‘Paithani’ Web-Series Review: A Senseless Mother-Daughter Story That Lacks Basic Emotions

Marathi films are mostly known for great stories and screenplays that are filled with plenty of emotions. Marathi films could be compared to Malayalam cinema, where the focus is more on the characters and the story the makers are trying to convey, coupled with some great performances. Paithani, the Zee5 Global miniseries, is named after a small town in Maharashtra. Paithani is also the name of a type of saree that is worn by Maharashtrian women. Directed by Gajendra Ahire, this show is in Hindi language but contains the ethos of Marathi cinema. Paithani highlights the importance of the Paithani saree in the lives of two women.

Kaveri is a young school teacher who is the daughter of Godavari, a renowned Paithani saree weaver. Growing up, she has been a witness to her mother painstakingly weaving Paithani sarees for her brother’s shop in the town. The market value of each saree is close to eight lakhs INR. Godavari herself cannot afford to buy the sarees she makes, which upsets Kaveri the most. She plans to buy a Paithani saree for her mother as a gift for raising her right. On the other hand, Godavari was married to a man who was obsessed with his desire for a male child. On the birth of their son Samrat, he took their son away and raised him on his own. The son grew up to be a vile man who spent his father’s money on many vices. Will Kaveri and Samrat run into each other? Was Kaveri able to purchase a Paithani saree on a school teacher’s salary? Why is Kaveri fixating over the saree? All these questions are answered in this miniseries, which seems painfully long. 

Paithani has more cons than pros, which is sad as the premise is very interesting. There are hardly any interesting stories set around the importance of the Paithani saree, which is predominantly popular in Maharashtra. The makers could have added extra layers of storytelling and additional subplots to make the premise engaging. The makers of Paithani spend a lot of time on melodrama and circling round the same subplot over and over again. It gets maddening after a point as the story is just at a standstill with nothing new to offer. Every episode is hardly twenty-three to twenty-five minutes long, and each one feels like it’s crawling forward at a snail’s pace. There is a toxic dynamic between Samrat and his father which is hardly explored by the makers. The father is only seen yelling at his son from the start till the end, but there is no appropriate conclusion discussed about their relationship. It does not make sense why this narrative is introduced as there is no character exploration done. 

There is a cliched reunion subplot between Kaveri and her father, and Godavari and her son Samrat. This storyline comes out of nowhere and ends quickly with no time given for any character to have proper closure. The subplot about Kaveri seeking a Paithani saree and heading to Mumbai to find one has been executed in the most sluggish manner. There is nothing to offer as Kaveri is constantly sad, upset, or worried; besides that, there is nothing explored about her character. There are river motifs mentioned in the dialogue and the screenplay. The two female leads are named after rivers. Sadly, there is no way to understand what exactly the writers were trying to convey. The writers and the director of the show discuss the mother-daughter dynamics but there is not much explained either through dialogues or emotions. On paper, everything comes across as lazy, and the same could be said when it is translated on the screen. 

The direction by Gajendra Ahire has to be the weakest aspect of the show. The melodrama infused in the screenplay of the show is reflected in the performance of the actors which is not good news. It is appalling to find out Gajendra Ahire, who has delivered some really good films in the past, was unable to go beyond caricaturish television serialistic treatment with this show. The direction is plain agonising because of the screenplay, and the editing forces the narrative to just wander around without any final goal in sight. The show could have been in Marathi, keeping in mind the town it is set in. There is no logical reasoning behind why the makers of Paithani chose Hindi over Marathi as the primary language of the show. 

The social issues mentioned in Paithani have a married woman choosing to leave an abusive marriage with her child and raising the girl to be a self-assured woman. The premise seems nice, but sadly, the surface-level treatment of this social issue only makes it seem like they chose the subject as it is topical, not because they want to explore it in depth. The makers, however, are quite convincingly able to portray what happens when an emotionally strong and financially independent mother raises a child, and how the child turns out to be when he/she is raised by a patriarchal father. Sadly, this small success of the show does not make Paithani watchable.

There are some bad CGI shots in the film, which only ruin the viewing experience, which is sad as Zee5 Global and Gajendra Ahire delivered a good movie, The Signature, just a few weeks ago. Sadly, the ending of the show is also neither compelling nor interesting. The inconclusive ending to this slow-paced show was an added misery. The music is also another element that simply forgets to add any extra emotion to the screenplay. Marathi classical music is considered sublime, but in Paithani the original songs and background score do not match with the mood of the show. 

Mrinal Kulkarni is a veteran actress and she has been criminally underused by the makers of the show. She is restricted to being a typical mother figure sans complexity and layers.  Eisha Singh as Kaveri is simply a doe eyed lost woman in this show. As female lead she was given practically nothing to put her acting chops to use with. The rest of the cast is barely mentionable in this review as they only walk in and out of the shot at random times. Paithani, the seven-episode series, could have been an emotional family drama circling around the ethos of our culture. Saree is at the heart of Indian society, and the makers could have worked around it, but Paithani seems like a lost chance.