Paa !!

Walking out of the theaters after watching ‘Paa’ two of my friends were complaining that the movie never made the emotional impact or never had those gut wrenching scenes which would make us walk out of the theaters with a heavy heart. For me that was one of the many reasons that I like about ‘Paa’. Many movies dealing with physical disability to its protagonist often treads the expected path of showing how difficult is their survival and tries to win over the audience by getting highly manipulative and pretentious.

“Paa’ which is about a Auro 13 year old kid who is suffering from a rare genetic disorder Progeria treats its subject with high sensibility and not for one moment tries to get manipulative. None of the characters treat Auro as a piece of sympathy be it his single mom or his set of adorable friends. Auro himself is portrayed as a bundle of energy with a tongue in cheek humor. There lies the films biggest strength. Take for instance that brilliant sequence where Auro calls up his best friend Vishnu ( brilliant performance ) over the phone to check if he has got any similarities with his dad or the sequence where Auro talks about potty with the minister on his way back from Rashtrapthi bhavan, these scenes are absolutely hilarious and very well written. These are the films highest points. Even the sequences where abhishek asks vidya to get an abortion or the following sequence where vidya breaks her situation to her are treated with utmost subtleness and there is no huge loud of cry.

While Balki the director gets most of these things absolutely right he loses his grip with a needless subplot of abhishek as a revolutionary young MP, trying to bring down a corrupt colleague and as a do gooder to the people. This subplot turns into a mini episode of bachchans taking pot shots at the media which does no help to the movies central theme. How I wish we could have had more scenes with Auro and his gang at school or even a bit more of development between Auro and his father.

Nevertheless but for this glitch Balki should be applauded for his terrific effort. Such ideas will always look brilliant on paper, but here he executes it close to perfection. Dialogues are simply brilliant and his witty one liners are rib tickling. Special mention should be made for his ability to extract such natural performances from the kids. The film belongs to Ilayaraja and PC Sreeram as much the movie belongs to Balki. Ilayarajas music and background score are top notch. The Violin orchestration running throughout the movie gives us a scintillating feeling and simply elevates a scene to a different level (Was utterly disappointed that balki used only 1 min of the brilliant ‘Gumm Summ’ song). PC Sreeram matches IR shot by shot and literally creates poetry with his cinematography. ‘Mudi Mudi‘ song is so beautifully shot and looks purely magical on the big screen.

With taking the mantle of the producer as well for the movie, Bachchan junior gives a decent performance as a ultra cool MP. Surprisingly Vidya balan gets much more screen time and gives a very restrained mature performance. She has never looked more beautiful on screen. Better than these two I loved Arundathi Naags performance as Auros loveable grand ma. Given a very well written character her performance was so natural. Wish we could see more of her. That leaves us with the biggest talking point of the town right now, Amitabh Bachchan. He redefines superstardom and shows the way for all the other aging super stars . Under such a heavy prosthetic make up ( outstanding work, so much of detailing , check out his teeth and single shot where his calf muscles are visible) you are left with very little chance of emoting . The more important issue was to get the body language and his voice modulation right , and he gets that to perfection. Right from the first frame where he is introduced to us to the last frame its hard to believe that it’s indeed Amitabh Bachchan. To reinvent like this and put an effort at this age is nothing short of an astounding achievement.