Pasanga- for the child in each one of us
All of us have been kids at some point of time. We have all had our moments of glory, moments of frustration, moments of success, moments of failures etc during our childhood. And barring certain exceptions I’m sure most of us look back with great satisfaction and happiness when we reminisce over our childhood days. Now haven’t many of us wanted to be an actor, a policeman, a doctor and many other things when were kids in school? Most of us would keep changing our desired profession of interest from time to time based on the current flavour. Like if I saw a movie where the hero ( mostly Amitabh Bachchan )was a cop then I spent the next few days imagining that I’m a cop. When I saw Ravi Shastri win his Audi car & get the Champion of Champion title when India won the World Championship Series in 1985, I wanted to be a cricketer. There was even a lovely ad ( Aviva life insurance ) featuring a kid,his father and Sachin Tendulkar which highlighted this aspect creatively.
While I’m talking about childhood & associated stuff can I avoid talking about children’s films? A very common complaint that we keep hearing is that children’s films as a genre has not really taken off within the mainstream cinema of India. While we have been watching movies like the Home Alone series, Baby’s Day Out, numerous animation movies, films of Majid Majidi etc and admiring them, children’s movies as a genre within the spectrum of mainstream Indian cinema has seen just the odd Masoom,Makdee,Hanuman or a Taare Zameen Par. A wonderful effort like Santosh Sivan’s Tahaan went literally unnoticed. Amidst this backdrop here comes a Tamil film called Pasanga which clearly defies all conventions and is surely a trendsetter of sorts.
Pasanga has no stars (unlike Aamir in TZP) and is not too preachy. In recent times Tamil films have seen some wonderful natural depiction of childhood in movies like Veyyil,Autograph,Azhagi, Poo etc but the difference between these films and Pasanga lies in the fact that in these films the childhood segment is only a part of the film & the kids go on to grow up and the tempo of the movie shifts to a different gear. Here in Pasanga there is a scene when one of the 4 main kids – Anbukarasu while introducing his family members to the audience cheekily says – “you might be mistaken if you feel my uncle is the hero of the family, but no I’m the actual hero and I don’t grow up till the movie is over”.
Debutant director- Pandiraj has literally relived his childhood by shooting the movie in his native village of Virachilai ( near Pudukottai ). The story begins with cheeky introductions of ‘the brat gang’ of Jeeva ( Sriram), Pakkada ( Pandian ) and Kuttymani
( Murugesh ) – class 6 students,who are the troublemakers and the feared lot in school. In comes Anbukarasu I.A.S ( Kishore ) as he calls himself. Anbu is an ideal student and adds the IAS to his name as he is a follower of Dr.A.P.J.Kalam & wants to become a collector. Anbu goes on to earn the displeasure of the brat gang as he is liked by all in school including Manonmani ( Dharani ) , the cousin of Jeeva. Rubbing salt into the wounds of Jeeva & co is the fact that their class teacher Chockalingam ( Jayaprakash ) is also fond of Anbu.
So there begins a typical tale of rivalry,jealousy,hatred and of course love too. Woven into the tale of the kids is the simple romance between Meenakshi Sundaram ( Vimal ), Anbu’s uncle and Sobhikannu ( Vega who debuted in Saroja ),sister of Jeeva which is shown in a sweet and effective way. The dialogues between Meenakshi and Sobhikannu are interesting and humorous and not once do you find the romance distracting the audience from the main plot involving the kids and here again the director Pandiraj scores. Not only has the director shown the kids in a natural manner, he is even able to infuse a lot of tongue in cheek humour. Watch out for the various references to the popular Kollywood stars and their histrionics in some of the scenes in the movie.
The rural milieu has been well captured and the performances of the entire cast are extremely natural. Music by James Vasanth is good and he has shown his tribute to Ilayaraja in the right way by using a few of his tunes in the background at the right times. Cinematography by Prem kumar also does justice to the movie. While the climax is melodramatic, the finale more than makes up for it. In a nut shell this is a movie which is not just worth watching, it certainly needs to be appreciated for being a children’s film which gives you the complete satisfaction of having watched any other entertaining film. And a big round of applause goes to the producer- Sasikumar (director of Subramaniapuram ) who has shown complete faith and confidence in the vision of Pandiraj. We need more such movies, till then let the kids of ‘Pasanga’ rock.
