Patna Shukla: Raveena Tandon-Starrer Is Ingenious But Derivative

VIVEK BUDAKOTI’s Patna Shukla is new wine in an old bottle. Headlined by Raveena Tandon, the film plays out like everything we have watched before — while holding out a glint of originality. The problem is neither the form nor the tone props up the buckling ambition of the film. Instead, the jaded tonality and the derivative montages drown out the potential that the premise of Patna Shukla possesses and make it seem like any other film revolving around a distinct protagonist: a career-centric woman.

Take for instance the rigour with which the film restricts itself to a template. The story centres on Tanvi Shukla (Raveena Tandon), a lawyer in Bihar who is equally proficient at home. She irons her husband’s shirt (a restrained Manav Vij), makes breakfast for her son, and chases his school bus on a scooter when he forgets to carry his tiffin. There is little about Tanvi that is told but there is little that needs to be said. Her husband is supportive without making a fuss. When his friends and their wives come over for dinner, he indirectly belittles Tanvi to make the other women (all homemakers) feel better about themselves. The judge in the lower court (the late Satish Kaushik) eats ladoos made by her and says without irony that she cooks better than she argues.

This narrative of a professionally driven woman who is subjected to condescension draws several parallels. The more recent one being Pulkit’s Bhakshak where a female journalist (essayed by Bhumi Pednekar) is cornered for doing her job. Patna Shukla not just follows the same beats but mimics them. When a big case does come up, Tanvi takes it and her life gets upended (not unlike Pednekar’s character). Her husband, a government employee, is forced to take a sabbatical, their house is broken down, and her father tells her to give up.

The case being of this young girl called Rinki Kumari (Anushka Kaushik), a student of Bihar University, who is convinced that the institution manipulated her marks and failed her. Belonging to a lower middle-class strata, education is her only means of upward mobility and when it is threatened, she finds the courage to fight a legal battle against the university. Representing the other side is a famous lawyer, Neelkantha Mishra (Chandan Roy Sanyal), whose presence draws traction in the court.

If the setting sounds familiar, the treatment feels more uninspired and hinders the one speck of originality embedded in the story. The tone does not help. Written by Sammeer Arora, Farid Khan and Budakoti, Patna Shukla feels unoriginal till the last frame. The David vs Goliath clash unfolds exactly as one expects it to. One court session follows another. Tanvi digs deeper, finds the involvement of local politicians in the education scam (one of them slogans, “beti padhao, desh badhao”) but ends up getting outwitted by the opposition lawyer.

There is only one way to go from there. The success of Tanvi, hinging on the case, will redeem her. But the stakes need to be higher. Patna Shukla goes the whole hog, outlining the binaries along the way. Everyone on Tanvi's side is nice (her husband stands by her) and everyone on the opposite end is evil. Even the actors play their roles as one note. Tandon, as always, is watchable but there is little that she can do with the role. The actor plays it painfully straight. She lends her support to Rinki and her father and although her fixation with the case grows, there is little to no evidence of her ambition in the character to support this. The first case Tanvi fights is about a man’s underwear.

All of this is a pity because there is something Patna Shukla quietly does which films on a similar theme do not: it resists burdening the central protagonist with the virtue of excellence. There is a tendency among the filmmakers, prone to telling such tales, to deify the female character. She is supposed to be brave, exceptionally good at her job. Perseverance and merit ought to be her middle name. The prospect of being better than the rest earns her the distinction of headlining the narrative. 

Although Budakoti’s outing eyes a similar ending, it also humanises Tanvi by designing her as a hard working lawyer who isn't particularly brilliant at her job. She is not immune to oversights; her research has loopholes. There is genuine ingenuity here which overrides the fact that this is tied to the twist the film reserves for later. Patna Shukla accommodates this bravery but refuses to inhabit it.

Stream Patna Shukla here.