The Mystic Masseur

The Mystic Masseur is the latest offering from Merchant Ivory Films, a conglomerate company of producer James Ivory, screenwriter Caryl Phillips and director Ismail Merchant. The trio have created a number of critically-acclaimed films drawing on intelligent and mature themes from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Ivory was born in the United States, Phillips the West Indies and Merchant in India, offering a broad scope for the themes and development of their pieces.

The cast includes Jimi Mistry (The Guru), Ayesha Dharker (Anita And Me), Sanjeev Bhaskar (The Kumars), Aasif Mandvi, Zohra Segal (Bend It Like Beckham, Bhaji on the Beach), Om Puri (East is East) and James Fox (Sexy Beast). The cast work well together, providing enough on-screen chemistry to make the performance believable. At times the film borders on a kooky comedy, and at others on a serious emotional drama, but a happy medium between the two is not clearly defined, making the film jump around between genres. Then add in the political side of things and you have a real mish-mash of styles. So the first hour or so is an enjoyable, if bizarre, story, but then the politics come in and really just ruin that fun and frivolous mood that's been built up.

The Mystic Masseur tells the story of Ganesh, played by Aasif Mandvi, who is a schoolteacher but just has a passion and love for books. Upon the advice of an English loony (Fox), Ganesh starts to write his own books. The slightly comic side comes in when he marries Leela (Dharker, and no not Leela from Futurama) and their life together begins with a few hidden agendas by a variety of characters getting in the way – all with the goal of getting even, so to speak. We have a dotty Auntie who comes and goes like the wind, a moody wife, a slightly daft mate, a cunning father-in-law, a young protégé and then a political drama all thrown in the one film giving a rather odd tone, and at times an undecided one. So Ganesh starts writing books, and as the cover says, some have greatness thrust upon them, but he just happened to thrust himself in the direction of greatness... generally... vaguely. Perhaps. And Ganesh then becomes a masseuse to make money and a mystic because, well, he just thinks he is a mystic man. So then we take off, The Mystic Masseur, somewhere between a comedy and a drama, and somewhere between coherent and nonsense too.

The video is presented in a full frame aspect of 1.33:1, and is obviously not anamorphically enhanced. The original aspect is not quite known, but the framing feels alright for this film, even though it may be pan and scanned. However, at times some black bars could have theoretically been dragged down from the top and bottom to give the film a widescreen aspect, and also because of a slight glitch in one scene. During some camera movement on a dolly track, the camera hood drops down slightly into the top of the frame, giving an angled black shape at the top of the screen. Just the addition of some bars during the mastering process would have a) given the film a widescreen aspect and b) gotten rid of that problem. Another possible reason for this is that during the telecine process, the racking wasn’t quite right and therefore displayed some excess at the top of the 35mm frame. And for those who don’t believe these words, check out the scene from the eight minute mark. But who knows what happened... technical information for this film is scarce and is just therefore left up to speculation.

Anyway, colours are lifelike and healthy, showing no posterisation or unnatural nasties. Surrounding colours are bright and vibrant, and hold a mystical quality – it’s just so luminous! Hmm, OK that’s even scaring me now... Blacks are incredibly solid; however do give a really icky shadow detail that at times is really messy and totally lacking in definition. Film artefacts are not an issue whatsoever, and film grain exists in the form of a light wash. Some aliasing slips through, but for a non-enhanced transfer surprisingly there is not a lot to whinge about. So we have a full frame transfer with some slight glitches in production, but hey, it’s still a very watchable presentation.

The solo Dolby Digital 2.0 English soundtrack is reasonable, but is by no means stunning or even great. It garners the “good� label, and sits there for the entire film. Dialogue is at times incredibly hard to understand due to fast speech and some thick accents, but still has a true-to-life fidelity. The music that skips through the soundtrack has some decent lower-end levels to support the score, and the style accompanies the mood at that particular second. Stereo effects are limited to the odd ambient effect, and really provide little interest for the audience. But hey, it’s a dialogue-driven film so it really doesn’t matter that much, but jeez at times it makes you wish that there was more action in the soundstage. Yawn.

After the 16:9 enhanced Madman logos, we are presented with a full-frame menu with three options. On the extras page we can select from a 4:05 Soundtrack Promo, a textual advertising page on The Novel, three pages of information on Merchant Ivory Films as well as the usual Madman Propaganda. The propaganda on this disc includes trailers for Rain (2:23), Spirited Away (2:18), Samsara (2:16) and The Tracker (2:06). On the extras page, each of the options is on the spine of a book, but strangely there are a few blank books. Are there more extras lurking around on someone’s computer? Hmm oh well, what we do get is quite disappointing and is just an advertising spot for the film as well as other Madman discs, with no real information about the making of the film.

*poke* Oh it’s over now? Well that film went past and started out as a kooky drama that suddenly turned into a quasi-political drama that just really ticked this reviewer off. There are a heap of familiar faces who have popped up on English films and TV series such as The Kumars at No. 42 and Anita and Me but still this film drags on and just doesn’t follow a straight line – it just moves this way and then that. Madman’s transfer is suitable for what is presented, but still a few issues with the video and a plain audio transfer stop this from being anything better than good. The extra features are pretty much adverts and adverts only – and sadly this is the extent of the extras. So it may be suitable for a rent, but not a must-have by any means. Give it a shot and see how you go.