Release Date
December 4, 2009
Language
Hindi
Genre
Drama / Social
Producer
Sunil Manchanda
Director
R Balakrishnan
Star Cast
Amitabh Bachchan...... Auro
Vidya Balan...... Vidya
Paresh Rawal...... Mr. Atre
To be or not to be Amitabh Bachchan? Years after having every bit of Bachchan being broadcast in biographies and beyond, it makes more sense to not be Amitabh Bachchan and still deliver bigtime. Director R. Balki does exactly that. He takes away everything from brand Bachchan from his persona, baritone, height to mannerisms and presents him in an absolutely another aura as Auro.
Paa is certainly not inspired from Francis Ford Coppola’s Jack (1996) where Robin Williams had a similar aging disorder like Auro. If you have to, you can find remote references in films back home like Dard Ka Rishta (1982), Kaash (1987) or more recently Heyy Babby (2007) where a child is instrumental in getting his estranged parents together.
Vidya Balan kinda restores her role from Heyy Babyy playing a single mother who brings up Auro all alone when his biological father Amol (Abhishek Bachchan) suggests abortion. The couple is alienated for years until Amol accidentally meets Auro at his school’s annual function and awards him for his artistic excellence. Auro was born with a rare genetic disorder called Progeria wherein a child ages fives times faster than his actual age. So at 13, Auro physically looks and functions like a 65 year old but is mentally as stable as his real age.
From its very outset, Paa is not designed as an educational or informative film on Progeria unlike Taare Zameen Par that took a serious look at dyslexia. The disorder is just used as a backdrop to make way for a basic human drama. And Balki has an absolutely different definition for drama. His storytelling is supremely simple and subtle. Much of the plot is predictable but the director’s lighthearted approach to a subject, which otherwise could have been melodramatically reduced to a tearjerker, makes it different
Balki has a distinctively dry sense of humour which comes out through his witty one-liners and seemingly the director incorporates a lot of his personal views through the dialogues and screenplay. Through his crisp writing, he touches peripheral issues from politics, civic sense, media to motherhood without being preachy or paltry in any and making his narrative multidimensional.
Like in Cheeni Kum, Balki has a penchant for having child characters in his story and also imparting them with maturity, somewhat beyond belief. Like the intelligent underage Swini Khara from Cheeni Kum, Auro too seems to be clever beyond credence in working towards his parent’s reunion. But then again one can’t rule out that possibility in this speed-age and it’s certainly more believable than an Anjali trying to hook up her father with his ex in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The climax is sure to bring a lump in your throat and even the stone-hearted will end up with moist eyes.
