'Mask' Movie Review: Kavin Headlines This Uneven Ode to Middle-Class Rage

Mask is in love with citing cinema—the masks worn by robbers that open the film’s drama are of MR Radha; the actor Mohan’s filmography plays an important role, almost giving the scene its language, the way people use cinema and cinematic language to express their feelings; as does Nayakan, and its famous “nallavara kettavara” question (Are you a good or bad person?) and the ‘Naan Sirithal Deepavali’ brothel song, which is creepily—intentionally—transposed on that of a girl, who even wears her hair the way the women in the song did, in two gilded braids. 

Mask is also in love with cinema. The way the camera snakes through the film, and the way the edit splices the story apart to stitch it together, shows a desire to make cinema and not just movies. In one scene, Kavin, playing Velu—also the name of Kamal Haasan’s character in Nayakan—walks into the restaurant his father owns, and the camera trails him till he strikes his gaze upon a beautiful girl, at which point the camera, as though Velu, stops to glare at her, and then you see her gaze shifting towards the left, and it is when Kavin is seen at the left edge of the image walking on, you realise he has moved forward, but you are still frozen there, at that moment of a match being lit. It is a thrilling frame that renders the feeling of being stuck and the desire to push ahead that comes with love at first sight. What next? What if we stay in this moment forever? 

But Mask, for all its love, doesn’t quite cut it. It uses the “nallavara kettavara” cliche—a cliche so overused it has become a symbol of half-hearted heroism itself—to mount Velu’s character, an ethical hacker who has no qualms extracting money out of people, blackmailing them with footage of their affairs, irrespective of those who can and cannot afford his charges. But he is the hero, because he gets to ask the question of whether he is a good or bad person, such is the fickle state of affairs in our movies. Heroism is more in the asking, than in the answering. 

A still from 'Mask'

On the other hand is Bhumi (Andrea Jeremiah), a woman so coherent and strident in her desire to make money and be free that she has no use for that question. She is what she has to be. This is another kind of heroism that the film sets up, only to squander its potential. 

Unfortunately for us, cinema prefers those that ask over those that do—and so Bhumi is relegated to villainy in the second half. Introduced as a woman who takes trafficked kids in to educate them for a better life, she is later described as a sex trafficker herself, a thol vyapari. She trains the children under her care to become professionals—and this can also mean sex work. She will chop the fingers of those men who misbehave with the sex workers under her care. The film almost comes close to saying sex work is work—much like being a lawyer or a dancer or an engineer. But it cannot possibly hold the weight of that statement on its fragile body that is insistent on turning Bhumi into a Bond villain. Besides, it also wants to sexualise its women, in an uncomfortably shot song of women thrusting their breasts at the camera—seducing us.  Bhumi has collected and is now distributing 440 crores of cash to help a politician come to power. In return, the politician will give her new legal documents with which she can begin a new life. This money, though, has now been stolen, and Velu—as a private investigator, an ethical private investigator, with a way to find answers—has been entrusted with finding out who. The wrinkle is that Venu is involved in this heist, in a twist that includes strawberry condoms and that MR Mohan mask. 

The set up is delicious, albeit with a nosy, irritating voice-over that keeps nudging us—see what happens in five minutes, see what happens next, see now, see, when what we are doing is, in fact, seeing. 

A still from 'Mask'

A mild spoiler in this paragraph. Jeremiah has a chilling screen presence here, with a frigid gaze that even when she is to be vanquished, the film doesn’t show us her at her most vulnerable, the moment when she gives up before death. The film cuts away before it blows her off. She has even the film’s balls clutched tightly in her grip, it doesn’t even get to bid her a cathartic adieu. There is a scene where Velu upstages her, and he looks her in the eyes as she is looking into his, and though the film lands on Velu’s side of the issue, it is Bhumi’s manicured perfection you cannot help but be swayed by. The way she glares back at him, defeated for the moment, is a promise to upend that disproportion.

Kavin’s comforting presence is made for such saviour cinema—a monotone charm that doesn’t slip up anything, such that even when he weeps, it feels like a set-up. He feels reliable, as though the film can rest its moral burdens on him without worrying. 

Ultimately, though, what Mask is unable to do is to collect the strands it has laid out. Velu might have fallen in love with a woman—who speaks Hindi, a nod to the increased presence of the language in Chennai, but whose backstory is left unanswered—but what this love even means is forgotten after a brief moment of vulnerability. Bhumi, too, speaks of her past in quick anecdotes that doesn’t really carry the weight of violence that she carries, and wants to get rid of. The first half of the film, where Mask is comfortable not making bold statements about characters, slowly slipping into their lives—their childhood, their marriage—is overwritten by a second half that is driven by a desire to keep the story moving towards a climax that insists on turning the film into an ode to middle class rage. The heady progression of the story thumbs over its fragile deepening—and, truly, what cinema can ever come of that?