There are films that woo the box office relegating logic to the background, heavily relying on star power and formula. There are films that trust the intelligence of the audience and give them something to chew on, something that will eventually knock their socks off and give them an experience worth remembering. Such films have recall value besides going on to become surprise hits. Then, there are films that earnestly want to take the second route but stop midway, unsure if the box office will accept something considered niche. They overtly simplify a concept trying to make it accessible to a larger section of the audience. Watching National award winning director Neelakanta’s Maaya , we couldn’t help feeling that perhaps he was trying to walk that mid-path.
Maaya touches upon extrasensory perception with its protagonist Meghana, a television reporter (Avantika Mishra) having the ability to foresee deaths waiting to happen. As a child, she is unable to comprehend the gravity of a vision and suffers a personal loss. Years later, a vision helps her prevent a murder in the nick of time. ESP is a subject rarely touched upon in Telugu cinema and a few scenes whet our appetite, making us anticipate for more.
Meghana meets fashion designer Siddharth Varma (Harshavardhan Rane) and is swept off her feet by the smooth-talking designer who harps on helping weavers of Pochampally and Mangalgiri by the day and parties by night. The romance is stopped in its tracks when her childhood friend Pooja (Sushma Raj) arrives and announces her impending wedding with Siddharth. Meghana accepts reality quietly and tries to cope with it, until she is jolted with a vision that Siddharth is a murderer in waiting.
She confides her visions to her father (Nagababu) and a parapsychologist (Jhansi) and tries to find the truth about Siddharth. With a gripping screenplay in place, the film could have seamlessly shifted between the romance and thriller tracks. But Maaya takes its own pace to unravel and ends up feeling longer than it actually is. The film has very few twists and turns to position itself as a thriller and just when we feel the director is tying up the different threads of the story into a gripping drama, the suspense comes undone. It’s not tough for a regular moviegoer to sense the culprit.
Maaya has its moments and had immense potential, which unfortunately hasn’t been tapped into. Avantika is beautiful, expressive and tries her best to pull off a role that calls for an experienced actress. Her styling, though impeccable, lets her character down in a few sequences. A television reporter, when out on work, needn’t always be perfectly turned out with manicured nails and not a strand of hair out of place. Sushma Raj and Nandini Rai, too, are actresses with potential. This is probably one of the toughest roles Harshavardhan Rane has played so far and is impressive. Music by Shekhar Chandra and cinematography by Balreddy deserve mention.
If only the film had been racy, it would have made for a riveting watch.
