If you look at the soul of the latest movie from Chidambaram, after Manjummel Boys, Balan, it captivates you by showing how one can add so many layers to a single line said by a character. It is not like you won’t realize the importance of that line when it is first mentioned in the movie. But the movie gets the help of a different track that makes us forget that aspect of the story, and when it comes back as a payoff at the end, it creates that cinematic euphoria we wish to experience in a movie theater. With some refreshing casting choices and impressive performances, Chidambaram’s Balan: The Boy stays with you for all the right reasons.
The movie is about this boy and his mother. The mother was pregnant when she was imprisoned for a crime, and in the life after her release from jail, this woman and her boy kept changing their identities. At one point, she gets this assignment to take care of an elderly woman in a rural space. Even though she found comfort in that space, it didn’t last that long. What happens there and how that eventually shapes the life of both the mother and son is what we see in this movie.
From the movie’s promos, it was pretty clear that it was about the relationship between this mother and son and how it gets challenged at one point. The beauty of the film is the way it ultimately shows us how strong this bond is. As an audience, we are entering the story somewhere in the middle, and we are curious to know what is making this duo run away from things that seemingly feel like a safe space. Just when we feel this will be entirely about one particular journey of theirs, the movie takes a drastic jump. What unfolds after that is mostly a character study, and you might get a feeling that the movie is drifting away to a totally different space. But the movie utilizes that disconnection from the main track to make the finale much more powerful.
The cast of the movie has so many new faces, and since the film deals with mystery around characters, this freshness works in the movie’s favor. Farzana Palathingal plays the role of the mother, and her eyes have that innate blend of sadness and mystery. It somehow helps the movie to make the audience look at her with a certain level of empathy, even though we know that there is a criminal instinct somewhere inside that character. Adisheshan is the one who plays the part of the younger version of the boy, and that innocence in his eyes definitely enhances the emotional depth. Even though the footage length is comparatively minimal, Mohammed Sinan, who plays the older version of the boy, was the best performer in my opinion. There is a unique resilience in that character, which he performed with great conviction. Lal Jr. Jean Paul Lal gets a very interesting character, and he was very effective. People have already spotted Tovino Thomas in the trailer. It is not a mere cameo, and the actor sheds all the star vanity for that particular role. One of the characters that is definitely going to stay with everyone is that of the old lady these two take care of in the first half of the movie. The name of the actress is Dolly June, and she was a delightful performer. It was fun to see director Girish AD as an actor in a police role. Beena Antony makes a comeback to the big screen with a memorable character. Even though it was a character without any dialogue, Archana Padmini managed to make her character special.
The movie is written by Jithu Madhavan, and it was so different from the kind of stuff we have seen him do in his directorials. Chidamabaram prefers a more visual treatment with fewer verbal explanations, and one can see that in the frames Shyju Khalid has set for the movie. The movie has a flat aspect ratio similar to Manjummel Boys, and in those key scenes that show the loneliness and helplessness of the boy, the verticality of that tree-filled path enhances the eeriness. The production design has done a remarkable job in showing the transformation of locations in the most realistic way. Sushin’s background score is very minimal in nature, and the unique choices in the orchestration help the movie to consistently maintain that unsettling nature. If I am not mistaken, the final moments of the movie have a different version of the Engotta song, and the edit pattern of that sequence was a delight to watch.
One thing that makes me happy about Chidambaram’s choice to make a Balan after delivering something as huge as Manjummel Boys is the fact that he sort of breaks the pattern of filmmakers climbing the ladder too quickly to work with stars. The pressure to deliver big commercial blockbusters has taken away the hope we had in many promising directors in almost all industries. Balan invests completely in the story and characters, and even the so-called star cameo gives that actor a chance to do something he perhaps wouldn’t get as a hero. I am a big fan of Shoojit Sircar’s October, and a major reason for that is the way the movie adds depth to a simple question like “Where’s Dan?” Somewhere, Balan gave me a similar experience as the film elaborately explored a very simple promise.
