Movie: Paathshala
Director: Mahi V Raghav
Cast: Nandu, Anu Priya, Sirisha, Sai Kiran, Shiva, Shashaank
Rating: ***
‘This journey was our essential place of learning’ nostalgically describes a character in Paathshala after the five-week trip comes to a close. Taking off from where Sekhar Kammula left in Happy Days, this road film uses five principal characters to deal with conflicts that evoke a universal connect. It is unassumingly weaved through a love thread. There are mostly fresh faces around except for some recognizable actors in various parts of the film.
This welcomes us to a pleasing mishmash of all the candid and much needed confessions to be made, some bittersweet bonds, a good set of happy go lucky moments of blissful nothingness, the ‘what to do next’ questions and quite expectedly, some convenient answers. We’re now looking a potential best seller of a novel in our minds, which unfortunately is an undernourished visual translation. This would have been ‘path breaking’ had thematic ‘honesty’ been the topmost criteria to make a good film.
Watching first timers take center stage, we see their intent to give it all with the adrenaline rush. There are some organic, raw touches that come about. Thanks to the cinematographic strain, the frames of the 5000-km ride really feel like it. The film’s freshness is alluring as long as it doesn’t seem conscious of giving itself a ‘filmy’ coating. In the hush to dump several ideas into a single effort, on the lines of the Krishna Bhagawan episode, the one where they help a child attend a dance audition, also accommodating the last set of wishes that a character wants to fulfill, we sense an overkill happening ridding the film of its very purpose. It rather tries to be too ‘cute’, practically repeating its focal point without much novelty.
The subplots, that are to seamlessly integrate into a wholesome product, turn out to be misused opportunities to showcase the wobbly side of the middle hour. The length of sequences, practically craving for too much of everything, more often is the issue than the predictability factor.
Paathshala still retains some freshness, treading a déjà vu-filled arena that Inkosari and Sneha Geetham too encompassed with reasonable success. A major event in a character’s life turns the table down for a bunch of five friends, throwing them on an open ground to re-emphasize their priorities and ambitions in life. The struggle to choose between a heartfelt passion and another practical compromise is something that Mahi V Raghav explores in utmost detail, making it the most resonating dimension of this carefree outing. Some nostalgia, some poetry, some refreshing music and some bonhomie make this a sound weekend watch, but not something that sweeps us off our feet.
Review by Srivathsan N. First published in Cinegoer.net
