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Paath – The Lesson review : delivers a strong and profound message.
What: Paath – The Lesson - Dialogue-writer turned director Karan Singh Rathore’s Paath – the Lesson delivers a strong and profound learning against the deplorable and prevalent scenario of bride trafficking.
For centuries, Bride trafficking has been an unprecedentedly booming business in the states of Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan and some parts of Northern India.
Some shocking statistics - A door to door survey found 1352 trafficked wife’s living with their buyers in 85 villages in North India in 2014 and according to the 22016 National Crime Records Bureau, 33855 people were kidnapped or abducted for the purpose of marriage.
Paath – The Lesson review
Dialogue-writer turned director Karan Singh Rathore’s Paath – the Lesson delivers a strong and profound learning against the deplorable and prevalent scenario of bride trafficking where a 12-year-old girl (Sara Arjun, last seen in Ponniyin Selvan II as child version of Aishwarya Rai) is bought by two men much older than her to marry her. One is a 55-year-old widower (Jackie Shroff) who pays a higher price than the other man (Abhilash Thapliyal) who had first bought her from his penury-stricken father (Rajkumar Kanojia).
Performance
Jackie Shroff subtly pillars this reforming with restraint and a poignant performance. Playing a Rajasthani character for the first time, he conveys depth with a sense of love and loss. Abhilash, whom we last saw as a creepy psychopath in Blurr, is earnest and efficient.
Here the 17-minute film ends on a optimistic note – but as the embedded poetry ((lyrics by Karan) says,” If you want to walk where it’s bright, then you need to first burn yourself”, it strongly underlines a significant emancipatory movement with striking visuals (DoP Santosh Damodar Detake, with additional footages by Ikshit Patel and Nikhil Waradkar) and a pensive musical score by Aadi Arora.
I go with 4 stars out of 5 for the film. The film has been embraced at multiple indigenous film festivals and you must give it a chance and take the “Beti Padhao Beti Bachao” abhiyaan forward.
Ahwaan Padhee, is an IT Techie/Business Consultant by profession and a film critic/cinephile by passion, is also associated with Radio Playback as well, loves writing and conducting movie quizzes. More By Ahwaan Padhee