Saibal Chatterjee reviews Max, Min and Meowzaki, a warm, perceptive exploration of love, grief, family, friendship and healing, elevated by fine performances and a gentle cinematic nod to Hayao Miyazaki’s enduring universe.

A young musician, one of the three eponymous characters in Max, Min and Meowzaki, has just lost his mother. Worse, he is breaking up with his live-in girlfriend, Min of the title, after being with her for three years.

Minara “Min” Hussain (Medha Shankar) opts to leave her cat behind although the man she is walking out on has a fur allergy, a condition he combats with a nasal spray and Allegra tablets.

Nor is that all. Mahesh “Max” Mahadevan (Siddharth Menon) does not see eye to eye with his bigoted businessman-father Ramesh Mahadevan (Adil Hussain), who is disappointed with the boy for choosing not to join the family firm.

But thank God for Hayao Miyazaki! Max finds solace in the films of the Japanese animation legend, after whom Min and he named the feline pet that serves as a two-way conduit to memories of happier times as well as to what lies ahead.

What lies ahead is the remarkably sorted pet-sitter Carol Sequeira (Vidhatri Bandi), who steps in to share thoughts and stories with him, saves him from bad dates, and takes care of his cat.

Max spends time with his atheist bon vivant grandfather, Sridhar Mahadevan (Nasser), a celebrated classical vocalist who is now a resident of a retirement home. Carol’s granny Jennifer (Nafisa Ali) is an inmate who develops a bond with Sridhar.

Miyazaki, Memory And Growing Up

Max quotes a line from a Miyazaki film. “Lives are like the wind. They come into being and resonate with each other and then fade away,” he says to Carol. But as things stand, he deals not with a gentle breeze but a storm of contradictions and confusions.

The two Miyazaki films that are specifically mentioned – Kiki’s Delivery Service and The Secret World of Arrietty – both have cats as significant characters, which isn’t unusual at all for Studio Ghibli. That isn’t all there is to the connection between this film and the world of Miyazaki.

Kiki’s Delivery Service is a rite-of-passage story of a girl who leaves the home of her parents, who are fully supportive of her move. Freedom is a prized commodity but finding a way through adolescence isn’t a cakewalk. Kiki has to learn to fend for herself as she seeks independence.

Max isn’t a teenager like Kiki but he has, by his own admission, some growing up to do. And that is what Padmakumar’s film is essentially about.

A Warm Coming-Of-Age Story

To be sure, Max is not the sole focus of the film, a translucently perceptive tale of love, grief, friendship and family written and directed by Padmakumar Narasimhamurthy (A Billion Colour Story) with touches that are both delicate and firm.

He tells a vibrant, warm coming-of-age story that is refreshingly non-judgmental, even about people and ideological stances that he and his protagonist do not agree with.

The screenplay presents a clear view of the challenges and pitfalls that young people encounter on their way to discovering, holding on to and mending relationships, negotiating shifting alignments with earlier generations, and looking for the pace and space that best suit them in the act of adulting.

At its heart, Max, Min and Meowzaki is about acceptance of differences, about the diversity of the languages that human hearts speak, about forgiveness and reconciliation and, above all, about closure and healing.

It is also about fathers who have not been fair to their sons. It is about a young man seeking to reconnect with what he has lost. And it is about living with the pain of not having said sorry when there was time.

Fathers, Sons And Old Wounds

After the initial sequences devoted to the young couple about to go their own separate ways, the film takes us back to three years earlier. Max meets Min at a cat-petting café. A relationship takes shape. Min moves into the home that Max’s departed maternal grandmother bequeathed to him.

But that is now in the past. What looms before him is his dad, a bundle of hang-ups and complexes. “Mumbai Madrasi” Max has nothing in common with his old man. They barely tolerate each other. The death of Max’s mother has only widened the gulf.

Mahadevan Senior insists on calling Max Mahesh, is secretly happy that the boy is now rid of his Muslim girlfriend, eats only at a Hindu restaurant and wonders aloud what his son has done with his poonal (sacred thread).

Yes, many unanswered questions about opportunities missed, choices made, ideas pursued and worldviews espoused hover over Max’s relationship with his father. There are no easy answers available to either of the two men.

The questions take the form of pointers that healer Dhaara (Mandira Bedi) offers Ramesh during therapy sessions aimed at helping the man deal with insomnia, back pain and bad decisions that drove a wedge between him and his family.

A wife he could not hold on to, a son who drifted away from his restrictive orbit and a famous and exceedingly busy father who was too immersed in the pursuit of musical excellence to be there when Ramesh needed him still haunt Ramesh. But salves for wounds are never more than a few sessions of therapy away.

Adil Hussain Steals The Show

While the three younger actors – Siddharth Menon, Medha Shankar and Vidhatri Bandi – are terrific and enhance the film’s sparkle, it is Adil Hussain, with his subtly accented Hindi and English and a smattering of Tamil and a magnificently calibrated performance, who steals the show the way he almost always does.

With seasoned performers like Nasser, Nafisa Ali and Mandira Bedi providing impeccably modulated supporting acts, Max, Min and Meowzaki is perfect for all those who love contemplative cinema that is as akin to a gentle caress of warm fingers as to a poke of a provocative fist – and cats, Miyazaki’s or otherwise.