Tags: Amitabh Bachchan, James Vasanth, Majid Majidi, Pandiraj, Prem kumar, Ravi Shastri, Sachin Tendulkar, Santosh Sivan, Sasi Kumar
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
I’m impressed and choose to watch the film somehow now in the coming weeks ….
me like the post. hoping that i get to see the movie too. but widout subtitles, i dunno, if i wud… but then, keep writing… thanks for sharing.
BTW the poster is cool yaar!!!
Magik- go for it even if you there are no subtitles, you’ll still have a rollicking time-I guarantee that.and yes the posters are damn cool.
the family portrait wala poster is a tribute to Subramaniapuram in fact
Appadiya? hmmmmm… lemme see…
i wud reccomend a similar poster for raju hirani’s ‘3 Idiotts’ :-)
Appadiyethan
and yes the poster- its a good concept for Raju Hirani’s 3 Idiots too.
Sethu, good one…would watch this today…
Its good to see that Sun TV top ten James Vasanthan has reached his goal, and is shining there…his hardwork seems to have paid off.
This is the nth film with rural backdrop that deals with a different original subject, to come out in recent times…one can only wish that may such films grow and encompass even wider spectrums…for the betterment of cinema…
@ Ram- yes its good to know that James Vasanth has found his way to reach his actual destination.And credit has to also go to Sasikumar for giving the break to his music teacher from school i.e James Vasanth.A great story of teacher-student relationship & friendship here.and yes such films are showing that they can be different & yet be so entertaining.Go for it- you’ll love it.
The last nice movie on screen. Was hoping someone will write about the movie on PFC. Loved the movie. Had a hearty laugh with my friends when i watched it. Loved the various filmi reference and spoofs of various tamil blockbusters. Again an homage to IRs music in some scenes, just like subramaniapuram. The kids were terrific. The climax was a big let down but overall the movie was very well made. And the posters were used to spoof all the recent hits in tamil cinema.
@ Balaji- yes its a very good movie and keeps you entertained all throughout.You leave the hall with a smile on your face & thats a big achievement.Yes the climax was a let down as mentioned by me in the post, but loved the way the movie ended- very well executed.cheers to such movies.
Was waiting for this…
Why so late??
Already saw it twice. The climax seemed like a compulsion.Though I’m sure Sasikumar wud not have said “Abey o Institute, main yeh film festivals ke liye nahi bana raha”.
One of the best parts of the movie was that breaking-all-stereotypes relationship b/w Anbu’s parents. Very real. very unlike the only reason tat our Cinema gives for a drift in such situations..Tat of another woman..
Also, the references to Run and VV were enjoyable.
This movie deserves a more detailed review.Yours is more like a summary.
The best preaching I’ve seen in years.
Sorry for the nitpicking, but I think the girls name is Manonmani..????
Have seen the promo. Such a brattish bunch of kids…i thought it was like a serious take on how such kids end up on the wrong side….something like that…and then you wrote this Sethu
..
ill watch this film sometime…
@ Arthi- please do watch it, you’ll like it.certainly not something that you thought it would be like.
@ Bala- thanks for reading the post carefully.and yes my bad, the girl’s name is indeed Manonmani- it was a typo error.Well unlike my usual norm of getting to see movies in the 1st week of its release, I just couldnt manage it for Pasanga & hence the delay.Well I did want to write more, but controlled myself as I did not want to sound verbose & at the same time reveal too much about the movie.I want people who haven’t seen it to be curious about it & then watch it.
hey Sethu,
I Wanna watch it yaaar, But yahan (doha- Qatar) i don’t know whether its gonna release or not?? your post has made me more curios to watch this MOVIES !!
@ SID- yeah I know how you feel.But be on the look out.I hope it releases there.atleast even if it releases in some other nearby part of the gulf area also I suggest you must make the effort of going over & watching it.You wont regret it.
“All of us have been kids at some time in life”. Ha Ha. Deep stuff
@ charui- whoever you are,if you had only this to point out or say after reading the post what do I say to you?
@ sethu: nice post, and quite a tempting concept, especially the togue-in-cheek humor that u hv mentioned. i guess its not yet released in pune, but will surely catch up if it does.
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any idea if this movie is playing in srikakulam / vizag? im going there agn in first week of june.
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last time, billa was a huge disappointment. perfect example of all-style-no-substance. btw, did i tell u i came out at the interval? “Can Can” was too much, hahaha…
@ Jha- you must see this one.Currently its not released anywhere in A.P to the best of my knowledge.Will keep you posted on release in Pune & A.P.
Regarding Billa – Telugu, I did warn you of the style over substance funda.