Gifted peo­ple don’t lose any of their belong­ings. I was [ am ! ] not gifted in that way. I have been los­ing my things invari­able through­out my life. It ranges from chap­pals, hand ker­chiefs [ Max­i­mum num­ber of times ], Tif­fin box, pen, ID card, keys, hall ticket, dig­i­tal diary, train ticket and what not. Even today I am han­dling my things by fluke and not by con­scious. Dur­ing my 10th std, I lost my new ‘Jaiku­mar Eng­lish guide”. It fell down from my cycle and I couldn’t trace it back. My mother helped me in locat­ing [inves­ti­ga­tion skills ! ] and found it in a remote colony in the out­skirts of my town. I didn’t even write my name on it. Even today, either I for­get to get the change or the item itself from the shop :). While look­ing back it may not appear as seri­ous it was dur­ing those days — but it was damn serious.

I remem­ber in my ear­lier work, I have lost the last instal­la­tion disk [ Disk 7/7 :) ] of Word Per­fect soft­ware. To hide it from my boss, I roamed all over Trip­li­cane those days to get the copy of the pirated soft­ware. Finally, we got an upgraded ver­sion of disks from Bom­bay office [ Appaadi !! ]. Most of the prob­lems resolve by them­selves, actu­ally[ Puthiya thathuvam ! ].

On a sim­i­lar theme, Sujatha has writ­ten a won­der­ful short story [ Iran­danaa ] about his child­hood expe­ri­ence los­ing the iran­danaa coin and the con­se­quences, in his sparkling nar­ra­tive style. I expe­ri­enced the same while watch­ing the movie “The White Balloon”.

Story

One of the sim­plest sto­ries we have ever come across. A 7-year old girl Rayeiz hap­pens to get a 500 Tomans note from her mother in order to buy a gold fish on her own. What hap­pens to the note, the fish and the kid is the story.

View

I would sug­gest to have a touch with Iran­ian cin­ema — Chil­dren of heaven, Father, Color of Par­adise, The Mir­ror [ not a good one ], Ozama [ Equal to 10 Mahanadhi ! ] and of course, the while bal­loon. Iran­ian direc­tors have a restric­tion of show­ing women/teenage girls on screen. Hence they weave the story with chil­dren. Let me list out the ele­ments that are miss­ing in the movie first — Music, catchy pho­tog­ra­phy, great actors, songs, exotic loca­tions, com­edy track, fights, and lengthy dia­logues, fast cut edit­ing. It results in an enjoy­able form of cin­ema. Trust me !

The open­ing mur­der scene of a story, will fall on the audi­ence head to resolve the mur­der. We start to guess and inves­ti­gate in par­al­lel, along with the story. Sim­i­larly though this film is a drama, we start to own the prob­lem. The story starts in a busy mar­ket where a mother search­ing for her child. Almost all the impor­tant char­ac­ters appear on the screen with­out any explicit intro­duc­tion. Then comes the beau­ti­ful kid Razieh (Aida Moham­mad­khani) join­ing her mother. The story revolves her nag­ging, pas­sion towards buy­ing a gold fish, dis­ap­point­ment, sur­prise, sad­ness, tears, joy, beliefs, faith and every­thing. I can’t sim­ply say that she bril­liantly acted. It’s feast to watch her talk­ing and her reac­tions through­out the movie. I have never come across a good per­for­mance of a kid in Tamil [ except shamili in Anjali — Durga illeenga :) ]

It’s tough to write a sim­ple song to the kids [ Azha. Val­li­appa is really great ! ]. The film comes down to the level of kids and floats the story in their mind­set. You’ll get a solu­tion to their prob­lem by your intel­li­gence. But the way they reach that solu­tion is the screen­play. It’s a racy script — The story hap­pens a day before New Year and the voice from radio says you have 1 hour 28 mins to the New Year. The film exactly ends at the tim­ing they set for the New Year [ 85 mins movie ]. It’s never used in thriller movies. The story has mul­ti­ple twists and turns which leave you to join the kids with­out apply­ing  your grown up intelligence.

If you won­der about the title of the movie, you have the answer told in the movie. It’s bet­ter not to know the full story of the movie before watch­ing it. The good­ness of the movie is that you can watch it with your fam­ily. Espe­cially with your school going kid. Thanks to Mathan for rec­om­mend­ing this movie.

:)

Toto

Related Posts B

No related posts. B