Now melodrama is not always a bad word. Avant garde cinema has always been at wars with it, for that is the stuff popular cinema is made of. Of late, however, the dividing line between ‘art’ and ‘popular’ has thinned down, as far as Indian cinema is concerned. What we have today is something ‘middle of the road’: emotional melodrama weaved into technical brilliance; everyday reality stirred into the larger than life. R. Balki’s Paa is one such film. You would surely fumble a few times before calling it brilliant; but there’s definitely something that stays with you long after you have left the theatre.
Interestingly Paa is not about progeria, as all the promotional media hype surrounding it focused on. It’s a love story between a father and a son, where the son is incidentally a progeric baby. He could have been perfectly normal. Paa reminded me of a very well-made but not so popular film, starring Pallavi Joshi, Neena Gupta and Paresh Rawal, called Woh Chhokri (That Girl Out There). In this film, Pallavi Joshi estranged from her father (Paresh Rawal) at a very young age goes through several ups and downs and lands up in a railway yard slum, dirty, slightly deranged and often vulnerable to sexual advances of roadside tramps and railway coolies. Parallely, Rawal rises meteorically in his political career, and becomes an MP. Completely unaware of such a development, Pallavi recognizes her father on the television one day. She visits one of his meetings in the city, hoping a reunion, when her father remarried and popular refuses to recognize her, for he wants to keep his past strictly undercover, fearing a downfall in his political career. Pallavi returns to her slum, emotionally shattered. Paa apparently seems to retell this story, but from a different perspective. The ending, however, is not tragic; but rather hopeful. Amol Arte’s (Abhishek Bachchan) recognition of Auro (Amitabh Bachchan) at the expense of putting his own successful political career in jeopardy has lot to do with the popular notion of a changing India. Though the reality may be totally at odds with such popular narration of the nation as rising to be the next superpower, Paa sort of compels you into believing a definite change in the political scenario, with educated youngsters entering the picture.
The film also concerns itself with the establishment of the picture of the new Indian woman, independent, yet carrying within her certain old values. I do not want to sound judgemental in this: but I did not understand why a doctor, foreign-educated and powerfully independent, gets down explaining to a female patient the pleasures of motherhood. She seems to claim that motherhood is a natural necessity. Is that so? In this sense, the film appears a little regressive: putting motherhood above careers, the home above the world. This scene somewhat sticks out as a sore thumb even after you have been sufficiently involved emotionally with the naughty Auro.
And Auro! Yes, Mr. Bachchan scores spectacularly high. He almost literally enacts the metaphor ‘Old age is the second childhood’. He talks like a boy of thirteen, he emotes like one. He is naughty; he is loveable; yet, more mature than the age he plays. Your extra-diegetic awareness of the real age of the actor enables you to appreciate him more. He is the hero, sans heroism: his excellent comic timing, his expressive eyes, and his awesome co-ordination with the other actors in the frame win him the battle. All the best actor awards are waiting to populate his already overcrowded mantelpiece. All the actors are simply brilliant. Vidya Balan as the single mother is so natural that her star status is often forgotten. Abhishek’s character is a bit amateurishly drawn; but he does excel as a father. One fine discovery is Arundhati Nag. As ‘bum’, Auro’s grandma, hers is perhaps the second most powerful performance. The character is extremely consistent and therefore least flawed.
It’s laudable that Balki does not make a documentary on projeria. Unlike Taare Zameen Par where dyslexia was a major cause behind the marginalization of the protagonist, Paa does not make progeria a cause of humiliation of Auro. He is treated like every other child in school, and he is the hero of his group. Though Paa is not a great film, it’s worth a watch. Full-on entertainment, the film caters to every emotional nook and corner of your soul; be there, to be with Auro! He makes a great company.
