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A review on Kriti Sanon's Mimi. It is a bundle of contradictions- but an emotional ride that brings a lot of food for thought.
A review on Kriti Sanon’s Mimi released on Netflix. It is a bundle of contradictions- but an emotional ride that brings a lot of food for thought.
A meaningful piece of art is always thought provoking. It stirs something within and helps us be better versions of ourselves. It can enlighten, it can educate. But sadly, not all, in the name of art, do that or are able to achieve that.
There’s usually a message or a theme in an artist’s work. They might touch upon other issues or themes on the way but to expect that they’ll address and resolve all of them in the same work might be too idealistic.
Or let’s say I chose to be less idealistic after I watched Mimi this week. A movie that aims to break stereotypes and talk about a topic that not many feel comfortable talking about, be it in urban or rural India.
So what does Mimi, the latest Bollywood film released on Netflix, really do?
Being a mainstream Bollywood movie, with names such as Kriti Sanon, Pankaj Tripathi and A R Rahman associated with it, the fact that it’ll reach the masses should be no revelation.
And when meaningful art reaches the right audience, it becomes better. It gets elevated to something that was always meant to be out in the open for everyone’s consumption.
This could be why we have the concept of “tax-free” movies in India. The tickets are sold without the usual tax so that more people can watch it in cinemas. Sounds like a 1990s concept isn’t it? Well Toilet Ek Prem Katha, Hindi Medium and Airlift are some of the more recent examples.
Coming back to Mimi, does it have a message? Does it achieve that “meaningful” status in 2021? Does it address a social issue that’s relevant? Yes It does.
For me, the climax was what brought it all together. I kept wondering throughout the film, how are they doing to revolve the issues at hand.
Kriti Sanon gives a brilliant performance, while Pankaj Tripathi continues to impress and make the audience fall in love with the character he plays.
So does Mimi disappoint then? Yes it does when it uses terms like Down Syndrome and “normal baby” loosely. When it fails to do its research on the adoption system in India.
Another problem that I noticed was the protagonist’s decision to choose a child over her career but not much about how she came to that decision.
Some of the issues the film could have talked about but chose not to:
Single motherhood Surrogacy Down syndrome A woman’s choice of career over child
The orthodox family that turns supportive overnight and the Muslim friend who seems to be living without any social pressure is a rare phenomenon if you look at real life in our country.
But then I personally know such people. They do exist.
So yes they could have chosen to portray all these challenges too. But with a limited time frame, you got to focus on one. And that one message that they are trying to put across is the plight of orphans in the world. The issue of adoption. The fact that if we create a nation of all orphans in the world right now, it’ll rank 9th in population.
And that with a support system, anything is possible. As a mother raising her toddler in another country during a pandemic, I couldn’t help but get misty-eyed over the scenes that truly depict the statement “It takes a village to raise a child.”
For now, I feel hopeful that these issues are being discussed in a mainstream Bollywood movie. Watch this one for an emotional ride and a lot of food for thought.
Image courtesy- Youtube
A former journalist, a freelance content creator and a mom blogger who can be found scribbling away in her many diaries, when she’s not entertaining or learning from her toddler daughter. A spiritually-inclined read more...
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My house-help asked excitedly, “I am going for wedding. Can you let me wear your red & black saree? To be honest I was stumped for a moment; I didn’t know what to say but I still said yes.
I lent a gorgeous saree to my house-help for a wedding in her family. Soon I stated getting questions if I would wear that saree again or if I was okay to be seen wearing the same saree my house-help was wearing?
We are all so conditioned to give our used clothes to our house-helps but are we okay to wear the clothes they were wearing?
A few days ago she came excitedly to me, “I am going for a family wedding. I want to wear your red & black saree, Ill wash and give it to you after the function. Please can you let me wear it?”
Beauty is a very clever, very evil capitalist tool. It traps those who have it into hanging on to it for dear life and those who don't into mutilating, torturing themselves to achieve the unachievable.
I recently wrote a piece about MP Shashi Tharoor’s tweet in which he had shared a pic with six women parliamentarians tagging them and saying “Who says the Lok Sabha isn’t an attractive place to work?”
There was a rash of comments on the post shared on Instagram, which ranged from “chill, it’s just a compliment” and “stop overthinking compliments”, to (worried) men lamenting about “these feminazi”.
Here’s my answer to all those comments.
When Radha couldn't come for a few days, Mimi's parents behaved like the world had ended. Then they realized their house help's son had a fatal disease...
When Radha couldn’t come for a few days, Mimi’s parents behaved like the world had ended. Then they realized their house help’s son had a fatal disease…
‘Papa, what do you think? Will she agree? Papa!!!’
Manas lowered the paper to face Mimi at last. His daughter was not going to give up until she received some acknowledgement.
Kriti Sanon's new video on International Women's Day went viral. But guess what? We're not done talking. We need to talk - and act!
Kriti Sanon’s new video on International Women’s Day went viral. But guess what? We’re not done talking. We need to talk – and act!
Tokenism marked International Women’s Day for the most part, and many women I know have agreed to this. Be it those countless offers that sailed on a tide that capitalized International Women’s Day, or those myriad pledges taken to raise the bar on worldwide activism for women’s rights and parity that all turned into pumpkins at midnight, this was clearly the way we were willing to go.
One of those riding the tide in all of this was Kriti Sanon, and her clothing brand that she co-created with Anjana Reddy – Ms. Taken. The video comprises the currently famous way of video-based storytelling using banners and facial expressions to convey a message, and begins with a rather happy looking Kriti, whose expressions turn to anger and then to disgruntlement, as she shoves the last of the sheets before walking out of the frame. The sheets, by the way, start with the perfunctory women’s day greeting, and end in “All we do is talk, and I’m done talking.”