Paradesi Review

      First things first and this movie has gained a lot of positives from what was seen as a let down from Bala in his previous attempt Avan-Ivan. There are quite a lot of facets that can be seen as a typical Bala ones in this film as well and some new additions to his skill set too.

The Typical Bala

• A dark subject and storyline.
• Characterization research
• Cast looks and costumes
• No happily-ever-after ending.
• Protagonist not glorified as heroic.
• Female cast having important roles
• First half having comic moments
• Characters having undergone physical overhaul for their roles.
• A song that mostly is unnecessary for the story.

The New Bala

• Firstly, he has stopped spoon feeding the audience with the screenplay to a great extent in this movie.
• Less gory & tragic scenes.
• A making-of-the-movie teaser as a promotional stunt.
• A crisp running length as needed for the movie.
• Bala the producer.

What worked?

• The length of the movie.
• The conviction of the output put forth by the entire cast.
• The music score.
• Screenplay being episodic in nature than being an usual one that lasts the entire lifetime of the protagonist.
• The movie has given popularity to a good extent to the book it was inspired from.

What did not work?

• The crispness in establishment of characters or spaces was a tad too much and been to the extent of not sufficiently believable throughout the entire movie. For eg : A large section of villagers agree to go on a mission to earn a better living, however the showcase of how bad their current lives were were missing. The only person who was convincing in this aspect was the protagonist as showcased aptly.
• On the same lines of the previous one the elements to indicate this being a period film could have been even more extensively showcased.  The village shown in the beginning was believable, which in the latter part of the movie was either missing or wasn't sufficient.
• There were quite a lot of between the lines left to the audience to fathom themselves, which was quite far from being acceptable. Ex: Periappa's demise had a build up to be hidden from Rasa but then what happened thereafter? His body was left to rot in the hut or what? A doctor was brought in to battle the disease, he preached Christianity ok fine, did he do what was called for? as the story immediately moved to 4 years later.

Some smaller pluses and lot of minuses did exist here and there in the movie which I don't want to get into and here I move on to the conclusion. 

Bottomline:

         This movie is neither a National Award material on any front and I would be greatly surprised if it did win nor it is as bad a typical commercial cinema and fares way better than that. Its definitely a good (if not great) attempt by Bala on a period subject. I would however not rate this movie as a best of his, but maybe it could be one of good ones this year! 

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