Vaathi review: Dhanush is the all-knowing teacher in a 100 percent predictable film

Dhanush and Samyuktha in Vaathi. (Screen shot)

A teacher who changes the lives of students with his/her dedication is hardly a new story. From the British To Sir, With Love (1967) to the American Mona Lisa Smile (2003) and homegrown movies like Nammavar (1994), Hichki (2018), Raatchasi (2019), Super 30 (2019) and Master (2021), the plot takes a path that anyone can recite by rote. What really sets apart a film with this premise is its honesty in crafting the challenges that exist in the education system and how the teacher enables the students to confront these – be it race, gender, caste, class or their intersections.

Directed by Venky Atluri, Vaathi is set in the 1990s, a period of economic liberalisation in India. The film opens with three students from the present times trying on an old video cassette in the anticipation that it could be an erotic film. The grainy picture, however, reveals a young man writing mathematical formulae on a blackboard. To nobody’s surprise, the young man is Dhanush, the mathematics vaathi (teacher) around whom the story revolves. It’s a low-key introduction, but Atluri compensates by including a “mass” fight scene soon after. This vaathi doesn’t just throw chalks, he also throws punches.

Balamurgan (Dhanush) is an earnest assistant teacher at Thirupathi group of educational institutions headed by Thirupathi (Samuthirakani), a man who believes in commodifying education. There is no nuance whatsoever in the characterization of either Balamurgan or Thirupathi. One is 100 percent good, the other is 100 percent bad. The net result, for the audience, is 100 percent predictability.

The batch that becomes Balamurugan's mission are the teenagers of Sozhavaram, a village on the Andhra-Tamil Nadu border. The film, made by a Telugu director and starring a Tamil star, is yet another effort in the line of recent films like Prince, Varisu and Michael to capture both markets. But unfortunately, such films end up being neither here nor there – the dubbing is off, the sensibility doesn't quite match, and the locations don't create a real sense of the place and culture.

Vaathi has similar problems though Dhanush is his usual dynamic self. His screen presence makes the hyperbolic sequences watchable, though in the second half, even that can’t save the film from devolving into dated melodrama.

Samyuktha plays Meenakshi, a biology teacher in the same government school where Bala is posted. The very day he sees her, Bala tells his roommates not to fantasize about her because he can already see her and his mom boiling milk in the kitchen of the house he will one day own. The average Indian male’s sense of entitlement is surely immeasurable, mathematician or no mathematician.

By turning a story about educational reform into a one-man hero-centric narrative, Atluri packages every complex problem as something that can be resolved with an inspirational speech or fight. If the village doesn’t understand why education is important, he tells them the story of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Everyone looks mighty impressed and the next morning, all the students are at the school. It’s not clear how all the students in the village seem to be in the same year, or what’s happening with those who are younger.

Centuries-old caste discrimination is similarly resolved with a trademark Bala brainwave. It is commendable that the film acknowledges that caste exists in the classroom, but in its eagerness to untie every single knot over the course of 2-3 scenes, it trips over itself.

Gender discrimination also disappears, courtesy Bala. In one scene, a girl is prevented by her stepmother from going to school because she wants her to do housework. After Bala’s intervention, though, the father slaps his wife and lets the girl go to school. Domestic violence is clearly out of syllabus when discussing gender discrimination, looks like. The girls lead cloistered lives but strangely, their parents don’t seem to be worried when they go missing every evening from 6 to 9 pm (hint: it’s another Bala brainwave).

The story is supposed to be about the young people and their future, but they are presented as tropes rather than individuals. Bala is free to slap them if he thinks they’re going astray too. For a film that talks so much about education, there is no attempt to examine what education really means or what these young people are actually interested in studying – the focus is simply on obtaining state ranks and passing the TNPCEE (Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Examination). Concepts like encouraging independent thinking are nowhere in the vicinity of the plot, since Bala grooms the kids to do exactly as he tells them.

The plot ambles from one overblown scene to another (Bharathiyar and maatu vandis are involved), and the writing labours under the pressure to milk every scene for tears, with G.V. Prakash’s loud background score competing with the maudlin dialogues. Samuthirankani’s Thirupathi occasionally forgets that he’s in the 1990s and says things like, “This is what is in trend these days!” or offers Balamurgan a salary of Rs 1 lakh per month to join his private school instead of being such a Good Samaritan.

For context, India’s per capita income in 2000-01 was just over Rs 16,000. Thirupathi definitely needs to go for some coaching classes to upskill his negotiation capabilities.

Without Dhanush, Vaathi wouldn’t have even been passable. As it stands, it just about scrapes through with the grace marks you feel compelled to give for the actor’s understated charm.