Is Sridevi’s ‘Mom’ Good Parenting Advice?

‘Mom’ boasts of powerful performances by Sridevi, Nawazuddin and Akshaye, but lacks thrill and reasoning. 

Photo courtesy: Zee Studios

Ravi Udyawar’s Mom isn’t a great thriller, but it did have me rooting for Sridevi’s powerful performance, despite the film’s questionable ideas of justice and parenting. While the film buff in me walked away disappointed, as a woman, I found myself rooting for the revenge trip Devaki (Sridevi) is on, when her step-daughter Arya (Sajal Ali) is denied justice after being brutally gang-raped. But that’s where I had to stop myself. Beware! Spoilers ahead.

Mom not only justifies, but glorifies the idea that a woman has every right to take the law into her own hands, when it comes to rape. Even though that idea made me squirm, it also made me wonder if I would’ve felt differently, had I been in Devaki’s shoes.

Arya could never accept her biology teacher as her mother. Till the very last minute of the film, Devaki cringes at being called ma’am rather tauntingly by her step-daughter. But she understands Arya’s teenage angst over losing her mother to death and then her father to another woman.

The mom inside Devaki breaks down at seeing the tattered body of her teenage daughter in the ICU. Even caring for her means putting up a fight. But when the law fails Devaki, she takes matters in her own hands. I want to ask mothers out there- would you too? More importantly, would you allow that to be the ultimate parameter for your mamta?

The film treads the thin line between what’s right, wrong and very wrong, rather uncomfortably.

But what makes me squirm is its rather simplistic approach to a complex crime. Arya’s trauma and state of mind take a backseat as the screenplay thrusts forward Devaki’s journey as the cold mother-turned-assassin. She has no patience to let kaanoon do it’s job. Devaki turns into a criminal mind and uses Nawaz’s information to plot her clever moves against the perpetrators, making a total mockery of the police and the judiciary.

Though Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s detective character Daya Shankar almost drowns the loopholes in the story with his unexpected humour, Devaki continues her mission as the silent maimer. Even Officer Mathew’s (Akshaye Khanna) tough cop brain is too slow to catch up with this maa ki extreme mamta.

Sridevi in a scene from Ravi Udyawar’s Mom. Photo courtesy: Zee Studios

The revelation of Devaki’s scheming is disappointingly easy too. So is the film’s climax. But the real moments of trauma, silence, bawling and grief make the film extremely real.

What lingers long after you’ve watched the film is its rape scene. Udyawar leaves it entirely upto one’s imagination, and everything that you’ve ever read, seen or heard about the brutality of rape, comes gushing at you with goosebumps, especially if you’re a woman. AR Rahman’s haunting background score and the distant aerial shot of a dark tinted vehicle cruising through the deserted streets of Delhi, leaves you in agony and awe.

Sridevi’s performance will make you tear up no doubt. But the fact that Arya finally passes her in the meri mummy best mummy test only after she is done castrating, poisoning and shooting her daughter’s rapists, is a bit much for me to digest. By this logic, was Arya’s father, who did nothing but appeal in higher courts for justice, a lousy parent?

Despite Sridevi and Nawazuddin’s convincing performances, Mom falls terribly short when it comes to chills and thrills. And it doesn’t set a very good example in the parenting department either.