Saturday, January 23, 2010

Bala wins National award.

There might be people who might have won the national award for their first film, but the case of Bala was different. It was just a question of when, rather than if. Though National awards in India are subject to political whims and bias, it is indeed painful that Naan Kadavul has not won more awards. I personally fancied for Pooja and Vaali as well. Pooja for her performance and Vaali for composing a Sanskrit song (I thought that will also 'touch' the Northies in the jury). After the announcement, Bala in his interview to TV channels did say that he personally fancied awards for Arthur Wilson, the cinematographer, Pooja and Arya and pleasantly surprised to get the award himself.

He has done just four films and has already built a lot of reputation. Even more surprising is that his films are expected to be 'off-beat' and not of the 'commercial masala' brand. I am not sure of expectations of Naan Kadavul but I went to Pithamahan with a big expectations and even more surprised to see it surpassed (normally expectations are belied ;)). I had not seen his earlier two films - 'Sethu', which almost everybody claim is a classic, giving a stunning life for the actor Vikram alias Kenny and 'Nanda', which gave a life for Surya, who was doing mediocre films at best. I felt that if not in Nanda, Pithamahan should have got Laila a national award and Ilayaraja for background score. Infact, even in Naan Kadavul, background score of Ilayaraja is simply exhilarating. The tempo of the film which is just near 2 hours of duration can be just sensed by the background score.

I had mentioned about Bala's opinion expressed to Jayamohan in my last post on public opinion of 'Aayirathil Oruvan'. Surprisingly, unlike 'public', media gave a very favorable opinion of 'Naan Kadavul', whether it is Hindu, Sify, Behindwoods. Of course, I liked what I saw and opined so. In my college days, I didnt like whatever little that I saw of Sethu and even later didnt venture into Nanda, though I heard good 'word-of-mouth' for the latter. Recently when I saw those movies, I could see that he has really churned out good products. I was also impressed on how he keeps the unit in good spirits. Even during 'Naan Kadavul', Pooja mentioned about the 'puzzles' that he used to ask - like Tamil palindrome. As a director, maybe he is ‘God’ of a different kind.
How does he rate ‘Naan Kadavul?’
“The best among my four films! You have to keep growing, right?”
RIGHT :)

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