram and his son Dhruv, has a lot to say on ideology. Naachi (Simran) hails from a Gandhian family and believes that ‘ideology defines a person.’ Gandhi Mahaan (Vikram), also hailing from a Gandhian family, doesn’t think so. With an austere, ascetic lifestyle being shoved down his throat -- by his father, and later Naachi -- Gandhi plays along. Until one day, he hits a mid-life crisis and decides to party. The situation escalates and Naachi leaves, taking their son Dada (Dhruv) along with her. Gandhi, on the other hand, ends up on the other extreme -- running a liquor business with Sathyavan (Bobby Simhaa) and Rocky (Sananth).

With a premise like this, the irony presents itself on a silver platter. The most obvious is a liquor baron named Gandhi Maahan. But it extends to slightly deeper threads -- chosen family (Sathyavan and Rocky, who treat Gandhi as their own) vs actual family (Naachi and Dada, who never really try to understand Gandhi). In the final few minutes, Gandhi says that if he, as a liquor baron and a gangster, is an extremist, so is the brutal, violence-hungry police officer Dada. This is barely a surprise, consider how the juxtaposition itself is flawed on several counts. The film reduces pacifist Gandhian philosophy to mere alcohol prohibition, which is incredibly reductionist.

It’s laughable that Nachi and Dada call themselves Gandhians and are so hung up on alcohol, but have no problem with indiscriminate violence. The teetotaler Dada has no problem chewing on betel leaves, it's only alcohol he has a problem with. So the film doesn’t set up the ground for a real ideological conflict. Moreover, Gandhi justifies his alcohol business by saying that they don’t force anyone to drink. While not a huge fan of prohibition myself, the drive against alcohol began because of the social ills it was feeding -- deaths from spurious liquor, domestic violence, child inebriation, etc. Mahaan, however, doesn’t address the social angles and sticks to platitudes -- both commercial and emotional.

There are some interesting writing devices Mahaan employs -- the cyclical dynamics of interpersonal equations. But these remain at the surface level. The writing tries to be cerebral but lacks heart. Most of the emotional equations aren’t fleshed well and this reflects in the performances as well. Dhruv Vikram looks good onscreen. But in Mahaan, he doesn’t go much beyond animated cackles. Vikram, known to be quite the chameleon, looks tired. You almost feel like they are just going through the motions. (Interestingly the film makes a joke out of at one place where Dada says, 'sentiment over, let's move to action' ) I rather enjoyed the performances of Bobby Simhaa and Sanath, who bring a lot of conviction to their characters that plugged in a few emotional gaps. Some of the visual metaphors are too on the nose well. There’s the now trite ‘white shirt-black shirt’ symbolism -- Dada and Gandhi keep exchanging colours through the film. In an important action sequence, the noise of a speeding train is used as a metaphor for the psyche of the characters. But this becomes annoying when you see the train rumble behind every time there’s some movement on the emotional graph.

Karthik Subbaraj’s films have always played with irony. In Jigarthanda, he found irony in a gangster who found his calling as a comedian. Pizza had a man who was terrified of ghosts, cook up a great ghost story to cover up a theft. Iraivi was a film about female empowerment but told through the male characters. Even his short film in the anthology Navarasa looks at ‘peace’ from an ironic vantage point, an ongoing war. Mahaan is the latest addition to the list. But with its flawed set-ups and a lack of emotional depth, it doesn’t become a very memorable one.

Rating: 2/5

Ashameera Aiyappan is a film journalist who writes about Indian cinema with a focus on South Indian films.