Maya

This movie is really split in two. The first half is the "innocent kids enjoying their youth" section, and the other half is the "holy samosoa! Did they just do what I think they just did?" section.

The first half I thouroughly enjoyed cause it reminded me of when I was a lil boy growing up in Trinidad, and Toronto. The beautiful cinematography, and bright sunshiney, summerey, goodness, made me feel feel like I really was 12 years old again.

The second half is totaly different, as MAYA has her innocence taken, by way of a (horrible) traditional comming-of-age tradition. The movie gets dark in a hurry, and the sunshiney goodness, is replaced with the hard realities of life.

Overal, this movie made me think of two main things:

1- Being a kid was soooo much frackin fun. Growing up sucks.

2- Religion is a dangerous thing.

7.5/10

Brilliant and heart-wrenching.

If you are an Indian born post-independence like me, this is a must to watch.

My heart just broke into a thousand pieces and something core to my existence died.

To think that this must still be happening in some remote corner of India is even more disgusting.

The biggest paradox that I cannot yet deal with is that a pristine form of art like Bharatanatyam or Sadir coexisted intensely intertwined with a similar age old system.

The story unfolds slowly - maybe a little too slowly - but overall is beautifully told. Two cousins - a boy and girl - are caught up in a ritual triggered when the girl starts to menstruate. The brutal climax of the ritual is genuinely shocking. The girl, Maya, is raped by holy men. This is part of the ritual, and guests feast outside the temple while it's happening. The adults in the story see such rapes as rites of passage and celebrations of family prestige.

Perhaps characters and attitudes are too black and white; metaphors are a bit heavyhanded; and there is little nuance, but this film has considerable qualities too - not least that it tackles an important and current issue - and does it well.

Digvijay Singh's tragic observation of life in secluded India is both invigorating, in the sense that life, and its people seem to care only for the simple things that make them happy, and it is above all savagely tragic, in ways that certain rites and traditions are not or should not exist in the first place.

The tragedy is amplified quite masterfully by the approach of the little girl's life. The film centers around her innocent childly activities and her simple (yet perhaps quite harsh) life in a poor under developped area of India. Unfortunately, fate would have it that the child must grow and become aware of certain aspects of life which simply can't be understood nor accepted.

This film is a prime example of how I see tragedy. To fully implement a strong sense of tragic, one needs to build it around simple minded genuine calmness. I found the film perfect in this aspect.

I love to watch documentaries as against pure commercial flicks and so I picked up this movie. Mita Vashisht,Ananth nag and the kids have put in a brilliant performance. The first part of the movie really kept me guessing what the story was all about.I thought it was really generous of the couple to bring up Maya as their own kid.The pranks played by the children did remind me at times of the fun we had as kids.Other than that there was nothing special really. As the story progressed about the girls first period I thought they would show just another ritual performed in some parts of our country. What was shocking was it was more than just a ritual........a brutal rape and child abuse still prevalent in our country, which I thought never existed.In the name of religion people are encouraging the wrong practices.Maya should be an eye opener to the educated section of our society who can create more awareness amongst the superstitious and orthodox community.