‘Paranthu Po’ movie review: A gentle reflection on escaping the grind

It is a polaroid of characters a million Indian middle-class families could see themselves in — it’s about the dreams that have caged them to a lifestyle and environment, the ebbs and flows in the pursuit of those dreams, and the comfort in breaking out of the rut and seeing the world as an eight-year-old boy who knows how to climb mountains but not how to climb down. With a mystifyingly simple language and a tone that is casual and humorous, Paranthu Po is a striking departure from the tone of Ram’s diverse filmography. The writer-director manages to achieve a lot through an elegant premise and austere filmmaking.

The very first sequence of the film encapsulates the essence of what follows. A drone shot and a background track akin to a nursery rhyme take us to an upper-middle-class apartment in Chitlapakam, Chennai — the lyrics suggest how the house was built encroaching over a lake, which becomes a pointed political commentary as well as a metaphor for the delicate footing over which working-class dreams are built. The apartment is home to the naughty eight-year-old Anbu (even his name means affection; child actor Mithul Ryan shoulders the film), whose hyperactivity and curiosity need all the attention of his parents. His father, Gokul (Shiva’s performance would make every middle-class father feel like an ‘Agila Ulaga Superstar’), owns an organic foods business, while his mother, Glory (we need Grace Antony in more Tamil comedies), is currently busy at her saree stall at an expo in Coimbatore, yearning to return to her haven soon.

Grace Antony in a still from ‘Paranthu Po’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

From afar, Anbu has almost everything a boy of his age would ask for: dotting parents who work hard to ensure he gets the best education; expensive toys, and he even has a ‘crush’ who responds to his heart emojis! There are hints of how spoiled he is in his parents’ endless attempts to pacify him. From the way Gokul cuts the call from Anbu’s annoyed school teacher, or how he locks the gate whenever he leaves Anbu alone, or how the child casually speaks to a delivery agent delivering a peace offering pizza from his mother, there are signs that this is habitual in this household.

But this isn’t just the usual case of a child throwing tantrums. There’s an inexplicable restlessness in the child, which is what we and Anbu’s parents begin to understand more about when Gokul and Anbu (whose waveboard-riding mimics a bird flying) go on an incidental road trip to the suburbs, a journey that brings one too many surprises and colourful characters — like Emperor, who has an unbeatable open-air ‘palatial’ abode and a heart nobler than any king; Dharma The Great, who climbs atop trees and makes bird calls; and Vanitha (Anjali), Glory’s long-lost ‘crush’ and her soft-spoken husband Gunashekhar (Aju Varghese). We also get on a rocketship to Mars and wish for a dinosaur to come out of a duck egg.

Paranthu Po, as the title tells, is a story about the necessity to fly away from all that we trap ourselves under in our pursuit of dreams, and it’s something to think how most of us would have come across or yearned for an Anbu to break us out of our spells and usher us towards the mountains. It’s a gentle musical road comedy — a rarity in Tamil cinema — that makes you want to climb mountains, walk through a sunflower field, sleep atop a tree, swim in a lake, or hold a duck’s egg in your hand.

Sequences move gradually in a linear fashion, and the information we need about their pasts is either told matter-of-factly or becomes pivotal subplots for characters, like how Glory’s family hasn’t spoken to her since she married someone from a different religion against their will. A major strength of Paranthu Po is the gentle, deadpan comedy that leaves you in splits every fifth minute. Letting songs written in simple Tamil and English, like a catchy school-time poem, accompany the narration works like a charm. Moreover, nothing feels out of place, and initial shots of the child playing with a tractor toy or donning a football jersey become hilarious details recalled later on.

Shiva in a still from ‘Paranthu Po’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

The language Ram opts to tell the story in has the appeal of one of those bedtime stories you could revisit at any age and always find a little more to love, laugh and think about. This is a film that acknowledges the bad in the world but compels you to look at the good and to expect kindness from fellow human beings. A tea stall owner goes to any lengths to help a father. An auto driver is empathetic to the plight of a helpless woman. A father witnesses a painful but hilarious ‘no smoking’ campaign from his son. A poor old homeless man buys breakfast for his unlikely, richer guests. The kindness people put out to the world finds a way of coming back to them.

This is, after all, a film that makes even ‘Saathaaney’ (‘devil’) turn into a term of endearment. Ram does touch upon some worldly topics, including caste, religion and class, but like the analogy he keeps mentioning in his interviews, these commentaries flow deep into the stream, and on top, the river flows as calmly as it could.

In colloquial Tamil, ‘malai erittaan’ — which translates to ‘he scaled the mountain’ — is used to refer to someone throwing a tantrum. Paranthu Po is a film about a child learning to climb down a mountain, literally and metaphorically, but it is also a story that urges us to fly away to the hills and to remember when we threw a tantrum every time life seemed unfair. Perhaps it is a romanticised perspective on life in the modern world, but there’s romance in listening to Ilaiyaraaja on an old tape recorder while sitting on a hilltop. Paranthu Po reminds us that life loses its magic when we can no longer dream of dinosaurs hatching from duck eggs.

Paranthu Po is currently running in theatres