More often than not, films are built on logical foundations. Three-part screenplay, eight-sequence structure. It not only provides a clear path for filmmakers to tread upon but also, I guess, gives the audience something to look forward to as the film progresses through its runtime. But Month Of Madhu (MoM), despite having a definite pay-off, does not at all feel like it adheres to these said conventions. One major reason behind this could be the fact that we do not have an inkling of where this film is heading most of the time ourselves. The opening and closing scenes of the film — involving Lekha (Swathi) and Madhusudan Rao (Naveen Chandra) in 2003 and 2023 — are an example of how what you think will happen next in the film is so far away from what actually transpires on screen. And what happens in the middle sometimes qualifies way less as a middle, and more like standalone vignettes with their own beginning and ending.
Cast – Swathi, Naveen Chandra, Shreya Navile, Harsha Chemudu, Gnaneshwari Kandregula, Manjula Ghattamneni
Director – Srikanth Nagothi
Lekha and Madhusudan exist in the limbo between separation and dissolution of marriage. In a tale Madhu tells multiple times, we find out that Lekha exited out of his life when he went to buy mutton. “I came home, and put the mutton in the fridge. When I looked around, she was not there. I never saw her again.” is Madhu’s version of the story, a narrative that reflects the very disbelief people come with when they ask, “Ok, but why are you guys getting a divorce?”. Lekha, on the other hand, is more dour and less theatrical when people ask, even give a ton of unsolicited advice about her personal life. The film never walks us through their marriage itself, only its genesis and broken fragments. But Lekha and Madhu, despite becoming social pariahs, are less interested in what society has to say about them and more about their own love. Madhu talks about how he only loved the way he knew to love, like the way his father loved his mother. We never see the father in the film, but we do get to know that the father, much like Madhu, was an emotionally abusive alcoholic.
Compared to Madhu, whose narcissistic, hard-drinking, pathological lying ways make him unlikeable and inaccessible, Lekha’s grief is more palpable and moving. In one part of the film, she says, “I lost all my patience. Only when I lost my patience, I learnt that love also has its patience.” In that one line, you see what all she possibly endured in the name of love, despite never actually seeing it. In a parallel played across timelines, we see Lekha telling someone that she thinks of Madhu way more than she thinks of herself in the past, which is immediately followed by a scene in the present where she tells a colleague who fancies her that he should never think about or love anybody more than themselves.
It is hard to understand why Madhu’s namesake and the film’s third character Madhumati — a teenage NRI who decides to spend a month in India after returning to the homeland for a wedding — features in this story. One way of seeing it is to see Madhu Jr as the kid Madhu and Lekha never had. But maybe we, the audience of the film, are all Madhus. We may not have any obvious connection to the films we watch or the art we consume and yet it passes by in our lives, keeping our loneliness at bay. Offering us company, connection and respite the way the Madhus in this film gave each other through their relationship. And loneliness is indeed a recurring theme in the film. At least two times in the film, Lekha tells people that it is better to be alone without being married than to be alone in a marriage. If Lekha wishes she could be seen by Madhu, Madhu Jr wishes she could be seen and understood better by her mother (Manjula Ghattamneni). Even the film’s supporting characters, which include a widowed yoga instructor and a cellphone shop owner who has a crush on Madhu Jr, are lonely in their own ways, hoping they get seen and acknowledged by those they love. Echoing the film’s various shades of loneliness and longing, Bhakta Ramadasu’s Paluke Bangaaramayena, a kirthana where a devotee keeps asking god why he does not respond no matter how many times he calls him, plays at different times throughout the film.
By the end of it all, the film does offer a poetic closure to the Madhus’. The two endings, despite being different, reflect that differences between individuals who love each other does not necessarily need to distance people within a relationship and make them feel alienated. Yes, cause and effect exists but correlation is also not causation. Of course, what sets these two situations apart, is the effort one needs to put in to keep a relationship alive. Madhu Jr’s tale is barely coming-of-age. In a lot of ways, her arc is similar to that of Baby’s Vaishnavi. But what again, sets these two apart, is the gaze with which a director approaches depicting their respective characters. Is a woman bad just because she smokes, drinks and indulges in casual sex? For some, it is cause and effect. For others, correlation is not causation.
MoM is set in Visakhapatnam, and there is enough B-roll of the waves crashing against the shore, but it is way more than footage to display the location where the film is set. In a film framed as a series of memories, the waves are a poignant visual metaphor for the ebb and flow of time. MoM follows a non-linear format, but it feels less like a stylistic choice and more like an intuitive one. A memory of Lekha asking her mother why she makes idlis all the time is immediately cut to her telling her mother in the present that idlis is all she can make at the moment. Lekha’s brother (Raja Chembolu) coming to terms with his sister’s clandestine affair with Madhu is immediately followed by him refusing to accept the separation. It almost feels like the film’s characters are themselves driving the film, triggering what comes next with their memories, almost entirely the way we cut into our memories at different times in the present.
Madhu Sr is equally in denial for the most part about his marriage dying and is also seen in other stages of grief as well, right up to acceptance. At first sight, it almost feels like Naveen Chandra is playing some version of the character he has played in his previous films but Madhu is evidently a far deeper character, and Naveen is riveting to watch in the smaller, more subdued moments where the pathos is sometimes a bubble, other times a stream. Swathi is also amazing, filling Lekha with a measured strength in the face of severe judgment. Through Lekha, we understand best that marriage is a personal matter, not a societal one. And also that the pursuit of happiness and hope are its own forms of revolution. Madhu Jr is also an embodiment of this very pursuit, trying to find her footing amidst the conflicting value systems of the US and India. MoM displays no such struggles, standing defiant and strong in the face of conventions, both social & cinematic. The cost of an individual in a relationship and the price of an individual on their own are the key issues the film is always trying to figure out, but the experience it gives one at the end of it all is quite invaluable.
#Month #Madhu #Movie #Review #Love #loss #longing #meet #bittersweet #triumphant #tale
