REVIEW 712: PATHINETTAM PADI

Release date:	July 5, 2019
Director:	Shanker Ramakrishnan
Cast: Language:	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): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	160 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/pathinettam-padi-movie-review-loud-crowded-high-school-drama-leans-too-heavily-on-mammootty-prithviraj-cameos-6946401.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/PrithvirajSukumaran/

REVIEW 709: LUCA

Release date:	June 28, 2019
Director:	Arun Bose
Cast: Language:	Tovino Thomas, Ahaana Krishna (credited here as Ahaana Krishnakumar), Nithin George, Vinitha Koshy Malayalam

An air of sadness hangs thick and heavy over Luca. A policeman is called to a crime scene. As he searches for answers to the mystery he must solve, he grapples with questions of his own in his personal life. Through his investigation, we get acquainted with a young couple at the centre of the melancholy pervading the entire film.

Luca takes its name from its attractive hero, a popular artist played by Tovino Thomas. It tells an engaging story made all the more so by Thomas’ easy charm and natural chemistry with the charismatic heroine. Arun Bose’s direction, the writing by Mridul George and Bose himself, and the acting by the lead couple are designed to conjure up a halo of heartache around this young man who has known loss and unimaginable pain.

We are introduced early in the film to Niharika Banerjee (Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela’s Ahaana Krishna, credited here as Ahaana Krishnakumar). She is a PhD student in Kerala for some research when she accidentally bumps into Luca who, at first, comes across as a stereotypically temperamental artist. Their maiden encounter is a pleasant little overturning of the age-old “boy meets girl, boy and girl have misunderstanding, boy and girl are antagonistic towards each other which leads to an attraction that she at least masks so that she can have him chasing her, until at last they acknowledge their love for each other” Mills and Boon-style silliness.

Yes they do start off on a spat but it comes from a believable – and quite funny – situation, unlike the contrived bunkum commercial Indian cinema has been serving us for decades in this space. They clear up the misunderstanding almost immediately, there is no faking of anything between them, and they become instant friends.

With its uncommon treatment of a lead pair getting off on the wrong foot, the film ends up getting off on the right foot, its determination to steer clear of clichés becoming evident from here on. And for the most part, it does stick to its goal.

Luca’s atypicalness is one of several reasons why an aching sweetness envelops it from the start. If we get its understated messaging, good for us, but if we don’t, there is still a simple, heartwarming romance to be enjoyed here. The film does not seek to impress us with intellectual profundities although it does end up having a point to make. Many points, in fact.

Take for instance Luca’s empathy in its approach to mental illness. Or the manner in which it educates the audience about necrophobia and thanatophobia while neither drowning us in jargon nor sounding like a dumbing down. Or even the emphasis on the heroine’s Malayali-Bengali descent. Contemporary Malayalam cinema is replete with mentions of the poor Bengali migrant labourers who have made their presence felt in Kerala society. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a portrayal of this reality, but it helps to remember that this community is as heterogeneous as all others. The mention of Niharika’s Bengali father makes no difference to the plot, but it does tell us that Messrs Bose and George are minds worth tracking.

The two have clearly also done their homework in the area of forensic science. As an avid consumer of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, sundry CSIs, Criminal Minds and other American crime serials, I had somehow missed the news that fingerprints can be used to detect gender. Now I know, courtesy Malayalam cinema.

These little details, Nimish Ravi’s cinematography and Anees Nadody’s production design that combine forces to demarcate the two simultaneous storylines by seasons and by colour palette, and the quality of the hero’s art works, especially that first spectacular installation at the Kochi Biennale, all add up, giving the film a certain finesse. One grouse: though the subtitles are quite good and even take the trouble to translate song lyrics, which is something Indian subtitle givers do not do often enough, the smattering of grammatical errors – “he pleaded me” ... “tensed” ... “anyways” – is exasperating.

What works for this film then is Luca’s life story, the role Niharika plays in it, the suitably languorous pace, and the whodunnit (not counting two needless red herrings that are left unexplained). What does not work is the effort to parallelly tell the tale of Akbar and his wife Fathima. The latter is played by Vinitha Koshy whose considerable talent was on display in Ottamuri Velicham (Light in the Room). She then can hardly be faulted for the lack of spark in the Fathima-Akbar relationship – the problem lies with the uninspiring writing of their story.

Malayalam cinema recently pulled off a similar narrative structure with greater success in the Joju George-starrer Joseph. In that film though, the policeman’s personal story was not just convincing, it was more gripping than the case he was working on. In Luca, the mystery that Akbar is trying to crack is way more appealing than the dull Akbar-Fathima angle, which desperately needed some revving up and depth. 

