Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola

Matru, Bijli and Mandola are three people. Mandola is also the village of which Mr. Mandola is the leading citizen. He is hugely rich and wants to get richer. Bijli is his spoilt daughter with a heart of gold and as her friend Matru puts it, a 'Meena Kumari' complex. She also has some sexy tattoos and hangs out at the village pond wearing very short shorts and a skimpy top. Matru is a lawyer with a communist bent of mind who has come back to Mandola to start a revolution. He also works as Mandola's chauffeur though his main duty is to stop Mandola from getting drunk on his beloved Gulabo beer.

Bijli is going to marry Badal, the son of a corrupt politician. As CM, she will approve of Mandola's SEZ which will come up by usurping the farmers' land. But, Bijli is sensitive, and her best friend Matru helps the villagers and Mandola can behave erratically when he drinks. What happens next? Watch the movie to find out.

Yes, I recommend this movie as a pretty entertaining watch. I can't decide yet whether it is a fairytale with a realistic backdrop or a real gritty story about farmers with a fairy tale treatment to it. Either which way, there is an over the top-ness to the movie that works in its favour if you embrace it.

A big brass band accompanies a lot of the crucial action and an African tribe gets transplanted in to the Haryana fields like cheerleaders. The village farmers are the bunch around whom the action is set. The sense of drama is pretty huge here and the best way to enjoy the movie is to give in to the crazy elements of the movie and not try to wonder how it can swing suddenly from the serious and sentimental to the absurd and comic.

The star cast of the movie has had a ball acting in it. The senior actors specially are positively licking their lips; from the way that Pankaj Kapur skips over beer bottles lined up on his steps to the way that Shabana Azmi (As the CM) plays footsie with Mandola under the table. The younger lot is more serious. Imran tries but doesn't really pull off the drunken sequences with Pankaj Kapur too well. Maybe he is too deadpan for it. But as a revolutionary trying to help the farmers he is sincere. Anoushka plays her nirmal cheery self with ease, which is getting a wee bit tiring. She is a good actress and needs to do something different. Arya Babbar as the spoilt son is too much of a caricature most of the times but does manage to show a menacing spark of nastiness at times.

A lot of the dialogues are in Haryanvi and some of them passed me by but there are a few great laughs throughout the film to keep up with the crazy bends in the story. There is one place where Mandola speaks of his dream for his village as an urban hub, which is fabulous and gave me goose bumps.

I love Vishal Bhardawaj's music and this is no exception though I have liked his earlier works more. The use of African beats is unusual. What also stood out for me is the background score that sets the mood of the movie very well.

In short, Matru.. is a fun watchable movie which has a message in it somewhere but I don't think it wants you to take that part of it too seriously. The main thing to take away from it is a simple homily. The next time you feel fat, don't wear pink.

It saddens me when a good filmmaker loses his touch. I once thought Vishal Bhardwaj is the best filmmaker working in India today. Others are only pretending to be. That was when he followed Maqbool (2003) with Omkara (2006) and Kaminey (2009). Then came 7 Khoon Maaf (2011). I gave that film the benefit of doubt, thinking that a filmmaker of such immense talent cannot make a bad film. It was an interesting failure but it wasn't a bad film. Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola is a very, very bad film. Anyone who thinks it isn't, really wishes to like the "kind" of film it is and not the film itself.

The film begins well with Harry Mandola (Pankaj Kapur) and Matru (Imran Khan) ramming a limousine into a theka. The barebones plot is clearly "inspired" from the Bertolt Brecht play - Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti. Mandola is two personalities. The disgruntled man when he is sober and the cartoonish nice man when he is drunk. Matru is his chauffeur who is in love with his daughter, Bijlee. There is nothing else that Bhardwaj does with the plot. A wonderful opportunity of adapting a Brecht play gone to waste by trying to grasp more than can be reached. Or probably grasping something else entirely which was never in reach. Instead of telling a story, we are told everything else around it. You can call this a bold move but it is nothing but an idiotic one.

Pankaj Kapur was lauded for his work in Maqbool (2003) when he did a Marlon Brando impression and repeats the same quirk here, especially when he is drunk. In Maqbool, many thought his dialogue wasn't clear enough. I couldn't fully comprehend it either but I wanted to seek the film out again to understand it all. I “wanted” to understand what he was saying. In the case of this film, I don't “want” to know the hogwash he is blabbering. Some of it is funny, but mostly overwrought.

