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.

P.S- Originally published in PFC.Check it out here- http://passionforcinema.com/pasanga-for-the-child-in-each-one-of-us/