Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola – Filmi Feast

Vishal Bhardwaj’s ‘Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola’ –   India, Pink Buffaloes & More

‘Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola’ – it’s a real mouthful of a movie title but what a tasty morsel! It is a reminder of why I  love going to the movies. At a time when so many Bollywood films are warmed up repeats of what’s gone before, films where you can easily check out the beginning and the ending, fast forward to a few item numbers on Netflix or simply watch a few song scenes on Youtube, Matru ki Bijlee is a film which is quite delicious and warrants watching.  Just like you wouldn’t want to miss any part of a feast, you don’t want to miss any sequence of it. It took me back to the Vishal Bhardwaj movie that I really enjoyed – ‘Blue Umbrella’, a small unheralded film which told of  larger truths through a really simple tale.

Matru Ki Bijlee is a potent mix – dark comedy, political satire, romance – and great fun. It has something to say about urgent social issues and you enjoy listening because it’s not a lecture or a diatribe but a beguiling tale, cheekily told. The action takes place in Mandola, a sleepy little village in Haryana whose most powerful inhabitant is Harry Mandola (Pankaj Kapur), a heartless, calculating industrialist who has some cold-blooded plans to turn green fields into malls and housing developments with the help of manipulative politician Chaudhari Devi (Shabana Azmi). She has some pretty cold-blooded plans of her own to marry off her spineless son Baadal (Arya Babbar) to Mandola’s feisty daughter Bijlee (Anushka Sharma) and thus gobble up Mandola’s vast properties.

The Two Mandolas

The twist is that the moment Mandola drinks the local liquor Gulabo he becomes quite another man, a lovable bleeding heart, a closet socialist who in fact incites the villagers to revolt against himself! His side-kick in all the craziness is Matru, (Imran Khan) his driver who is supposed to keep him away from the bottle but in fact makes sure he has a steady supply. So the movie swings on the wild pendulum of the two Mandolas, and it makes for a fun-filled blast. Agrarian revolts, greedy politicians, socialist angst, and  police corruption were never addressed with so much zest, with a bright pink buffalo, wild African dancers and a barrage of cow dung cakes thrown in.

This is not a movie with a conventional hero-heroine story – it is a three-pronged attack and the largest role is that of Harry Mandola played superbly by Pankaj Kapur. He hogs a lot of screen space and absolutely deserves it. Shabana Azmi as the crooked politician plays her with such nasty delight, such relish that you know she’s really enjoying the joke, being a do-gooder and farmers’ friend in real life. Imran Khan and Anushka Sharma, eye-catching stunners both,  are names which should bring commercial viability to this movie and the screen sizzles with the chemistry between the two.

For Vishal Bhardwaj fans, this is a must-watch, and for those who don’t know his movies, this is a good place to start.  At times the action slows a bit, the plot gets a bit muddled and the revolution loses its punch but the last few scenes of the wedding tamasha are hilarious and the ending will make you smile. You’ll also love the spit-fire dialogues, lyrics and the music. ‘Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola’ – a mouthful but an eyeful and an earful too.  Go for it.