The other aspect of Luca that does not quite sit well with the rest of the smoothly flowing narration is the use of non-Malayalam languages. It is clear from a regular viewing of Malayalam cinema that for many filmmakers in Kerala, Hindi is an aspirational language in the way Hindi film makers once viewed English and, for instance, chose to make a point about coolth/class by assigning English dialogues to Amitabh Bachchan’s characters to impress and intimidate those around him with his Anglicised accent – it worked in some Hindi films like Aakhree Raasta (1986) but by the time Prakash Jha’s Aarakshan (2011) came around it had become a dead bore.

Language can be jarring when its use is self-conscious and does not seem spontaneous, and the insertion of the one-line Hindi refrain in the romantic number Vaanil Chandrika in Luca sounds wannabe and forced. That contrivance is put in the shade though by the stereotyping that screams out when a song featuring a line starting with “Ya Maula” plays in the background while Akbar is pondering over his personal predicaments. In two scenes. Because he is an Akbar you have to go the “Maula” way? Really? Uff. And worse, when Niharika and Luca kiss for the first time, an English song comes up. Uff again. That latter device takes away from what is otherwise a pleasant comfort between Thomas and Krishna there, and the film’s own comfort with physical intimacy in an industry that is still awkward around scenes of sexual closeness between members of any gender.

In small ways do writers unwittingly reveal their conservatism. In this case, the latter two instances are disappointing because in other small ways, Bose and George offer other little touches that we do not often get in Malayalam films. How many times have you seen a woman driving a vehicle in which there is also a male passenger in Malayalam cinema, or for that matter in ads created across the country? Or a woman guitarist in a band? We do here in Luca, without a big song and dance being made about it.

How often do we see a man able to take a no from a woman who has opted for physical proximity to him, without that woman being treated by the narrative tone as a tease? Again, we do here in Luca.

And then that English song plays, and I am given pause, and I wonder: are Bose and George faking their progressiveness, or are they not even aware of how far they have to go? Is this why they made Niharika a Bangalore-based half-Bengali instead of a full-blown Kerala-based Malayali girl? Cos let’s face it, “north Indian girls are easy” and “city girls are easy” is the kind of tripe often to be heard from Malayali men if you travel across Kerala.

So anyway...

Tovino Thomas has already proved in successive films his ability to add subtle yet distinctive nuances to roles that might on the face of it seem like the same natural charmer but end up being so much more because of him, from the loveable rascal of Mayaanadhi (2017) to the tempestuous lover of Theevandi (2018), the chap trying to mask his insecurities with bluster in this April’s Uyare, the quiet efficiency of his character in this month’s Virus and the exhaustion of the money-strapped filmmaker he plays in And The Oskar Goes To also released this month. The actor gives his Luca such an aura of sorrow and tragedy despite his boyish fun-loving appearance, making his sure-footed performance the fulcrum of this film’s effectiveness and poignance.

Ahaana Krishna has a compelling screen presence and an easy on-screen equation with Thomas that makes them perfect to play both buddies and lovers. She did need the director to control an occasional impulse to play cute, as he should have controlled her tendency to make her gestures and lip movements more pronounced than usual in dialogueless scenes that are overlaid entirely with songs as though she is afraid the viewer in the last row will otherwise not notice. Those quibbles apart, her performance in Luca is proof that she can carry a film on her shoulders because although it is written from the hero’s point of view, it ends up being as much hers as his.

Barring a jarring performance in the minor role of an industrialist called Saipriya, the rest of the cast is fair enough.

No doubt there is more that this film might have been, but the tone and style of the mystery reminded me so much of one of my favourite British writers, Agatha Christie, Bose conjures up such a Christie-like atmosphere in his narrative, and Thomas and Krishna are so good together, that everything else is put in the shade. In Luca’s final twist, Christie faithfuls are likely to spot flashes of two of her beloved bestsellers, one of which was in itself a bow to William Shakespeare’s arguably most iconic work. I am leaving all three unnamed to avoid giving you clues, but know this: Luca is not a copy, it is a thematic revisitation and a wonderful tribute to Christie’s classics.

As Kerala’s legendary rain pours down in sheets, and Akbar inches closer to determining his answers, I could not take my eyes off the screen nor detach myself from the grief of that young artist and his loyal companion long after I had left the theatre.

Rating (out of five stars): ***

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	151 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/luca-movie-review-tovino-thomas-ahaana-krishna-meet-agatha-christie-and-gentle-heartache-in-gods-own-country-6905811.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/LucaMovieOfficial/