Kajol Can’t Save Maa From a Weak NarrativeFronted solidly by Kajol in the guise of a woman who fights fiercely to prevent her daughter from falling prey to an old curse that hangs over the family and their village, Maa is a confused concoction. Faith, fear and feudalism flow into a feminine fable both fantastical and feeble.
The mythological drama pans out in a remote Bengal village – its name is a Punjabified ‘Chandarpur’ and not ‘Chandrapur’ as it would be pronounced and spelled by a Bengali – off a forest that nobody dares to enter. Here, newly-pubescent girls disappear only to return within days without any recollection of what happened to them and where they went.
That is pretty much the fate of Maa, helmed by Vishal Furia, whose fame rests on the 2016 Marathi horror flick Lapachhapi (remade in Hindi as Chhori by the director himself). It is way too erratic to be aware where it is going.
Forty years ago, twins, a male and a female, are born in an aristocratic home on the night of Kali Puja. The birth of the boy is greeted with joy all around. The girl is taken away and done to death under a massive banyan tree that is destined to become a key ‘character’ in the story and spread its tentacles way beyond the jungle.
The killing of the girl unleashes a curse that casts a shadow on all young village girls on the cusp of adulthood. They are hounded by a daitya (demon), a personification of a fearsome giant tree that spreads terror around the zamindar’s mansion that is now up for sale.
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