I watched Paa last week with Arjuun and Lasya. After having watched it, I booked 2 more tickets and asked my parents to see the movie. They came back and told me that after a long time, they enjoyed a neat and clean movie.
1) Its a true Balki’s golden touch straight from his heart.
2) The special thing about this film, is its simplicity. You can see this approach being adopted in many key areas like screenplay, dialogues (simple & pleasing), casting, expressions and the costumes.
3) Hats off to Balki for deviating from the main stream and adopting simplicity in his thoughts, vision, story, characters and the final end product. This simplicity was the greatest asset of Paa and that’s the reason why it was able to achieve such a high penetration rate into the market in such a short span of time.
4) An outstanding performance by Abhishek may be his best so far. Nobody could have played the character of Amol, so well. He lived and breathed as Amol throughout the film. Abhishek ensured that, the audiences see only Amol on screen and not himself. My kudos to him, so getting into the skin of the character so well and he carried himself so well with his simple costumes (white kurta) and powerful expressions.
5) What can you say about Vidya? All credit to her, for playing such a wonderful mother and for projecting her motherly instinct spontaneously. It would not have been easy for her to come through with such feelings & emotions, especially when you know that you are playing the mother of such a 67 year old legend, and not a small boy. But she did it with great ease. Balki also ensured that her costumes also added a lot of colour to Vidya’s character. There we times, when she loses her cool to her mother (Auro’s Granny) and to Amol, she was simply brilliant in those packed performances.
6) Raja Sir’s music is just unparalleled; such is the effect. Re-recording is a special skill and only a genius like Raja sir can create such an impact.
7) With Paa, Raja Sir has proved to himself and his critics that he is NOT a music director; but a TRUE CREATOR of quality music. His tunes just keep ringing and ringing. Raja sir has created such an impact in a lot of films in Tamil(e.g. Many films of Mani Ratnam like Nayagan, Mouna Ragam, Agni Natchathiram, Anjali, Thalapathi, Punnagai Mannan, Aboorva Sagodharargal etc) and I was very happy that he renewed his magic with Paa.
8) All the songs just jelled with the theme of the movie and did not stand out at all. You can never feel that the songs in this film are for commercial reasons. You will be so glued to the movie that you will feel; that the song is part of the movie and never an add on.
9) Picturization of the songs was done in a very lively way and you can see the richness in each song. Great team work by Balki and PC sir, for giving a visual treat.
10) Especially I was disappointed when the songs “Gumm Summ” and “Meri Paa” did not feature in the main film. These were some excellent numbers, but we could hear only a few lines of “ Gumm Summ” in the background(during the hospital scene) and the “ Meri Paa” song by Amitji, came only at the last after the film had finished(when the credits where given after the film).
I really want to know from Balki or Amitji, why these 2 value adding songs were chopped from the main picture!
11) The work of 3 genius Balki, Raja sir and PC sir is very much evident when you see this film. It’s an experience by itself, short, sweet and value adding.
12) Finally the energy and passion with which Amtiji has carried off Auro is simply phenomenal !
4 hrs of make up, waking up at 2:30am, 2hrs to remove the make up, all at the age of 67, can somebody do this! Yes, only Amitji….His energy and passion for this film has created further positive energy into the entire chain and this has given the film such a divine blessing; that it cannot fall back.
With this film Amitji has proved to the entire world that you can still given simple, intelligent and value based films to this society and the people will support it; if you give the message it in the right way. There was absolutely not even 1% of masala element in this film. I sincerely hope that our south Indian leading actors should take a leaf out of this experience and provide such quality films.
To sum it up :
Paa is NOT a movie, but an experience that Balki has shared to this world and has proved that you do not need long lead time, high budget, tech-funda graphics, sexy numbers by the heroines, masala scenes to make it a success. All you need is simplicity in story and thinking; with a belief that the script is the real hero of the film and not vice versa.
It’s a real tribute to a simple human being (with a lot of energy, positive attitude, passion and commitment) named Amitabh Bachchan! It’s a one of those rare film, which will make you feel at the end – why did Balki restrict this movie to 2hr and 10mins! That’s the real success of how well audience has embraced Paa.