Imran Khan could have finally shown his acting chops but the script lets him down. Anushka Sharma is the single most annoying thing about the film. I couldn't tell the difference between her and Arya Baboon. Her “acting” is getting repetitive and increasingly hammy. Shabana Azmi is the greatest actress India has ever seen and can come out of any acting hell unscathed if she wishes and that she does.

There is also quite a lot of pseudo-intellectual drivel and contemptible name-dropping Vishal “Bard”waj indulges in. For example, a poster of Che Guevara in the background and referencing Mao Tse Tung repeatedly. I found it funny a few times, especially the “Ghar mein Mao-Lenin na hain ke?” but when it became a part of the plot my jaw dropped out of unimaginable horror. There are also dialogues like “Commie bastard” and “Bourgeois Bitch”. Shakespeare and Macbeth are given one scene. Shakespeare? More like *Shakes head* African dancers, karaoke and a pink buffalo seal the deal. It is time for this talented filmmaker to leave European drama (particularly the theatre of the absurd) alone. Probably stop looking at Emir Kusturica, Coen Brothers and Tarantino's work for inspiration as well and look inward.

There is a scene in the film where a few people are attacked with cow dung bombs. Basically, a load of cow dung is hurled towards us. You guessed it. That's what the film is. For me, this film is a mix of the frivolity of Joker and the atrocity of Aiyyaa. (At least the former knew it was stupid.) Replace the aliens in Joker with a pink buffalo and this is what you get. Except here they take themselves way too seriously.

You'll always find people who will say “It wasn't that bad” or that “They at least tried something different”. Some pedantic critics type will even tell you “You didn't get it”. Probably start explaining who Mao is or what a political satire means. They will see what nobody else can see. Apparently. Quite frankly, it's a pink buffalo. It is a delusion. Nothing more than acute mental distortion. The fact is you've had enough of the Mao Mao and all you really want to do is punch someone in the face. My main problem is not the fact that I disagree with the political stand of the film. It is that storytelling is forgotten altogether.

I'm feeling bad dissing this film. This isn't a hate review towards the film, filmmaker or people who like it. I understand what Bhardwaj was trying to do and I know why anyone would find lots to like here. The way he did it is something that doesn't appeal to me. I did not like the humor, nor did I find anything of value. This is the vent my frustration has found. I truly wished the movie would work and I still do wish you go and see the film. For me, the thing that matters at the end of it is, whether it is a good movie or a bad movie. Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola is definitely a bad one. It is an absolute stinker and an early candidate for the worst films of 2013.

Having seen Vishal Bhardwaj's flashes of directing comedy in all his films I was very interested to see what he does with a full fledged comedy film but Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola is not that film.

A fictitious village in Haryana is called Mandola named after the rich industrialist Harry Mandola ( Pankaj Kapur). He wants to take away the land of the farmers and have a big dream about what he wants to do with it. The only problem is that he drinks and becomes a different person after he is drunk. He does things like taking a village morcha to his own house against him. He has a driver cum drinking partner in Matru (Imran Khan) who has studied law abroad and has come back to the village and is working for Mandola. Everyone knows he has a plan up his rolled khaki sleeves. What happens when Shabana Azmi arrives with his son Baadal (Arya Babbar) to the village to marry him off to Mandola's daughter Bijlee ( Anushka Sharma) is what the film is about

The film is schizophrenic when it comes to what it is arriving at or what it wants to do. Entertain, educate or inspire? Nobody's knows. It is neither a quirky comedy nor a satire on the state of our nation. I could sit through it only because of the cinematography and because I love watching Pankaj Kapur act. Remember that hilarious drunk scene in Jalwa?. When he is drunk, Pankaj Kapur is an extended version of that character. There are flashes of brilliances but few and far between.

Arya Babbar makes the most of the opportunity given to him. This is his most meaty role yet in a mainstream big budget film and he gives it his all.

Word of mouth - There is an abuse which is often used in the film. That was my emotion when I walked out of Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola. It is the 'Joker meets Aiyaa 'film of this year.

Rating - 2.5 ( Average)

Ticket Meter - worth 100 bucks

After a rather underwhelming turn in Saat Khoon Maaf, Vishal Bharadwaj opens the big-ticket film of the New Year with Matru Ki Bijlee ka Mandola, an absurdly funny and deliciously irreverent dramedy that in its unsettled sphere mirrors a biting social reality while also reflecting the booming pace of consumerism in the country.

