In defense of Pithamagan and Bala
Read some interesting thoughts on Pithamagan in the post about Bala. It is one movie that I had lots of fun watching. I have seen it 4 times and the literary depth of the movie is amazing. Its basic premise is taken from the Jeyakanthan short story “Yaarukkaaga Azhudhaan?” (for whom did he cry), a story of a grave digger who sings siddhar songs as he buries dead children. He forms a family and begets a child who dies subsequently. Now as he is burying the child he has to sing the same siddhar song(songs written by saintly poets called siddhars in Thamizh Nadu who wrote more on the pointlessness of leading a material life attached to people). Now he is unable to sing and breaks down crying. This concept has been expanded with beautiful and colourful characters and a realistic drug mafia backdrop in Bodi mettu in T.N.
Pithamagan is an interesting movie in many ways.
Vikram’s charecterization is a puzzle to many. However people who complain have no problems buying into Pan’s Labyrinth or Edward Scissorhands. I see in Bala ,an indian equivalent of Tim Burton. The only difference being the lack of extensive fantastic visuals. The unbeleivable part is in the characterization rather than in the setting or scene. The unbelievable portion in characterization also seems very much deliberate and arguments can be mounted for and against.
For example, the chitthan’s character is born in a graveyard and his mother dies immediately. Now it is a proven medical fact that if the childbirh happens under stress (to the mother) it may cause a significant amount of brain damage and that could mean that the person might become a “Savant” , like the character of Dustin Hoffman in Rainman. Savant is someone who has extreme mental abilities in one area, while impaired. and reduced functionality in another area. Some savants can endure pain or remember everything they read, so on and so forth, while their social skills are pretty much non existent. Now for a story like Pithamagan, this much of detail is not required as it is not a Nat Geo feature. So Chithhan is left to the interpretation of the viewer and other characters. The fact is, Chithan is someone who has no social skills or lets put it, no inclination for social life as his primary needs are taken care of in the graveyard. His vexed mental nature and aloofness is due to his lack of contact with normal men and when he sees them, it is only in the less cheerful mood of a graveyard or crematorium. So the director’s take is lets see what happens if we move this guy into society which generally has no mercy and compassion and how do the society and chitthan(whom the society identifies as humourless and merciless) interact and who wins? the fact that the movie is less about the internal machinations of Chithhan who is a mere cardboard required to be blown up by a fantastic actor against colourful and identifiable characters played by Surya,Laila and Sangeetha. It is to the credit of Vikram that he tortured himself to stretch every bit of nerve, both literally and physically to bring up such a performance that deserved more than just a national award.
The overall awe of the movie is multiplied by some scintilliating camera work(Balasubramaniem) and superb background score(Ilayaraaja). The movie will make you watch it many more times even if the subject is a little morbid and end tragic. That is the hall mark of a successful movie(coz it moves you, one way or the other), though it might not be a “great film”.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
bala is india’s tim burton.. hmmm.. that’s an interesting comparison VPJ :-? i think vikram deserved the nat’l award.. i remember reading on rediff that one of the industry “experts” was shocked to hear that vikram won the award over hrithik for koi mil gaya.. are you kidding me??
just found the article..
“In Bollywood, there is widespread shock at Hrithik Roshan not bagging the Best Actor award for his outstanding performance in Koi
Nice :-)…..tim burton..mmmmm…
Interesting thoughts. Bala is definitely a talented director but it’s perhaps a stretch to equate him with Tim Burton (whom I’m not really a fan of). Burton has funky characters no doubt, but his characters are bizarre. I don’t find Bala’s characters bizarre. They are unconventional no doubt, but very “possibly” real. And what makes Tim Burton, Tim Burton are his visuals. As you pointed out, no comparison there either.
By comparin, I am not equating. Offcourse Tim burton’s body of work is more volumnious. However the approach to characters and their enactment on screen is kinda same. How about Burton’s Sleepy Hollow? The headless killer played by the usually eerie Chris Walken in his usual eerie self. A part that had no emotions, no expressions, yet an unforgettable portrait nevertheless. In the middle of directors who can make a character inspired from real life appear rather card board, Tim and Bala can make even the smallest and lightly written characters come alive. The comparison or equation ends there.
VPJ: Good background info on Pithamagan and interesting thoughts…
Trivia: Vikram is said to have narrowly missed the National Award for Sethu to Mohanlal (Vanaprastham?).
Think there were a lot of contenders that year – Mohanlal in ‘Vanaprastham’, Manoj in ‘Shool’, Vikram in ‘Sethu’ and K.Mani as the dark horse with his ‘Vasanthiyum Lakshmiyum Pinne Njanum’ (Vasanthi, Lakshmi & Me).
And another bit of trivia: K.Mani and Vikram later became fast friends, Vikram remade that movie into Tamil as ‘Kasi’. Later, both of them starred in ‘Gemini’, where in a massy scene both of them reprised their respective roles face-to-face ::).