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Release
date:
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July 5, 2019
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Director:
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Shanker
Ramakrishnan
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Cast:
Language:
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Ashwin Gopinath,
Akshay Radhakrishnan, Chandunath, Mammootty, Prithviraj Sukumaran, Arya, Unni
Mukundan, Parvathi T, Ahaana Krishna, Priyamani, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Manoj K.
Jayan, Rajeev Pillai
Malayalam
|
When Aashiq Abu
packed Virus to the brim with stars,
each one’s presence served to underline the significance of every single
player, big or seemingly small, in Kerala’s battle against Nipah. Shanker
Ramakrishnan’s Pathinettam Padi (18
Steps), also written as 18am Padi, is
just a case study in showing off.
An array of newcomers
are the primary players in this bloated, pretentious melodrama about drugs and
gangs in Kerala schools. If the focus had remained on them, who knows, the
effect may have been different. Instead the film is stuffed with respected
character artistes in supporting parts, cameos by stars Arya and Unni Mukundan,
and extended cameos by megastars Mammootty and Prithviraj Sukumaran. Arya and
Mukundan do nothing for Pathinettam Padi
though their scenes, like many others in the film, do scream out “look, we got
him... and him... and her... and her also... and hey, him too.”
The action in Pathinettam Padi is set in two rival Thiruvananthapuram
schools, one a private institution populated by upper-class kids, the other
government-run and filled with students from less privileged families. The rich
kids take drugs and make out with each other. The less moneyed set are bitter
and angry. The class stereotyping apart, while class tensions among youth are a
reality, the scale of violence among this lot – bus burning,
constant bloodletting, even murder – defies believability.
That said, the
early portions of the film do yield some slick action choreography in
well-shot, well-edited fight sequences. One particular battle had me chewing my
nails off in fright as a group of boys battled each other on a bus.
Of course it is
about boys, boys and more boys. Women and girls serve no purpose in these
schools other than to be pretty props in the background for men to fall in love
with, assault or protect. Taking the cake in this respect is the
under-utilisation of Ahaana Krishna who plays a teacher called Annie at the
elite school. Just days after watching her Luca,
which is currently running in theatres, it feels almost insulting to the gifted,
charismatic Ms Krishna that her only role in Pathinettam Padi is to look glamorous
and make a male teacher called Joy (Chandunath) look even better by falling in
love with him.
By the time she
enters the picture, in any case it is clear that this film is preoccupied
with style over substance, and not one of its multiple characters is written in
a way that makes them emotionally relatable – not even the men who get tons of
screen time, reams of dialogues and are the primary movers and shakers of the
plot. Joy, for instance, is supposed to be the cool dude of the faculty, and to
drive that point home he is shown listening to Western music, has earphones
plugged in while walking down the school’s corridor, has long hair, is a buddy
to his students and acts in an English play, meaning, he is conceptualised as a
certain stereotypical ‘type’, plus he delivers cool-dude-ish lines and has a cool-dude-ish
swagger, but who this man is as a person never quite comes across.
In the foreground
of the crowded storyline are Ashwin (played by Ashwin Gopinath) from the
private school and Ayyappan (Akshay Radhakrishnan) from the government school. These
artistes, and in fact all their young co-stars playing students, clearly have
potential, but in the absence of good writing to back them, all I can remember
of Ashwin and Ayyappan now are their poses
and fisticuffs. And oh ya, Ashwin has a journalist sister played by National
Award winning actor Priyamani whose few-seconds-long appearance becomes another
instance of a talented star being wasted in this distended film.
Pathinettam Padi’s over-stretched timeline
accommodates the older Ashwin (Prithviraj) as a narrator, the older Ayyappan
(Arya) as an Army major dispensing intellectual sounding lines in the thick of
action in a border posting, and Joy’s elder brother John (Mammootty) who gets
to look imperious while making a late entry into the boys’ lives and steering
them towards a whole new path. There are some potentially interesting bits and
pieces in the students’ interactions with John, but they are lost to the
excessive length of this portion and its complete shift in focus from the
youngsters to the megastar.
Besides, everything
in this film is drowned out by its overall pomposity, drummed-up music, slow motion
shots, attention-seeking camerawork and multiplicity of poorly fleshed out
characters.
Shanker
Ramakrishnan, who earlier wrote Urumi,
has written Pathinettam Padi, which
also marks his debut as a feature director. The film is all sound and fury, no
heart or soul. Pathinettam Padi is
loud both in terms of storytelling style and literally, in terms of volume. Watching
it was an exhausting experience.
For a film that
spends so much on its art design, camerawork and stunts, Pathinettam Padi stints to amusing effect on makeup. In a scene in
which Ahaana Krishna’s character has aged, she is given salt and pepper hair
and spectacles, but her skin is as smooth as a baby in a Johnson & Johnson
ad.
Pathinettam Padi’s intellectual pretensions
begin with its name, an allusion to the age of adulthood and the 18 steps
devotees climb in their final approach to the sanctum sanctorum of the Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala. The lofty sacred
reference brings to mind the crucial aadyathe
padi (first step) of filmmaking that this team skipped: write a script that
is worth making into a film.
Rating (out
of five stars): *
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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160 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
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