Father and son switch roles in ‘Paa’ - Movie Review

Published: December 7, 2009

By JENNIFER HOPFINGER

Starring Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Vidya Balan

The opening credits of Paa read: “Introducing Amitabh Bachchan.” If only this were indeed his film debut—then audiences would get to enjoy him for another lifetime. But Paa at least gives us the chance to see him in the autumn of his career as if it were for the first time. The 67-year-old Bollywood legend, who has worked in the industry for 40 years, plays a 12-year-old boy so convincingly that it’s startling.

Bachchan is a towering figure with a booming voice, a thick beard, and a handsomely lined face. But he strips himself of any trace of his mature masculinity—and even somehow shrinks his impressive stature—to become a boy on the cusp of manhood, with slouched shoulders and furtive eyes, an awkward stance and nervous laugh. The makeup helps and so does the writing that perfectly captures childhood banter, but Bachchan’s transformation is largely his own doing. His character, Auro, has a complication that makes Bachchan’s performance even more challenging. Auro has a genetic disorder called Progeria, which causes accelerated aging—he’s a preteen with the body of an 80-year-old. The point is not lost on the audience: the actor is only able to play a child by forsaking the physical attributes that age will claim from him sooner rather than later. The repeated image of a clock’s moving gears—shown in flashes so rapid they’re almost subliminal—is a reminder that everyone’s youth vanishes in the blink of an eye.

But while time is regarded as linear in the West—as measured by clocks and calendars—it’s cyclical in the East, where life is thought to be always circling back. There’s yet another interesting twist in the film that reveals this Eastern understanding of the passing of time: Amitabh’s real-life son, Abhishek Bachchan, plays Auro’s father. Abhishek’s character, Amol, falls in love with Vidya (played by Vidya Balan) before he’s ready for marriage and family. They break up, she gives birth to his son without his knowledge, and he doesn’t learn about the boy’s existence until it’s nearly too late. The younger Bachchan, who produced Paa, struggled for years to prove himself as an actor, which surely must have been difficult with a screen icon for a father, and yet, Abhishek seems comfortable in the long shadow Amitabh casts. Still, there’s always an expectation for sons to eventually eclipse their fathers—and so, this son makes a film about a character who becomes a man by discovering he’s the father of a very old son, played by none other than his own famous father.

 

Paa is rated Must See.

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