Sthanarthi Sreekuttan Review | A Class Politics Story Set In a Classroom, Marked by Forgivable Compromises

In the filmography of Sthanarthi Sreekuttan, you can see names like Kaakka Muttai, Kaala, etc. When you look at the central event and what leads to that conflict, the political intentions are pretty clear, and the good thing is that Vinesh Viswanath’s film never becomes a movie that makes kids speak big political statements for the sake of being a political film. Sthanarthi Sreekuttan is a warm and funny kids’ film with a major layer of politics conveyed largely through the setting of the film. If some of the humor bits that kind of stick out from the major thread could have been avoided, I think it had the potential to be that emotionally overwhelming film. Despite those flaws, Sthanarthi Sreekuttan is a fairly engaging movie.

Sreekuttan, who studies in the seventh standard of KR Narayanan UP school, is our title character. He is this backbencher late-coming student who has no major aspirations. At one point, Sreekuttan had to face humiliation in front of the whole class because of a classist teacher, Chakrapani, aka CP. What we see in the movie Sthanarthi Sreekuttan is Sreekuttan’s efforts to prove his mettle by contesting in the class election to be the class leader and all the hurdles he had to face in that journey.

So the idea here is to sort of question labeling certain categories of students as a bunch that can never do any good. Here, those are the backbenchers. In a way, the makers are using the school as the sample space of the society. The backbenchers are the backward class in society, and the frontbenchers are the privileged ones. The antagonist in the movie, the teacher, is like the propagator of the casteist thoughts. Without really demonizing the frontbenchers, Vinesh and his writers are creating an idea about bringing a sense of equality in the classrooms and also the society by collectively thinking and creating a model that doesn’t have this frontbencher backbencher discrimination.

All these are the layers underneath the main story of Sthanarthi Sreekuttan. While the core idea is truly impressive, Vinesh and the team are forced to compromise on certain levels in order to make it look like a fun film that can attract audiences. The Johny Antony humor, the romantic track featuring Anand Manmadhan (co-writer of the movie) and Sruthy Suresh, and the whole Saiju Kurup episode, etc., are examples of such compromises. I am not saying all those portions are totally irrelevant to the plot. But one could easily see the compromised approach of those scenes. And because of these poster value adjustments, the graph of the movie is going through ups and downs. Thankfully, what we see at the end of the film is a beautiful representation of equality, and forgiving the film for its compromises does not become a tough task.

The cinematography by Anoop V. Shylaja keeps the movie mostly in that grounded, relatable space, and I loved how he used the Dutch angle at multiple places, especially in scenes featuring Aju Varghese to enhance the negative energy of that character. The music by PS Jayahri was lovely. That song at the very end was edited very impressively, and it made the reveal sweet and surprising.

Coming to the performances, Sreerang Shine played the part of the title character, Sreekuttan, and the boy carried the innocence of the character pretty neatly. The treatment of the film sort of demands all the child actors to give an accentuated performance, and that bit of “over-doing” was actually there in the case of almost all the child actors. My favorite performance came from Aju Varghese, who plays the role of the bad teacher CP. The acting is less physical, and he carries the anger of the character in a very internalized manner. In fact, I thought if he had more footage in the second half, the drama in the story would have been more gripping. Johny Antony is pretty much doing the comic relief role in the movie. Saiju Kurup enhances the poster value of the film with his Illuminati cameo. The pitch of the humor featuring the character played by Anand Manmadhan was slightly loud. It was good to see Kannan Nair in a calmer character. Sruthy Suresh, Ganga Meera, Gibin Gopinath, Sreenath Babu and several other names are there in the film’s star cast.

Sthanarthi Sreekuttan is an appreciable effort that clubs the kids’ film genre with political themes in a not-so-on-your-face manner. While the efforts of the script keep the movie in a fun zone is taking it into slightly stretched and predictable pockets, the overall result is not really getting affected by those compromises, making the film a passable watch with a handful of moments worth appreciating.