‘An original Hindi film as the fictional biography of a hugely famous porn writer of the 80s, writing books with all the sexy names and lusty front covers to be read in the dark corners of back alleys, bathrooms, store-rooms, rooftops, lonely gardens and more such places by people of all age groups widely.’
Now as this description of the film and its daring promos were released a few months back,
What did you expect to watch in it honestly?
Did you (secretly) wish to see the bold, never before kind of visual interpretation of whatever the porn writer used to express in his vulgar text, arousing great amount of curiosity?
OR
You actually were eager to know more about the mysterious person and the exact mindset with which he used to write such provocative stuff just using the simple Hindi words, with an exceptional talent?
The answer needs to be thought upon essentially, as that only will decide whether the film would turn out to be a worthy watch or not, depending upon the real intentions.
In short, for the ones choosing the first option, in search of all those bold porn scenes, shown in its Youtube videos and more, the film is going to be a big disappointment as the director here is not actually interested in providing that mental masturbation to his viewers, going against all expectations. So for friends, looking for that crude ‘GRAND MASTI’ stuff, this is certainly a lot less than their assumed wild imaginations, so better watch some free porn, easily available at the internet instead, saving both your time and money.
But for the others, more interested in seeing how the director tries to depict a fictional biography of an unknown controversial personality, this is sure going to be an appealing watch, though might not be a hugely satisfying one, portraying the story in a subtle, controlled manner focusing on the writer alone.
Actually MASTRAM begins with a young educated man aspiring to become a writer and then it progresses as a simple, realistic biography revolving around his initial hardships and struggle in its first 30 minutes. So there is no sexual stuff in these opening reels until, Rajaram (its lead character) forcefully starts writing porn stories to keep his kitchen running. And later too the film focuses more on the writer’s mental conflict & his relationships only instead of the expected erotic stuff served repeatedly. Therefore a large proportion of the viewers are bound to feel cheated as the film gives them nothing more than already seen in its bold You Tube trailers promoted well.
In fact the only sexual scenes coming in this 98 minutes movie are the ones when Rajaram starts writing a new story thinking about the fictional characters inspired from his real life acquaintances. And this is only the key feature of movie, brilliantly portraying the fact that every writer takes his basic inspiration from the existing people only in his immediate surroundings and then goes on assigning new roles to them as per his own imagination. In other words, whether it is the respected literature including poetry, novels & stories or the porn stuff including such vulgar texts, the inspiration remains the actual life only flowing around the writer in its various forms.
Moreover, the final insightful moments of the film further reveal that it all depends upon the unlimited capabilities of a human mind only that in what manner he wishes to use his creative imaginations in the end. Because it factually remains the same curvy body of a beautiful girl which is rhythmically compared to the Taj Mahal by one writer and interpreted in a lusty, sensual manner by the other with the mind visualizing the beauty in two different ways.
Hence if you see the film with a viewpoint of studying the person behind those best-selling sex books in the 80s, then it does turns out to be a worthy watch. But if you are just interested in watching some spicy sequences moving a step ahead than its online promos then its certainly going to be a below average film serving nothing as per the promises made.
Also, MASTRAM can easily be explained as a film caught within two distinctive perceptions of its producer/publicity designer and the director. Because where at one end the publicity material of the film suggests it to be one of the boldest films ever, there the film is actually a simple effort to depict a writer’s creative struggle and his cracking relationships due to the hidden job under taken. As a result, the end-product keeps standing in the mid-way and the viewer misses the bold content, being promoted all over the net in the last two months through an undoubtedly well designed publicity campaign, for sure.
To give you an idea about what harm did the sensual promos actually caused, I would like to mention my personal experience while watching it in the theater as below.
Firstly, at the ticket window itself I found a couple and even two young boys hesitating in buying the tickets of MASTRAM from the girl sitting at the counter, as if they were asking for something shameful. Next as the film didn’t have any sexual scenes in its first half an hour, one could feel restlessness, whispers and a few loud comments too demanding the stuff they had bought the tickets for. And lastly walking out of the theater, I could easily hear people saying, “Kucch Bhi Nahin Dikhaya, Bas Time Pass Hi Tha”.
