I’ve wanted to blog about a lot of things I’ve been up to recently such as publishing papers and contemplating a book and reading several books, including Ashok Banker’s Ramayana series and a bunch of mathematical experiments with the binomial distribution applied to nonlinear dynamics. I haven’t found the time for blogging about these things because of what keeps me occupied the rest of the time – work.
I made time today to blog about Paa – the new R Balakrishnan movie starring the Bachchan father-son duo and Vidya Balan. I saw the movie today and liked it immensely. Most of a movie’s impact is in the story, in its writing, and I think R Balki has written the script well, if not perfectly. The performances by both Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan are great and they’ve pulled off the role reversal very well indeed. Vidya does adequately well, if only a bit too schmaltzy in places. (Did I mention that she looked ravishing?) Paresh Raval is a comic genius but doesn’t fit into this movie too well – he neither plays the politician dad convincingly, nor is his humour used effectively. Amitabh really steals the show with his performance as a 12 year old with Progeria, a genetic disorder that causes accelerated aging, enough to rob a child’s youth and reduce life-expectancy to between ten and twenty years. Amitabh’s acting is excellent, although his juxtaposition with actual kids of his age makes him seem a tad out of place – and I don’t know how people couldn’ t find his make up hideous – but having said that, I find his performance praiseworthy.
A notable feature of the screenplay of this film is how the story is conveyed in breeze-through snippets – not because this is new, but because it is used effectively. Groups of these snippets are used to tell stories in parallel to the main narrative, but the director doesn’t take away from the narrative and confuse the audience in the process. Balki seems to respect the intelligence of his audience, and this is to be lauded. I have seen far too many Bollywood movies that are an insult to intelligence, these are like watching someone beating a dead horse (set to Punjabi music, of course, and throw in gaudy costumes).
Amitabh has managed to convey the infectious enthusiasm of a more-than-twelve-year-old and a sort of blunt, precocious manner – the scenes with the school kids are hilarious as are the moments between father and son spent at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The movie is endearing for its ability to showcase people who have made decisions with compassion – Vidya’s decision to have her baby out of wedlock, and her decsion to care for her child despite its condition are somewhat moving. The couple’s coming together because of their child is incredible but feels like poetic justice, except when it gets cheesy at the end with the couple performing a saptapadhi around the ailing child. Overall, I loved the true-to-life and frank feel of the movie although aspects of it were unconvincing – such as Amol’s complete incorruptibility and his dad’s pliability – and these are so perhaps because of my coloured perceptions of how politicians should be. Having said that, the media-bashing scenes in the movie are vindictive and more importantly, satisfying. A word about the soundtrack – I found an old Ilayaraja number in a Malayalam movie recycled into a song on this movie – anyone care to educate me on the track? I’ve heard it being performed by Balabhaskar (a well known violinist) too.
All in all, Paa is a good watch, worth my money and better than most recent Bollywood movies.
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