Vaathi (Netflix)
Rating: ***
It’s been a while since Dhanush has done anything predictable. He is at it now, full-on and not the least embarrassed by the maelstrom of mawkishness and sentimentality that floods into the narrative as Dhanush transforms into a highschool teacher in a village run by corrupt politicians and administrators.
It really can’t get any more trite and turgid than this. Director Venky Atluri’s Vaathi in Tamil(Sir in Telugu) is like a visit to an old grandmom who gives us the same gyan about the importance of education that you have heard infinitely. It provides the comfort of the familiar, squashing through a show of sincerity,all cynical reading of what is essentially a propaganda film for rural education.
Dhanush plays a noble-hearted selfless teacher who cares for nothing except decent education for the poor.We have been seeing the same teacher in a different garb since Sidney Poitier in To Sir With Love .
Dhanush’s Bala Sir is so noble he makes every educationist who works for pay look like a monster. The man is so irredeemably selfless he not a teacher but a certifiable saint, believe it or faint, incapable of any taint.
Bala Sir goes from door to door peddling his gyan to parents of students who can’t go to school because they have to do chores for their family. Reform comes the hard way. First we have to watch Bala sir go through physical and mental torture. After he rough-talks with a cop he is put in lock-up and beaten black and blue.
A lengthy sequence shows Bala Sir limping out of the village while his students rebelliously cheer him on in his singleminded mission.
Needless to say, there is not a single unforeseen moment in the script. It’s about a teacher with an invisible halo who urges all those who care to listen that children need to be educated. The treatment is heavyhanded. Making a messianic figure out of the teacher then adding a romance with the Biology teacher,seems a bit of a stretch .
The dramatic conflict is not between the educationist and the corrupt educational system but between a saintly teacher and a sleazy politician Tripathi (Samuthirakani) who thinks education is a lucrative business.
Vaathi, by the way, made lots of money at the boxoffice. So Tripathi is right.