Sashikanth’s “Test” justifies its title. It’s an atrocity to bear throughout, as unbearably elongated in a confused stew of clumsily written, patchy scenes as it is irrepressibly dull. Despite a reliable trio of stars, including Madhavan, Siddharth, and Nayanthara, the film never comes alive. It’s stuck in an overly manufactured, sagging bundle of amateurish scenes underlining its thematic angles of those who are victors and others shunted to being lifelong losers. What does it take for the latter to break out and lunge at making a mark, even if violent and coercive?
Arjun (Siddharth) is a once-shining cricketer who now fears a decisive test match between India and Pakistan. In fact, he doubts his capabilities. But more than him, it’s the executive board of the tournament that shows no confidence in him and has fully retreated. They give him the cue that his time is up. He has to exit the field and make way for the young to step in. Can’t you see you’re fumbling? They prod him. But he holds his ground.
This track runs parallel with the other couple, Kumudha (Nayanthara) and Sarvanan (R. Madhavan). She wants to be a mother, but he’s not as gung-ho about it, only mildly obliging her. He is a drifter who has accumulated a lot of debt. Now she has to clean up his mess, albeit he hides most of it from her. As pragmatic and thoughtful and savvy she is, he is flippant and has his head in the clouds. He’s an engineering graduate who hasn’t found a job. He still pins his dreams and ambitions on a project that will one day have the government’s backing and move into reality.
Soon, patterns interweaving Kumudha and Arjun become clearer. She’s a passionate admirer of him; his coach was her father, who’s now dead. She roots for Arjun. Incidentally, one of her students at the school she teaches is Arjun’s son. Even though some conflicts, the characters’ tussle and aspirations and moral dilemmas promise complexity and shading, the writing is so busy stage-managing certain situations that the impact is nowhere to be found.
It’s a massive ordeal to watch something like this, subjected to an endless barrage of contrivances and caricatures hammering every character in each scene. Plausibility takes an early leave. You wonder if all its makers, anyone involved in the mounting really left their brains behind before embarking on this project. Characters talk about the passion for cricket that drives them, the exhilaration that beats any and all family responsibilities. The sport is paramount, trumping considerations of family and private life, showing no concessions to trying circumstances.
Whatever happens, devotion to the sport must prevail; it’s binding and authoritative and irrevocable. You mustn’t let your love for the sport be muddied and hindered by family commitments, that’s how Arjun has been raised. It’s his philosophy that has brought him both success and shattered many things in his personal life. Neither can he stand a word that suggests his talent has started fading, that he might be on his way out in the game. He dreads pulling the plug on a vibrant sports career. With impassivity and a hard stare, Arjun rolls with the punches, enduring criticism but also doing his best to counter it, holding out his chances as long as he can.
Everything in the film can’t escape being too tidy and carefully designed, including the saree Kumudha wears. Even a wound she sustains on her forehead looks like it’s a speck of make-up. “Test” is torn on which tonality to adhere to and coast by. As a result, it is slovenly beyond recognition of what a simple drama with conflict could have been. It doesn’t help that Madhavan hams up way beyond one can pardon in a crucial climactic scene, as his character’s monomaniac darkness bursts to the fore.
This film is about the contrasting pull of conscience and ethics, what one sees as forgivable in order to buttress their private desire may not hold up at all within the purview of a larger morality. There are several key moral quandaries to confront and traverse. But “Test” only walks the surface, lapsing to a cheapening, silly, force-fitted kidnapping plot midway. No flash of depth comes through. There are only teasing indications, but the film is saddled with uninspired, sloppy writing. “Test” drowns in writing that’s too jaded and hamstrung by a slew of contrivances. Despite compelling questions about what pushes someone into ethically reprehensible acts, the urgency of the enquiries is wholly blunted by the unfocused, sharply dipping storytelling no matter the strained dramatic crests of a ransom plot.
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