Movie Review: Mata

Sandalwood regaining glory

During my teenage years I avoided Kannada movies like plague. There were several reasons for that including the fact that I bought into the popular notion that not watching Kannada movies was cool. Moreover the quality of Kannada flics were quite pathetic and had more or less the same storyline, same old faces, too much drama, unrealistic and badly executed action sequences. All this seems to have changed during the past few years. I have noticed that a new genre of Kannada movies starring actors like Ganesh, Puneet Rajkumar, Sudeep, Ramesh Arvind, Jaggesh, and an entire army of new actors and actresses are comparable with the best in any other regional film industry.

Recently I watched the movie Mata starring Jaggesh and effectively supported by a team of supporting actors such as Mandya Ramesh, Tabla Nani, Shashidhar Bhat, and others. The movie tells the story of a religious institution that cares for handicapped children. The chief swamiji of the institution is also responsible for these children. One fine day the swamiji falls in love and leaves his position to become a householder. This puts the institution in a quandary, the trustee decides to place an advertisement in the local newspaper and recruit the right candidate for the position. Something unheard of in the country.

The candidates who get selected to undergo the rigorous training to qualify to become a Swami are the heroes of this movie. I mentin Heroes because everyone has an equal role in the plot and Jaggesh is the only popular face so one tends to think that he is the hero. The rest of the movie is about the training that the applicants receive and which one becomes the swamiji.

The best part of the movie is its message and of course the liberal dose of comedy that is thrown in. Definitely worth watching and I would give it a 4 star rating.