Mastram Review

Mastram Review : Mastram is the Alok Nath version of erotica. You could play it on Star Plus and get away without offending anybody. 

Rating: *

Director: Akhilesh Jaiswal 

Cast: Rahul Bagga, Tara Alisha Berry

Mastram’s

Bold

Inventive

Titillating

Cheeky (and)

Hindustani

posters (35 in all) evince the cleverness and imagination of the marketing team behind the film. (And yes, I’ve used a stupid little acrostic above)

Subtle use of image, color, contrast, shape, words, font, pun and double-entendre together succeed in creating an impact on viewers and raise their intrigue towards the otherwise less-talked about film. I had in fact suggested a batch-mate and friend of mine to take up Mastram as one of the case studies for his dissertation on successful promotional campaigns and strategies by Bollywood films. I had often seen the posters pop up on the first page of Screen magazine and was convinced this would be a standout release, something like Ashim Ahluwalia’s Miss Lovely (by the way, just realized I mistook ‘Aseem Chhabra’, freelance critic, to be Miss Lovely’s director, and have been following him on Facebook since two months; thankfully, didn’t display my ignorance by commenting on his FB page “Hey, loved your film Miss Lovely!”…. but anyway, let’s head back to Mastram). Mainstream big-budget movies hardly experiment with posters and let their star-power do all the talking.

Just take a look at Dhoom 3’s poster:  Aamir in the centre (obviously), Abhishek and Uday to his left and Katrina to the right; some digitally added flames on their chiseled frames; police cars, motorbikes and helicopters at the back and the backdrop of Chicago.

It is low budget and/or independent cinema that attempt to jump out and flash their signs saying “Hey guys, we’re here too!” by going for unconventional marketing approaches. Mastram gives it all in designing the wickedest minimalist posters which are even more eye-popping than those of Dibakar Banerjee’s Love Sex aur Dhokha or Anurag Kashyap’s Dev D. The film, however, is everything the posters are not – drab, clichéd, mild, tired, humorless, masale-bina (no spice) and, as Indian Express Shubhra Gupta aptly puts it, bland.

It is so disappointing that I can confidently suggest any interested student of marketing to study this film but cannot recommend this film to any movie-goer. Those who follow my reviews (I know a very few do so here’s a link to the review: https://www.ourvadodara.com/what-the-fish-review/) shall know that I’d severely put down the poster art of Gurmmeet Singh’s little known What The Fish, also released this year, while showing a favorable reception towards the film itself. For Mastram, I’d say ‘Great poster work, even better than Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac. But what a poor, poor film’. Mastram, to be brief, is vanilla.

Its director Akhilesh Jaiswal, co-writer of Anurag Kashyap’s banging (yet hollow, in my opinion) Gangs of Wasseypur has clarified in interviews that the film is not porn. Yes, I can aver after seeing the film – it is in no way porn. It is a ‘fictional biography of a mysterious Hindi porn writer whose legacy of pulp fiction and erotic stories redefined Hindi sex literature.’; Jaiswal has mentioned in a Q&A with Wall Street Journal that he got little information about the writer or the magazine while researching (and I can empathize with him, having just completed a dissertation on art investors in Vadodara, which I admit are few and very rich so difficult to approach) and so had to rely on fiction.  Now I understand the filmmaker’s need to ‘play it safe’ while making a biopic on someone who’s still alive; writer Abi Morgan was severely chastised for depicting former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher as a frail, senile, dementia-stricken widow hallucinating about her dead husband in the Meryl Streep starrer ‘Iron Lady’ when Thatcher was alive and, from her rare public appearances, looked in better health than how the film claimed she was. Now Akhilesh Jaiswal, who also wrote Mastram, didn’t have to face such difficulties – he had a happening theme and subject (he partly owes credit to former adult film actress Sunny Leone for this), he had little knowledge about the writer and he only had vague memories of the magazines having read it in his childhood. He could’ve easily played with the narrative and could’ve given a complex account of a person who repeatedly had to tap his primal needs and ink it onto paper (or type it using a typewriter). What motivated him to create all those fanciful erotic writings which, as Jaiswal suggests, had a certain aesthetic merit attached to it too? Money – yes, that’s one thing. And what else?

Mastram portrays his protagonist Raja Ram Vaishnav (Rahul  Bagga, better known for performances in past TV serials Powder and Kismat)  as a failed novelist and poet who isn’t taken seriously one bit by anyone except his wife Renu (Tara Alisha Berry), whose character is so doe-eyed and supportive throughout that it’s hard to believe her character at all. She readily encourages him to find a job in Delhi, and waits patiently for months till he’s able to show her his published work (one that has no adult stuff, is apparently about a woman’s woes and isn’t written under the pseudonym Mastram, which he adopts for fear that his reputation may be tarnished). It is surprising that Jaiswal doesn’t add any depth to their relationship. Does Raja Ram find it easier to fantasize about other women because he and his wife aren’t having an active sex life? Is his wife not well endowed the way most men would want a woman to be? What happens to their relationship after his secret is exposed, especially considering that he puts her to great use, in what could be the film’s ‘boldest’ scene, in one of his stories? The film doesn’t even hint at such possibilities. It is simply about a failed novelist who is delighted when his porn books, written only because a publisher asks him to include ‘masala’ into his stories, sell plenty in the market but is disappointed that his real ambition to be a successful (serious) novelist has to be sacrificed along the way.

I understand that Raja Ram couldn’t be shown moving in the literary circles because he was basically writing anonymously. But he did have a life, and life is far complex that what’s shown here. I expected black comedy. I didn’t expect this film to have humor I’d normally see in movies like Fukrey. I least expected bad comedy – failed comedy. I didn’t find much erotica in the film except for one sequence– play this slightly edited on Star Plus after 11 pm and I bet no one would find it ‘too adult’. I’ll tell you what real erotica is – buy a copy of ‘Memoirs of Fanny Hill – A Woman Of Pleasure’. Written by John Cleland in the eighteenth century and considered the “first original English prose pornography”, the erotica in that book is a gazillion times more alive, vividly descriptive and well-written than the naughty-naughty bits Mastram, according to Jaiswal’s film, supposedly contains. And you know what, Cleland wrote the whole book while in jail and, according to Wikipedia, was thought to be a homosexual as he wrote from a woman’s perspective. Could there be similar possibilities in case of Mastram’s writer? The film never answers. Its narration, lighting, color scheme and symbolism are nondescript.

Your head nor your hands need to be used here. Actually, you could use your head by taking my advice and trashing this film. And as for your hands, you know better than I where to find the right stuff.

ourvadodara.in Rating Guide:

* = Avoid!!

** = Rent It / TV Premiere

*** = Book The Cheapest Seats

**** = Book The Best Seats

***** = Book The Best Seats + Buy The DVD!