The Mehta Boys movie review: Halfway through the OTT movie, the roof of Amay Mehta's (Avinash Tiwary) top-floor apartment literally caves in. His father Shiv (Boman Irani) has been staying with him for a few days at this point. As metaphors for tumult/chaos/breakthrough go, it's not subtle but it is effective.
When the trailer for director-actor Boman Irani's 'The Mehta Boys' dropped online, the comments section filled up with remarks about the difficulty of navigating the formative father-son relationship. Viewers expecting to see the tumult unfold and the hurt spill out, will not be disappointed. For, throughout the film, we see Amay and his father Shiv Mehta make conciliatory, even generous overtures to encourage and accommodate each other by turns. Yet each time you think they're finally getting along, one of them will say or do something to trigger the other.
Throughout the movie, we also see the women in their lives - Amay's girlfriend Zara Gonsalves (Shreya Chaudhry of 'Bandish Bandits') and sister Anu Mehta Patel (Puja Sarup) - oiling the wheels of the father-and-son's grudging, halting relationship, while also holding their own.
Another thing of note in the film: Within this modern-day fathers-and-sons-sans-the-succession drama, the movie does two things sensitively and rather well - showing us the effects of ageing and loss.
The Mehta Boys movie plot
(Contains spoilers) The first time we see Amay and Shiv in the same frame, Amay has returned home to his mother's funeral. Shiv, obviously aggrieved, greets the mourners unthinkingly, unseeingly. His first words to his son - "Thank you for coming" - are the same greeting he offers to the others, till his brain registers who he's talking to.
That the relationship is strained is obvious from the get-go. Father and son can't even look at eachother, and would sooner leave the other alone without the intervention of the daughter/sister Anu. Here's how the different story threads unfold and then come together in the film:
One, Amay, an architect in Mumbai is reluctant to share his ideas with the boss. His girlfriend and coworker Zara tries to help him out of his imposter syndrome, but he's been stuck in that rut for 10 years.
Two, as Amay sits through another big office meeting not presenting his good ideas because he lacks confidence, he gets news of his mother death. He heads back home, to Navsari.
Three: Anu wants to take her father back to Florida with her. He doesn't want to go, but agrees because of a promise he had made to his dead wife. At the last moment, he can't fly out because the flight is overbooked.
Four: Amay has to take his dad home for a couple days. These couple days extend to a few more, as a passport is lost and found. A nice dinner is ruined. A grieving man hallucinates that his wife is telling him to stay on in India - at the home they lived in together.
Five: After much bickering and even more adjusting, a few stitches to the chin, a fixed roof, an insight from his father and a push from his boss, Amay finally gathers the courage to present his ideas at work. He gets some pushback, but by now, he can stand up to it and defend his designs. (The insight is this: one night over drinks, Shiv looks out from the balcony of Amay's Mumbai home and grimaces that all cities look the same. "India ab India hi nahi lagta.")
Six: Shiv gets to stay back in Navsari and do what he loves - coach kids to play cricket. He is not getting any younger, yet he's often angry with others for trying to help him or go easy on him.
It would be simplistic to say that it all ends well. Father and son find a way to understand and love each other again—in their own ways. Case in point: Shiv still holds the handbrake when his son drives, but now Amay smiles at his father's quirky way of looking out for him rather than getting irritated by it.
The Mehta Boys performances
Boman Irani as Shiv Mehta is just as you would expect: really quite good. He embodies the proud father with the failing body and a life that seems to be falling apart after the death of his wife.
Puja Sarup as Anu has a shorter role to play, and it's mostly towards the start of the film, but she steals the scene in which she sobs loudly at the airport as her father and her brother bicker again. She brokers an uneasy peace before getting on the plane, and so also sets the stage for the rest of the drama to unfold.
Shreya Chaudhry as Zara looks lovely in saris and suit-pants. She takes the baton from Anu in terms of keep the father-son relationship on the rails. Her role is meaty enough to give her moments to be disarming, decisive and supportive by turns. It's not an easy switch, but she makes it look easy. Watch out for the awkward scene where she spends the night at her boyfriend's, and his dad is (unexpectedly) in the apartment too. There's nothing extra here, and that's in keeping with the tone of the film as well.