Now the one factor responsible for such negative comments unarguably was the over exciting promotional campaign of the film, solely showcasing the bold scenes. But the other quality factor generating such repulsive response remains the way debutant director Akhilesh Jaiswal conceives his skin-show scenes with an elegant camerawork, lighting and great angles. To give him the credit, Akhilesh refuses to use any actress in his film as a mere sexual object with cheap body displaying clothes in an exploitive manner. And his first erotic sequence in the film even reminded me of the one in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s PARINDA wherein also its only camera showing the skin from many distinctive angles without revealing anything clearly, leaving everything on your individual imagination alone. And the viewer is free to interpret whatever he feels like seeing the images formed on the screen in an artistic mode.
Coming to the music department, Honey Singh’s Gujarati track “Achko Machko” comes at a perfect timing and the song indeed sounds great while watching the film. But I was disappointed not finding the other promoted Punjabi track “Baba Ve” in the film, which ironically is a famous double meaning song of Punjab from the early 80s. Background music supports the onscreen sequences well and cinematography gracefully keeps the movie in the category of erotica only, avoiding stepping on to the obvious offensive path of a cheap comedy. Having a perfectly recommended cast by Mukesh Chhabra, it has a fine lead performance played by Rahul Bagga. Still the film actually scores more through its enjoyable supportive acts from a talented cast ensemble including the debutant Tara Alisha.
As a director Akhilesh successfully gives the film a realistic small-town feel, with all lively characters. But yes, he could have given Rajaram a better depth, making him more mysterious as well as expressive providing some additional entertaining moments and a more colourful feel to the project. Because at present his character does seem to be quite dull for a non-existing, exciting porn writer.
To end it on a positive note, MASTRAM is surely an effort to be applauded due to three basic reasons.
One, for making an original Hindi film based on a fictional biography which has been rarely tried in Indian Cinema.
Two, for not going the cheap GRAND MASTI way (disgracing the female actors), whereas that was the most easy and fruitful path to be followed resulting in much bigger returns.
And Three, for some extremely well designed series of posters with a delightful display of creativity using no images at all but just silhouette figures of pen, a nib and a girl.
So though admittedly it may not be liked by many, MASTRAM still needs to be given a chance, especially by those friends who have lived that era of 80s when pocket books, novels & magazines were one of the main sources of entertainment for all age groups. And if words like Gulshan Nanda, Chacha Chaudhary, School Guides/Kunji’s, Comics, Social & Crime novels with strange titles still sound appealing to you after all these decades, then go for it and have a nice time travelling back in the 80s watching a feel good movie wrongly promoted as a porn film.
Rating : 3 + 0.5 / 5 (with an additional 0.5 for the rare-original choice of subject, avoiding the cheap ‘GRAND MASTI’ path and designing some excellent creative posters with no pictures at all.)
(Note 1 : Regarding the reviews given by many renowned critics, I did feel a kind of hypocrisy practiced all over this time. Because in case this film would have gone the same over-explicit way in skin-show, having many double meaning dialogues and all that cheap stuff using female actors as mere sexual objects like always, then also everybody would have ridiculed it as a disgraceful project.
And now when the director has tried to make it as a decent fictional biography, emphasizing more on the writer itself, then also it is being under-rated as less engaging and offering unsatisfactory content than promised.
Now what kind of double standard reporting it is remains out of my understanding really.
(Note 2 : Though I had a lot to add about that particular time period of 80s and the era of magazines, but would go for it in another individual article instead as the review has already gone too long.
But for nostalgia sake, would like to inform that in those years, MASTRAM and such pocket size magazines were widely available in few other languages too and there was a huge demand as well as supply of such stuff from various secret publishers. Plus what they haven’t shown in the film is that most of these books used to come stapled, from the center-right point from where we normally open the book. So one had to buy it essentially to read the pages and there was no returning back after the stapler pin was off.
And no, I was not an avid buyer/reader of the stuff to know all this! But actually one of my friend’s father used to sell books-magazines-newspapers on a roadside pavement in the mid-80s and we both often had to look after the shop, sitting by the road under the scorching sun, when he used to go somewhere for his personal work. And confessing honestly, there were many unsuccessful attempts made to read few lines, without taking off the irritating stapler pin, before he was back.)
Cheers!
