Maharshi (2019)

I watched Maharshi before but I think I appreciated it more on this second viewing. The writing is pretty good; I’ll explain...

Mahesh Babu had one commercially successful film for each one of these last 4-5 years, which were considered run-of-the-mill massy affairs by most critics. I started watching all of them because I was curious: what made those films hits but not Guntur Kaaram? What was his latest film missing?

After watching Maharshi, I am inclined to say that the writing is its strong point. Maharshi is a well built film; it has 2 clearly separate parts, with the 2nd part totally reversing the expectations built in the first one. I think this structure fits very well the masala genre, and in general it responds well to what we expect from Indian filmmaking. 

In the first part, when we are introduced to the hero Rishi, he moves around grey-blue environments, glass offices, wearing neat suits and stylish sunglasses. It reminded me of ads for cool cars or international banking investment (or anything of that sort) that glorifies a certain way of life that is what we would call “neoliberal” or “tech bro”. The image of the successful NRI abroad is established in this way.

We then cut to his pre-college life where we learn about his relationship with his father, a lower middle-class man who is struggling to pay his loans, and how his failure in life inspired Rishi to become determined to become materially successful; lots of money and high achievement jobs. He carries this attitude to college where he meets his best friend Ravi, a person of lower social background, son of a farmer, and his girlfriend Pooja, for whom he means the world. But in order to become numero uno, he abandons everyone close to him and goes to the US where he becomes the CEO of the most promising software company. Up to this point all his choices seem justified and the script kind of supports this view by not revealing much about what happened to the other characters.

Around the midpoint Rishi receives a call that his father passed away and has to go back to India. From then on all the illusions of the first part that we as an audience had built for Rishi, and he for himself, start to unravel. We gradually become aware that the self-made successful image he had built for himself in reality was built on the sacrifices of the people around him: first his father and second and most important his friend Ravi who during their undergraduate days took the blame for a cheating scandal on his shoulders so Rishi could be absolved and continue his career in the US of A.

The thing that I appreciated the most in this film was how Ravi’s character was written to be the actual catalyst of the film. His character arc and decisions determine the routes Rishi's life will take. It’s really wonderful how the writers have countered each decision with an action in the life trajectory of these two friends. Rishi for example decides to leave his CEO position, the one he craved so much, to replace Ravi and continue his struggle against a corporation which wants to usurp their land. Through Ravi’s struggle Rishi is exposed to social and environmental inequality; by participating in that struggle he becomes an advocate for equality himself, shunning his previous self and obsessions with success. 

The film touches only lightly on its core themes: environmental sustainability, poverty, farmers suicides, middle class hypocrisy, and even... fuckboys. It approaches all these and gives a solution not realistically but rather through the invocation of a miracle, deployed by a god, our hero Mahesh Babu. His life-altering decisions are taken in the blink of an eye, as soon as he realises his mistakes (which are always committed due to some misunderstanding, not personal moral malice) and without much inner strife. It’s a personal transformation without a lot of baggage. It’s easy and might not feel earned to some, but to me this film is more of a moral lesson to be delivered straightforwardly to the audience than exploring character development for its own sake.

This is my favorite song from the film: 

I watched this on aha. You can watch the trailer here: