Paa – It is AB’s Baby (Sr., ofc.)
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Paa’s promotions indicated that the film will make a miserable spectacle out of progeria – as Amir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par did of special children for most of the film and Bhansali’s Black did of its blind & deaf protagonists for an entire film. So it is a relief to see that Paa is selling not the disease but a story. It is told with sensitivity and humour that one has come to expect from R.Balki after Cheeni Kum, a film that stands, if at times unsteadily, on its own two feet.
The fear of being forced to shed tears for a 12-year old child dying of accelerated ageing fades as one begins to share his joie de vivre and his views of the world around him. Auro’s disease is rare, but so is his precocious sense of humour. Auro (Amitabh Bachchan) lives with his mother, Vidhya (Vidya Balan) and maternal grandmother (Arundhati Naag) in domestic bliss while his biological father, Amol (Abhishek Bachchan) and his father (Paresh Rawal) are seen fighting intense political battles and living a life under full public glare and scrutiny.
With Auro at the center, the film can be neatly split into ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ worlds on his each sides. (It cannot be a coincidence that Amol’s ‘family’ has no women and Vidhya’s has no grown up men.) While the former is associated with colossal ambition, public domain and cynical political activism, the latter is private and full of emotion, nurture, and domesticity. It is the intelligent and sensitive Auro, with his vision of a ‘white globe’, who brings these two worlds together.
We see how the feminine domestic environment has nurtured Auro’s world view into one that is full of humour and acceptance. And this is also a world the director seems most comfortable depicting. By dropping the syrupy, artificial, smothering mother-child depictions in many of our films, Balki has made the treatment far more intelligent and refreshing. Indeed, the mother-daughter and mother-son relationship in Paa is one of the most beautiful in recent Bollywood films.
However, the political/public ‘masculine’ world that Balki creates is shaky, simplistic, dated and unconvincing. There is too much talk, too much naïve earnestness. The long tirade against the media is simply misplaced in this story. In the context of the narrative, it is fitting when media is blamed for its attempt to make a spectacle of Auro, but to stay on media-politicians’ fight is an unnecessary digression and seems out of proportion. Even if it was Balki’s intention of showing a certain sterility in the ‘masculine’ world (as against a fecund & compassionate ‘feminine’ world), Amol-as-the-politician track sticks out like a sore thumb.
Something that further undermines the beauty of the film is its ‘happy ending’. There is nothing wrong in it being happy; Auro bringing the two symbolic worlds together could certainly be a plausible resolution. But all of it is treated too literally with the child putting the parents’ hands onto each other (like those dying spouses & mothers in old films), and the parents taking marriage pheras round their dying child seems taken from the ‘wring-tears-from-your-eyes’ chapter of the ol’ Bollywood rulebook that one had feared at the start and was happy to not see until the climax.
Amitabh Bachchan, Esq. gives a truly rare performance in R. Balki’s Paa. It should be every seasoned actor’s effort to go behind the character and lose his own self in it. It is not Auro’s mask or the make-up alone that Mr Bachchan has used to his advantage. He instead takes one of the biggest risks of his acting career, puts every bit of his talent and experience and meets one of the biggest challenges to come up with a career defining performance. It is Bachchan’s enormously generous and inspired performance (as against hammy and caricatured acts of Black and Eklavya to name just two recent films) that becomes the highlight of the film and actually makes other shortfalls of the film more visible. Indeed, it is because of his father’s brilliant performance that Abhishek’s own act as Paa looks dull and stoic. Vidya Balan is a picture of feminine sensitivity, both in her romance as a student at Cambridge University and as a single mother of a child with progeria. Arundhati Naag’s grandmother act is equally adorable.
Illayaraja background score is fitting though it gives the film a ‘southern accent’ when the film is based in Lucknow. The brilliant cinematographer, PC Sreeram’s work is noteworthy although one felt his ‘icy’ steel touch in the climactic minutes was drawing the blood out of the scenes and could instead have had more warmth and passion.
I wish Balki had stuck more around Auro even if this meant scaling down the film to a world as seen and lived by a 12-year old. In the end, Paa is Bachchan Sr.’s baby. He deserves acting awards in this year’s roll-call. If they get one too many, I’ll happily look away.
