Great Movie!. Review on Mahanadhi Movie

Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. There are many things greed can do. It makes you do crazy things. It makes you take risks at the cost of things you love most. The irony is greed for wealth has no end to it. But many people don’t realize it. Even if they realize it, it becomes too late by then….This is exactly what this film talks about….

Mahanadhi has a very simple storyline.Kamalhaasan is an ordinary man who leads a happy life with his son, daughter and his mother-in-law in his native village (His wife is dead). A friend visits him one time and somehow he gets a desire to earn more money and become rich. He happens to meet Hanifa who asks him to come to Madras and invest in a chit fund. Kamal blindly believes what Hanifa says and he goes to Madras and invests his hard-earned money in the chit fund. Needless to say, he loses his money .The worst part is he is accused of swindling all the money of the chit fund agency and lands up in jail. When he is in jail, his mother-in-law dies. Not knowing what to do, his daughter seeks help of Hanifa. Hanifa takes advantage of the situation and sends her to a rich man who has a weakness for young girls. Finally, she lands up in a brothel in Calcutta. Meanwhile, Kamal meets with Poornam Vishwanathan who is the father of the girl (Sukanya) he is going to marry. His son also gets lost and lands up in a nomadic acrobat troupe. Years pass by and Kamal comes out of jail. The rest of the story deals with how he rescues his children and how he takes revenge on those who are responsible for the plight of his children.

Kamal has done a great job in this character... There are few scenes which highlight his helplessness which were really very touching. The scene in Calcutta where he rescues his daughter and pleads with the people there to leave them is very touching .What a horrible state of affairs! People treating People as objects….I only wish something can be done to get these people out of this horrible situation… There is another scene in jail when he comes to know that his daughter has come of age. Just check out his face expressions. You sometimes wonder whether this guy is acting or he is really “living” it.

This movie makes us think about many things. We see how an ordinary man, who gets the desire to earn money, is ruined because of his greed. You cannot but hate the characters of the rich man who ruins the life of Kamal’s daughter and Hanifa who is responsible for his ruin. But then, the film is showing only what is happening in the society. The society is infested with people like these 2 characters. That is why families get ruined, girls get into prostitution to help the family, and men become thieves in order to earn quick bucks. The problem is this: we feel sorry for those who are affected by these situations…but we are mere spectators…we don’t do our part...we don’t help those people who are in need…We just have the attitude that as long as my family is doing good, we need not bother about anybody…There are some people out there who are responsible citizens but then the majority are “don’t cares” ….

I would say that the bharathiyar poem he recites in jail (“Thedi Choru Nithamthinru pala Chinnanchiru kathaigal pesi pirar Vaada pala seyalgal seythu manam vaadi thunbam miga uzhanru Narai koodi kizhap paruvam eithi kodungkootrukku iraiyena pin maayum pala vedikai mainitharai pole Naan veezhvenenru ninaiththaayo”) is the theme song for this film. It roughly means this: “There are many people who spend most of their time looking for food so that they can survive ...who do bad things to people and as a result,torture their minds and get drowned in sorrow…who become old and die. I refuse to be one of them…I refuse to be sucked into this routine life”. Kamal reads this in jail when he is in deep sorrow. He realizes that there are many people who inflict sorrow to others and one should not be worried by defeat and should rise like a unicorn. If only he had this perspective. Then he would not have tried to ape his friend to become rich and he would not have fallen into this trap!!!!

Mahanadi Shobana gives an excellent performance as Kamal’s daughter. She also sings the starting lines of the song “Sri Ranga Ranga Nathanin “ which has been very well picturized in Sri Rangam. Ilayaraja excels in his BGM’s . The film has very good performances by all the actors. But it tends to be slow in some places and the scenes in jail are unusually lengthy and sometimes test your patience.

Even though it has 3 or 4 songs, the film is not for a commercial audience..Thus, since it looks like a cross between an art film and a commercial film, I suppose it didn’t attract repeat audience. Even though it is a good film, it didn’t have a good run in the box-office...

A must-see for those who haven’t seen it already.