'Muthayya' Movie Review: Big Dreams and Bigger Impact in This Charming Little Package

Director: Bhaskhar Maurya
Writer: Bhaskhar Maurya
Cast: Sudhakar Reddy, Arun Kumar, Purna Chander M, Mounika Bomma, Sai Leela, Kiran Kumar, Jayavardhan Sagar
Streaming on: ETW Win
Language: Telugu

Dreamers somehow always command the biggest empathy in stories. As Mia from Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (2016) puts it quite tenaciously in song, they often are “fools”, but fools who dream, ache, and choose to do it all over again. Bhaskar Maurya’s Muthayya is about one such dreamer who dares to dream and dares further to be the “fool” who wants to become a film actor at 70 no less.

Charisma comes naturally to small-time theatre actor Muthayya (Sudhakar Reddy). When he’s not acting or drinking the occasional arrack on the fields, he’s around people often charmed by his presence. Whether it’s the photographer who lovingly clicks and develops his portfolio shots in a moment’s notice or his daughter-in-law who sticks some money into his pocket, Muthayya’s joy is the source of his people’s joy. The biggest member of his fan club is Malli (Arun Kumar), a young mechanic who spends all his time with his senior best friend. They drink, eat, squabble, and share their grief. But most of all, they pick each other up. So, when Muthayya decides to star in a short film to fulfil his lifelong desire of being seen by an audience, Malli drops everything to help him.

This might largely be the story of Muthayya, but Bhaskar gives us beautiful sub-stories packed with deep subtexts. There’s a young romance that takes you by pleasant surprise (as Ram Jagadeesh’s recent Telugu film Court did) for its inconspicuous innocence, a tender track about a son who slowly harbours resentment towards his father, finally going on to atoning for his mistake, and another involving the collective grief of a generation of local artists feeling irrelevant. And the film is in no hurry to go over these stories in broad strokes. This makes Muthayya a solid drama that doesn’t just exist to spew inspirational drivel on audiences. It instead immerses us into a milieu and gradually connects us to its people.

Divakar Mani’s camera aids Bhaskar in this process, sometimes capturing beautiful static shots of hands gingerly flipping rotis on the stove or wide shots of movement, such as a family routinely eating their dinner, capturing the ordinariness in Muthayya’s life. And when excitement peaks in Muthayya’s life — some of the best scenes in the film involve Malli struggling to make the theatre actor recite lines to the phone’s tiny camera for some TikTok — the energy is frenetic and infectious. 

Sudhakar Reddy brings deep levels of complexity to Muthayya’s struggling actor. He is always seen with a smile, and greets everyone he meets with the “did you eat?” civility (and he actually wants to know if they lunched). But he also can’t hide the feeling of profound sadness that often comes with being a failed actor. His story about going to Madras as a young man with ₹72 in his pocket moves us and Malli in equal measure. Malli describes Muthayya in a lovely line in the film, even if he means it as a taunt. He scoffs at him for being “obsessed with beauty.” All that incessant twirling of the handlebar moustache makes us agree with Malli. But which actor isn’t? He might just be playing Lord Daksha to a few people on his street every weekend, but that doesn’t stop him from dreaming.

Arun Kumar is lovely as Malli, who doesn’t mind being a 70-something’s perennial sidekick. The joy he feels over his friend’s achievements is unparalleled. Whether it’s the joy of bringing him to a film shoot or even just the joy of abandoning work to have an afternoon drink, Malli is Muthayya’s biggest cheerleader. Ironically enough, it’s Malli, and not Muthayya, who has the best lines in the film. In a lovely moment, he expresses how Muthayya’s relentless energy at 70 makes him reflect on his lethargy as a man in his twenties. Muthayya is a film that is filled with astute observations of human behaviour, and restores faith in all the fools who dare to dream.