Mata

<p>The movie starts with a taxi driver Venkatesha ( ) welcoming Sister Martha (played by Pari) to Bangalore. He needs to drive her to a (monastery) in and he starts narrating a story to make the journey interesting, interspersed with sub-stories. The fore-said matha has an asylum taking care of handicapped orphans and a rare temple of . He narrates the story about this matha, whose chief is a skirt-chaser and goes to the extent of playing the flute to girls over the phone just to impress them. Soon enough, the chief decides to part with the post in order to join his wife. In unique circumstances, the manager and administrator of the matha, Appayya ( ) advertises in newspapers declaring a vacancy for the post, “Chief of Matha”. At this point, breaking the fourth wall, enacting the role of Appayya declines to read out the dialogues about placing a newspaper ad about vacant Chief of Matha position. Director makes a cameo entry bombarding Appayya to enact his role properly. The introduction scene of the film involves all the characters are invited with Vedic hymns, “Asathoma Sadgamaya”, which translates to “Lead me to the Truth”. The characters are neglected by society, their quest for a societal status and food drives them to do all kinds of things to just remain in the training period as they want to avoid destitution. Given that it is a multi-layered plot, the narrator (Jaggesh) infuses tit-bits of stories to the viewer and seamlessly weaves them with the main plot. For example, the comedy scenes involving Nagaraj Murthy as a desperate king, who wants to build a mausoleum for his wife, are hilarious and signifies the hold on making the audience waiting for the intuitiveness of the next scene. Sudarshan has given a modification of a cool head who always emphasize Dharma, manager’s role orchestrated by Sadananda, who is at his comical best. The story progresses through the many travails of all the six apprentices, who fight for their place under the sun. This process takes them on a journey which transforms their previous meaningless lives into a completely different dimension. The plot also explores the many illegal activities that run behind the scenes in a mutt. In the end, Jaggesh and the others realize the true meaning of life, and they each adopt a profession best suited to their personality. Sister Martha is revealed to be a guardian angel for the financially ailing mutt when she donates a substantial amount of money for its betterment. The movie ends with Jaggesh thanking sister Martha, and Guruprasad and Sudarshan sharing a small but lively conversation about the outcome of the story. The film began production on 14 January 2004 and was in production for two years. The film was shot in a near during the monsoon season. and Vadiraj were supposed to be a part of the film but due to their untimely demise, the former was replaced by . Former police officer Girish Mattannavar was paid ₹1.25 lakh for his two day role. The film has six songs composed by and Udayaravi, with lyrics by K. R. Sitaram Shastri, , Chaturmukha and . They were sung by C. Ashwath, Gurukiran, , , Chetan and It got favorable reviews from both fans and critics alike. In 2022, a critic from wrote that the movie was like a true vision of unrighteousness happening in a monastery and praised Jaggesh’s performance. wrote “The movie is hilarious, yet puts across its message effortlessly. The film could have been shortened a bit though”. This movie took on a controversial color when Jaggesh was presented with the . Jaggesh publicly expressed his disappointment that he was chosen for the award for best supporting actor despite playing the lead role and decided to reject the state award.</p>