Inba and his nephew share an unbreakable bond but when Inba gets married, the nephew feels neglected. The rest of the story is about how the two cope up with the separation.
Swasika, Inba’s sister, who is married for 10 years, doesn’t have a child yet. Maaman is exceptional in exploring this subject — the plight of a woman who is constantly scrutinized by the society & family for being unable to conceive, for being called infertile, the numerous, irrational religious penances she takes up, and the sudden change in the family that starts showering her with love the moment she gets pregnant, is very realistically portrayed.
But the morally high & progressive horse that the film sits on, fumbles upon a steep slope almost immediately.
What starts as a film on not being able to have kids soon becomes a film on why one shouldn’t have kids. The nephew (Laddu) then, becomes the conflict of the film, to the family and to the audience, or his discipline and the lack thereof — his clinginess to his uncle is unjustified and when Rekha draws boundaries, she is villainized.
That’s the problem with Maaman, it villainizes the women – Swasika and Aishwarya for merely having opinions and turns one against each other. It never acknowledges Soori’s inability to take a stand, or having wrong priorities but calls its women crazy or even worse, makes its women call each other crazy. It also blames Rekha for breaking the family, and not adjusting when she puts forward the most rational and human demands.
Archaic dialogues of wife-bashing are dispersed throughout the film and by men of all ages too and that’s when you realize that in this dysfunctional & maladjusted family, Laddu is the most sane member — and that’s saying something.
Everybody in Maaman’s family guilt trip and gaslight — the men do it to the women, the women do it to each other, and everybody does it to the child but when Aishwarya Lekshmi questions, the patriarch of the family advises them to ‘adjust’ because he believes women are god & men need women to survive (read coddled).
Prasanth Pandiyaraj, the director, whose previous venture was Vilangu is a cinematic gem — so it’s quite natural to wonder what went wrong in Maaman . It is Hesham’s weakest album yet: the songs don’t stick with you and the score is jarring too. The cast of Maaman, however, is quite apt – Soori, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Swasika, Baba Baskar, Rajkiran, Jayaprakash and other supporting characters are convincing.
Maaman is a new story with new ideas but approached with old and primitive ideals.