Crowding the grainy lands of Haryana with an exciting, interesting bunch of weirder-than-thou characters, Bharadwaj's Matru is soaked with Shakespearean references, joyously witty one-liners, and a number of satirical puns at popular culture, including billionaires and politicians. Through its rocky terrain, MKBKM is a relevant reflection of the vintage (yet prevailing) socio-political scenario but doesn't go all propagandist with it; instead choosing a boldly irreverent path - almost as whacky as attainable within the mainstream hemisphere.

Mandola, played by a staggeringly brilliant Pankaj Kapur is a man with capitalist ambitions in a village that essentially needs someone rooted with socialist ideologies. Matru is the servant who, predictably feels for the villagers, while Bijlee is Mandola's daughter who's spunky yet inherently unsure about her allegiance.

Together, these three make for entertaining and memorable on-screen characters who behind their vivid eccentricity hide a duality that is grounded with Maoist ideology, that is, of course in direct clash with the flourishing wind of capitalist consumption. While the scheming politico (an okayish Shabana Azmi) and the dim-wit son (a deservingly dumb Arya Babbar) want to enter into a liaison with Mandola and the daughter - one that could work in their best interests, Matru invariably becomes the barrier in preventing this, while at the same time resolving a rather complex issue.

It is this easy resolution that's perhaps the bigger of MKBKM problems, the other being an unsubstantial amount of mad-cap indulgence, that fail on both counts - taking the story forward or revealing anything crucial about the characters.

Nonetheless there are numerous flights of fancy, (literally) both inspired and insipid, and the performances are worth revisiting.

Although Imran Khan's limitations as an actor cannot be camouflaged behind his dyed beard-and-moustache, the actor gives a convincing performance, getting right the body-language if not perfecting the accent, while Anushka Sharma is her usual best, easily sliding into the character of a not-so-tradition-abiding village-belle. The pink buffalo is a remarkably well-thought motif, that is perhaps the most metaphorical character of the lot - a reflection of Mandola's collective fears, while also being something that eventually empowers him. On the whole, the picture is quite something.

The running Afro-vibe is a refreshing departure from anything that we are used to seeing, and the soundtrack coupled with lines that suspiciously play more like Gulzar than Vishal make the entire lunacy worth a trip.

Go watch. Be patient, think over the message the film tries to pass, and then decide whether you approve of it or not.

In the quiotic world of Bharadwaj, anything is possible, even a pink colored buffalo and a stretch limo crashing into a bar in the middle of a wheat field. Continuing his love affiar with all things Shakespearean, Vishal packs in a strong political statement in an absurdly crafted satire.

Mandola village is in the midst of a land problem, the rich man Mandola needs farmer's land to make an SEZ, the farmers need their farms, while the politician Devi ji needs her Pragati for Desh ki unnati. In the middle are an idealist Matru with strong leftist leanings and a stubborn Bijli, the bait everyone is after.

With MKBKM, Bharadwaaj turns into the quintessential Shakespearean Jester, who in his own madcap manner jumps around mumbling nonsense, yet look closely and you would find him commenting on his world.

Bharadwaaj, like a competent jester, touches issues from Land rights to FDI to politicians being a mirror of what we as a society are, yet does not take a stance, not once trying to espouse any ideology. He even ends up mocking the Mao's and Lal Salaams of the world with a twist that is revealed very early in the narrative. All of this is wrapped under a mix of satire, wry humor and plain absurdity that at times falls flat on its face.

Supporting the directors vision amply is the stupendously delicious turn by Pankaj Kapoor as Mandola. Bharadwaaj makes Mandola again a very Bard like protagonist- split in his persona, evil, yet good hidden somewhere inside, remorseful, lost in his own delusions- Pankaj brings out the eccentricity of the character out with panache.

He is a treat to watch and manages to off set the weaker parts of the film with his energy. Imran Khan passes muster while Anushka is decent playing herself to the hilt. Shabaana Azmi is the other stunner- her monologue is a testimony to her talent and experience in the industry.

Despite all of this goodness, MKBKM does not cohese as a singularly brilliat film. The first half is haywire, all over the place, desperately in need of some crisping.

The story gets back on track in the second half, packing in a strong punch only to loose the plot towards the climax again. A tad smaller by half an hour, and sans the indulgent absurdity, this wouldve been an amazing film. The way it stands now though, it is definitely worth a watch Go for it