The Movie

This movie had a lot of promise. In fact, after reading the box, I actually thought, if done right, this movie could be pretty darn good. The premise is interesting enough; a young man gets fired from his professional job and returns to his homeland to make a fresh start and write a book. But when he begins his new life destiny guides him on another path that changes him, and his country forever. Unfortunately this movie wasn't done well. Now I won't blame the acting, even though the performances were nothing to write home about, and I won't blame the story, because I felt it had a lot of potential. However I will blame the director, because Ismail Merchant, the director for The Mystic Masseur, dragged this story through the mud for nearly two straight hours. This might even make a good assignment for future film students to see what not to do when directing a movie. First, let me give you a rundown of the plot.

The movie begins in London, in the early 1950's. Here an Oxford student named Partap (Jimi Mistry) meets a longtime friend Ganesh (Aasif Mandvi) from his homeland of Trinidad. We get the feeling that the two are great friends, but we don't know what they've been through together. From here, the movie basically takes off as a very long flashback, where we see how Ganesh's life goes from bad, (he gets fired, his father dies, and he returns home to start his life over and write a book) to interesting, (he finds a wife, then takes up massaging to pay the bills) to lucrative, (he becomes a famous healer and powerful political figure).

From what I understand this movie is supposed to be a lighthearted comedy. Only problem is I never knew what scenes were supposed to be funny. Many times I thought to myself, "oh, I get it, this is supposed to be comical. Wait, no I guess it isn't. Oh, well maybe it is." The problem was Merchant waited so long to introduce humor into the movie, that when he finally starts using it, the viewer isn't sure if it is intentional or not. Actually, he could have easily solved this problem by making it truly funny. But the first 40 minutes of this film is so slow and boring, that getting into the story is like trying to sit still while someone pulls out all your nose hairs one by one.

This movie did several things wrong. For starters, it awkwardly jumps around a few times, which would be fine except the transitions are pretty rough and confusing. Also, conflicts between certain characters seem strangely out of place, and ultimately go unresolved. But what really stands out is the poor decisions in directing and editing pertaining to scene length and depth. Merchant chose to dedicate huge amounts of screen time to unimportant scenes. After the conclusion of countless scenes I remember saying to myself, "that's it?" I then expected these lengthy expositions to pay off somewhere later in the film, but they never did. Merchant just concentrated too hard on the wrong plot points. He then made the mistake of rushing through the more interesting points in the story, such as Ganesh's growing popularity as a healer, then as a politician.

Throughout the entire movie I expected something grand to happen, or for Ganesh to have a revelation about life, and his role in it. But the payoff never came. I thought his aspiration to become a real writer would come back around at the end of the movie to make a point, but it didn't. Maybe the point of this movie is to demonstrate the effects of randomness and lack of fulfillment. If so, then I think this movie was a glorious success. Call it a hunch, but I don't believe Merchant had that in mind.


The DVD

Video: The Mystic Masseur is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen. The picture is fairly grainy, and dull. Also the print is littered with specks, blobs, and streaks, although it is never really distracting. Edge enhancement is bad in a few scenes, but for the most part can go unnoticed. Colors reproduction is below average at best, and fails to make a strong impact. Overall this is a tolerable, but substandard video transfer.

Audio: Here we get a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track, but the movie would have been just as well off without it. The sound separation to the front speakers is probably the worst I've ever heard. Actually, I should say the sound separation to all of the speakers is the worst I never heard, because at no time did I hear any sound coming out of the rear surrounds. But even more shocking, is that I never heard any sound coming from the center channel either! That's right, all of the sound and dialogue came from the front left and front right speakers. Naturally the dialogue was incredibly hard to hear for most of the movie. I guess they should have figured out a way to send that stuff to the right speaker, eh?

Extras: There are no extras offered on this disc.


Final Thoughts

The Mystic Masseur is a failed attempt at showing the life-highlights of a truly interesting man. The story had promise, but the dialogue is bad, the directing is awful, and the acting leaves a lot to be desired. Add to that a ho-hum video transfer and terrible soundtrack, and this movie becomes easy to avoid. Skip It