‘Majili’…A straightforward tale of innocence lost, dampened by a meandering resolution.
Majili starts in the present day, with Purna (an impressive Naga Chaitanya) umpiring for a local cricket match in Vizag. When he is spoken of, by a player (We have Purna right, they exclaim), and you get a slow-motion entrance, you would think he would be the star player whom everybody is relying on to win, but with his bearded poker face, Purna is introduced as the umpire of the match. Soon after, we slip into a flashback and learn about the set of incidents that have made Purna what he is today. Purna of the past dreamt of playing for India one day and was briefly the opening batsman for the East Coast Railway Team. In that sense, his (changed) position as an umpire reflects his current passive, stagnate state of living.
Majili’s entire first portion plays out Purna’s backstory. (No spoilers, but after Arjun Reddy, a heavily bearded man immediately equals to a broken heart). It’s an easy watch, with Vishnu Sharma’s stunning cinematography capturing Vizag’s beaches, shipping docks, its churches, and its winding hill roads. The picturization of the songs — Maayya Maayya and Naa Gundello, which are shot without any opulence, encapsulates the sense of freedom and innocence that the characters, mainly Purna, feel. Even the conflicts never cut too deep, whether it is Purna’s incomprehensibility at the politicals that is involved in the selection trials, or his brief stint working for the wrong crowd. When Anshu (Divyansha Kaushik) is harassed by Bhushan (Subbaraju), you expect a grand showdown, but a small utterance by Purna adds the emotional weight behind his anger, and the fight is suspended. It is to the director, Shiva Nirvana’s credit that these occurrences don’t become mere plot points. He establishes Purna’s pure love for the sport and unwavering resolute as a team player early on in a short scene when one player asks him to let complete his half-century, but Purna couldn’t care less, as all his eyes are on helping his team win. So, when Purna plays for a local team and starts engaging with the wrong crowd, we get only one scene of him consuming alcohol and gutka. The rest is on us to perceive what eventually became of those instances.
Ultimately all these things are a build-up towards the redemptive second half. If one woman drowned Purna, another one will rescue him and with Samantha playing that saviour, the expectations are bound to be high. Alas, this is exactly where the movie meanders. Except for the charmingly shot Priyathama Priyathama song (the director does montages well), the movie fumbles on with what it should do, now that it had arrived at the meat of the matter. The time spent on the lead couple together is alarmingly less (the resolution was whipped out in literally the last ten minutes), and instead, there is a trip to Dehradun and the inclusion of Anshu’s daughter, and some things involving her that just made me exasperated. (Sidenote: In movies, can’t men ever move on from their lovers until they are dead? Just wondering if Purna would have reconciled with Srvani if Anshu was still alive and well? Just some food for your thoughts.)
All this is sadder considering that Samantha is in top form — she even gets a hero like slow-motion entry — but doesn’t get to do much. Her character Srvani is just as stubborn as Purna. If he is adamant about spending his life pining for a woman who might never return, she too is adamant on staying married to a man who has no love for her. This clash/similarity could have led to a simmering love story, especially with the real-life couple at the center of it. Honestly, who doesn’t want to watch two good looking people fall for each other? But after all the build-up, the movie sadly doesn’t amount to anything close to that.
