Mothers can go places to save their children. Maa, featuring Kajol, takes over your viscera as the rage lures you in. You see the unrelenting, raw fury of a mother.
There comes a moment in mythology and life when love must wear the face of rage. Maa draws its soul from that very moment, the primal, uncontainable wrath of Kaali, born not out of hatred, but out of love pushed to its edge. This film is a meditation on that transformation. What begins as grief quietly gathers the weight of injustice, until it demands a reckoning.
Maa, directed by Vishal Furia and produced by Jio Studios and Devgn Films, is a searing fusion of fable, eyesore, and uncooked human emotion.
The film’s grit is set inside a village, Chandarpur, West Bengal. The town draws you with its eccentricity. A strange fable that has kept the natives in trepidation. But as you leap, you understand that you are watching it for a bigger picture, female infanticide. Enveloped under the tonalities of what the audience likes to witness, Maa comes with a sincere message.
Its wreck begins at the script level, where writers Ajit Jagtap, Aamil Keeyan Khan, and Saiwyn Quadras have crafted a mythically sonorous and emotionally shattering narrative. Their writing flows precisely, each scene unlocking the next, building tension like a carefully wound trap. The conceptual leap of creating the fictional ‘Daitya aka Amsaja’ and seamlessly merging him with the mythological Raktbeej is ingenious. This synthesis not only invokes the fierce power of Durga and Kaali but anchors Kajol’s transformation into Ambika with mythic weight and cinematic electricity, almost like a cinematic exorcism. The dialogues are intense, emotionally laden, and willfully haunting. They are never just spoken but deeply felt.
Vishal Furia treats the script like sacred ground, peeling back its layers with reverence and daring. He paints the film like a sculptor. He does not merely direct; he orchestrates, allowing every emotional crescendo and mythic undertone to hit with full force. His vision matches the film’s cast, who do not simply perform but embody their roles. Kajol delivers a career-defining turn, shifting from heartbreak to divine fury with unprecedented conviction. Yet the film’s weight is also carried by the men around her. The supporting cast includes Ronit Roy, Indraneil Sengupta and Kherin Sharma, who stemmed the script like pillars, adding the pomp to what the narrative solicited.
Kajol reaffirms her stature as a performer who commands the screen with quiet authority, even in her most restrained moments. She traverses a complex emotional landscape with finesse, shifting between grief, resilience, and maternal instinct in a way that feels both deeply human and effortlessly layered.
Maa is a bold and audacious leap in Indian storytelling, made possible by the indefatigable backing of Jio Studios and Devgn Films. It is not just a film but a cinematic invocation where blood, belief, and maternal wrath rise together in thunderous unison.
Maa leaves you with a truth far more disturbing than any myth—it tells us that the real monsters never die. The film may end with Ambika slaying Amsaja, but it also reveals that darkness is not vanquished, only replaced.
So no comfort, there. Only confrontations. With your demons, yes. But also the society. It holds a mirror to a society that still buries its daughters and silences its mothers, and it does so through myth, metaphor, and searing emotion.
As the final frames bleed with both devastation and divinity, you are reminded that some truths are too sacred to whisper. They must be screamed. In Kajol’s fire, in Furia’s vision, and in the film’s myth-soaked heart, Maa becomes more than cinema. It becomes a cry for justice, echoing across time, wrapped in the timeless fury of a mother who will not be denied, well in loop.
IWMBuzz rates it 4 out of 5 stars.