Tags: Abhishek Bachchan, Amir Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Black, Eklavya, illayaraja, Paa, Padmaja Thakore, PC Sreeram, r balki, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Taare Zameen Par
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Rahul Dholakia
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Varma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Sachin Kundalkar
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Padamja ma’m,
Everyone’s missing the point here. The issue is not how a rare and perplexing disease named PAAgeria is dealt within the context of mainstream hindi cinema but whether Abhishek Bachchan will be offered any roles after his PAA decides to retire.:-P
The much hyped Guru nonwithstanding, Jr B is a block of wood if there ever was one.
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dude, what does your comment have to do with either Paa the movie, or this lady’s write up on it. Abhishek bashing is fine, but maybe this isnt the right thread for it.
@ padmajaa btw, great write up on Paa, finally something that is not a bland ‘review’ of the film but a deeper analysis. Thanks!
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common man there’s no point saying abhishek is a block of wood in the recent few years he may have choosen few bad roles but he has the potential of a very good actor.althought he doesnt have the charisma of the superstar paa but he is one of the most terrific actors in today’s times.if you say block of wood then u should also mention the films where he did so bad.
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Now, this is seems like an heartfelt and honest review. Your writing style is very straight forward and too the point and your analysis is great. You seem to have covered positives as well as negatives, without worshiping AB or being personal about anything.
” Illayaraja background score is fitting though it gives the film a ‘southern accent’ when the film is based in Lucknow.” so well said. I had the same feeling from the promos, just didn’t know how to describe it.
I also with your opinion about Black and TZP.
“Indeed, it is because of his father’s brilliant performance that Abhishek’s own act as Paa looks dull and stoic. ”
I disagree wioth you regarding AB Jr’s performance. He doesn’t look dull or stoic because of AB Sr’s performance. He is just a bad actor, that’s all.
First Kurbaan and now Paa, i think you seem to be one of the best reviewers around.
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Thank you for responses.
@ A. Singh Thanks for your generous comments. I happened to read your PFC piece ‘My Apprehensions about Paa’. Greatly enjoyed its passionate arguments and the rejoinders the article has received.
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Eklavya was not ham.
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Was Eklavya ham?
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Eklavya was… rather the whole movie was ham according to me… not that I am against ham, rather if a ham acting can carve an entire character unlike the actor I am happy… (not a great fan of ‘if xyz was an auto driver this is how he’d be’ acting)… but Eklavya was a ham fest… evry character right from Jimmy Shergil to Jackie shroff and Boman Irani to AB were way too unilateral, and hammed in their roles….
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ufff not again…
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oops… just did..
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nothing wrong with AB’s performance In Eklavya though same cannot be said abt the film..
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no it was not. Black was, and an inglorious one at that.
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Quite some analysis there to have brought out the masculine and feminine worlds in the movie. But..
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Where is the need ever to divulge details like “parents taking marriage pheras round their dying child”. Its like revealing the suspense in a thriller story
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And just how did TZP and Black make caricatures of the respective diseases that they portrayed. I thot TZP brought out the sensitivity needed towards special children. While in Black, the story was about winning against odds, just like Paa was not about progeria
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Padmaja, great review, especially considering the way you looked at the “Feminine” and “Masculine” side. For me too Ab Jr’s Rahul Gandhi-Mr.Clean political leader and that media bashing angle, looked out of place.
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Also you could have put in a spoiler alert in the review.
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Again i don’t understand how TZP made a spectacle out of dyslexic kids, if not for anything, it made parents much more aware and sensitized to such children.
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good review .. to the point. now i will certainly watch the movie.
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“Paa’s promotions indicated that the film will make a miserable spectacle out of progeria – as Amir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par did of special children for most of the film and Bhansali’s Black did of its blind & deaf protagonists for an entire film.”
It is baffling to see a so called reviewer reduce her understanding of a film to such simplistic terms. No wonder we have dearth of decent critics with a half decent understanding of the medium. There are many thing wrong with all these films but you have missed the point completely.
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Thank you for rejoinders.
@ narayan cinema is vast and one would always be learning. But there are films you can be certain of. I wish had the time to make my point on Black here (i’m aware how this film divides the audience into those who believe this is a masterpiece and those like me who think it was all baloney) – but you can see my review of Taare Zameen Par here, a film that I liked but felt had some problem right at its core –
http://passionforcinema.com/taare-zameen-par-2/
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