A True Masterclass in Storytelling

Maa Behen (Mother Sister) is a Hindi-language Netflix Original that seamlessly blends humor with incredible storytelling. The film directed by Suresh Triveni and written by Pooja Tolani follows Rekha (Madhuri Dixit) and her two daughters, Jaya (Triptii Dimri) and Sushma (Dharna Durga), as they navigate a scandal involving the death of Rekha’s neighbor. Maa Behen takes on the form of a riotous black comedy, but at its core, it’s about the complicated bonds within family and the communities that grow them.

Rekha is the town pariah, and that seems to have followed Jaya and Sushma into their adulthood. Jaya is married, but the film opens with her struggling to conceive. Meanwhile, Sushma is a viral influencer making questionable content with Jaya’s husband, Manas (Shardul Bhardwaj). Rekha’s call in the middle of the night, asking her girls for help, sets a comedy of errors in motion that will test her family’s resolve.

Maa Behen is a comedy through and through. The humor starts early and never lets off the gas. The way Maa Behen achieves this is by making the audience care about the characters right from the very beginning. One of the biggest sins that comedies tend to commit is by pushing the humor so hard that they forget to make the audience feel something other than laughter. Without the context of why the characters’ lives matter, filmmakers can create humorous movies with no emotional depth.

Maa Behen not only makes you feel something for the characters, but also for the bigger picture.

To be clear, Maa Behen doesn’t just make the audience care about the characters. It makes the audience care about the whole story. By adding backstory and context to the characters and the events leading up to this pivotal moment in the lives of Rekha, Jaya, and Sushma, audiences are given the chance to connect with the story being told instead of just laughing at it.

Maa Behen accomplishes this by cleverly disguising exposition dumps as humor. Using the in-story mechanic of a true crime television program called Khalbani, the audience is given insight into each of the characters’ pasts. This provides a clear understanding of what is truly at stake and why each character acts the way they act. Without these short bursts of humorous narration, Maa Behen would still be funny, but it would be shallow.

Here’s the thing— Maa Behen isn’t just a comedy. Each leading lady has their own storyline that sits in the background. Dixit’s portrayal of Rekha is more than just a sitcom-esque woman who has a problem to deal with. Over the course of Maa Behen, Rekha is forced to repeatedly deal with her community’s perception of her and, at times, the consequences of her own actions. The scandal that sets things in motion is draped in humor, but it’s dramatic, emotional, and, like an onion, it has many layers that get peeled back throughout.

Despite its comedic focus, Maa Behen never neglects the serious nature of its murder mystery.

The same can be said of Jaya and Sushma. They are sisters, but also adversaries, and there is real emotional weight to Dimri and Durga’s performances. Without taking away from the humor, Triveni and Tolani have created a story that blends laughter with serious emotional heft. There are moments that are dramatic, others that are heartbreaking, and even some that provide hope for the future.

The score works as a vehicle to transport audiences through this incredible journey. Every scene has exactly the right music to convey the emotion, the humor, and the overall vibe. There’s a special moment when the film even turns into a classic Bollywood-style musical, complete with amazing song and dance numbers.

Maa Behen explores themes such as jealousy, bitterness, anger, and malice, all within the family structure. While other movies may have cheapened these ideas by making things magically better, Maa Behen allowed its characters to sit in a bad place and deal with the consequences of their actions and those of others.

The film bridges cultures, tapping into universal themes surrounding family.

There is a through-line of honor and familial duty that seems to run all the way through Maa Behen that reaches out to the cultural reality of many families and communities in India. While American audiences may be confused by some of the choices being made and some of the reactions being had— especially among the film’s male characters— Maa Behen takes care to appeal to a modern Western audience without losing its identity.

By the end of the film, audiences can expect Maa Behen to tell a story that leaves them feeling full. There is depth, and there is growth. No one character leaves the same way they were introduced and yet that growth feels earned. Anyone looking for a story that is humorous but also desires to feel something should check out Maa Behen.

Maa Behen is streaming exclusively on Netflix.