Spoilers ahead…
The idea that it takes a village to get two underprivileged boys into school could have made for a powerful underdog story. Instead, we are left with something that feels like a fairy tale.
Towards the end of Lenin Balakrishnan’s Article 21, Joju George makes a speech. He plays a writer and social worker who’s asked to speak at a school function, and he says something that moved me terribly. He is happy that two underprivileged boys have been admitted under the Right to Education Act. But he is also sad because it’s just these two boys – there are many more such children who have been denied education because of their circumstances. (Earlier, we have seen the boys being described as “slum children”, and they are stereotyped by a principal as violent and potential troublemakers.) The Joju character says that even as privileged schools are getting ACs and smart-classes, public schools are being shut down. Education has become something that separates children rather than uniting them. In some ways, it’s become an extension of the British policy of “divide and rule”.
You can read the rest of the review here:
https://www.galatta.com/malayalam/movie/review/article-21/
And you can watch the trailer / video review here:
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