Avinash Tiwary as Amay can feel a bit contrived at times, but he gets the petulance of the son bang-on. You can feel his irritation, his desire for approval, even praise, and his frustration at his father.
The Mehta Boys director and writer
Written and directed by Boman Irani, the film is intimate without being intense. The camera shift from large, expansive views of the skyline—as Amay looks out at skyscrapers, partly for inspiration and partly in dismay at their sameness, from his office conference room and his balcony—to inside rooms and cars and local parks and restaurants, and back. We see this pendulum shift in the relationship of the Mehta boys, too: there's caring and deep knowledge of each other, interrupted periodically by irritation at the other's overprotectiveness, till the pendulum swings back.
To give just one example: somewhere around the 36th minute in this 115-minute film, there's a sweet interlude where the father— and unexpected April rain in Mumbai—contrives to keep Amay home on the Sunday before a big presentation. Shiv makes instant noodles and sits down to watch a Charlie-Chaplinesque film (the screen is blurred; perhaps for copyright reasons). Amay harrumphs as he tries to continue working on his laptop and turns down the noodles. Minutes later, he can't help himself. He's watching the film, laughing, eating noodles and, soon, is asleep on the couch. There are similar instances of Amay realising his father's limitations and wanting to help, but these efforts are more heavyhanded, less practised and much less welcome—not least because they're taken as signals of frailty (Shiv is 71 in the movie, plus grieving for his wife has shaken him up), possibly obsolescence.
The writing, by Boman Irani and Alexander Dinelaris, with Hindi dialogues adapted by Madhurjeet Singh Garvi and others, is smooth in how it shows the frictions and fractures between father and son.
We see how one minute the father praises the son for designing massive buildings and then berates him in the next minute for not being able to render the models without a laptop—which is out of juice after a prolonged power cut, courtesy the uncharacteristic April rains (points must be given for this unforced shoutout to climate change in the film). This conversation devolves quickly, as Shiv presses on about architects in the time of Shah Jahan getting things done without modern machines, and Amay telling his father: my presentation is on Monday, not in 1658. It takes a turn for the worse still, as Shiv takes umbrage because he feels Amay has called him and his typing school outdated and outmoded. Amay objects. But the evening is ruined. Just like that.
Throughout the movie, there are plot points where the father acts stubbornly or the son is reactive, as the burden of care shifts subtly between the two. The writing and the original score—by Gulraj Singh—underscore love, tension, moments of peace till it's gloves up again over some small thing or perceived insult. Keep an ear out for flute-tabla-violin Indian instrumental music that plays early in the film, as Shiv discovers where and how his son has been living for the last 10 years and Amay looks on in a mix of frustration-giving up-smugness as his father insists on carrying his own luggage up the stairs. The music is light, almost mischievous in these moments.
The Mehta Boys ending explained
'The Mehta Boys' is heartbreaking in places. Shiv misses his wife all the time; more so when he sees an older sari-clad woman wearing her hair in a bun and a veni of flowers around it. Indeed, he misses his wife so much that he chooses to stay back in Navsari instead of moving to the US with his daughter.
Throughout the film, Shiv has resisted the idea that he is getting old, and that his body can longer take strenuous activity or big hits. The truth lands with a cricket ball to the chest during a practice session as he eggs a young player to bowl to him "like a man". Shiv's laid up on his couch. Yet you get the sense that he's thankful that it's just his rib that's bruised, and not his pride.
In the end, things are better between the father and son, mainly because Amay has learnt to roll with his father's idiosyncrasies and posturing about still being as able-bodied as he used to be. He's also calmer about his father's protective behaviours.
Towards the end of the film, Amay tells Shiv: My whole life I thought you were fighting with me and finding faults, when all you were doing was getting me ready to face the world. It's not the most novel takeaway. Microsoft founder Bill Gates in his new book 'Source Code' says something along the same lines (writing that once he realized that his parents were on his side, he stopped fighting them so much.) Yet it's one that bears repeating. 'The Mehta Boys' does it well, too
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