It’s impossible to imagine that Balan: The Boy was once just an idea that was scribbled onto a notepad to later include plot points, acts and a set of scenes. It doesn’t feel engineered or constructed; instead, you gradually dip your two feet straight into its flow. It has its moods, its high moments and a very specific type of lightness, but the elegance of its storytelling is such that you feel like you’re listening to a person recalling the most striking set of memories, ones so vivid that they’ve defined his childhood.
This is evident, right in the way we absorb Indhu (Farzana) navigating the first few months of life outside of prison. She gave birth to her son, the titular Balan, while in prison and one of the lasting images is that of the young boy making sure that the four-legged creature he was seeing for the first time was indeed a dog. What follows just after their jail term is an exquisite montage that takes Indhu from one profession to another, between terrains and places and from one religion to another. Stillness or normalcy is out of the question for this mother-son duo and you see this restlessness in Indhu as she reminds herself not to trust anyone. There’s constant worry of the past finally catching up to them but their lives feel like an adventure, with both the mother and the son summoning the spirit of outlaws like Bonny and Clyde.
With each new city, they assume fresh identities and even fresher back stories. At one point, we listen in on Indhu narrating the story of a demon that had held a pregnant lady captive. Torn between the possibility of the child ending up like the demon, or a slave like the mother, Indhu describes the choices that may have led her to prison and the reason why she refuses to be confined to any one place or personality.
Their modus operandi is simple: stay on in one place but only until they aren’t bound by any obligations or relationships. Just when a shopkeeper asks Indhu to assume the role of his daughter, she runs away. Later, when a lady brings a marriage proposal to Indhu, she looks at it as another cue to leave behind this life. Later still, just when you think Indhu has isolated herself from the outside world to settle at a place that seems most remote, we see her past catching up, yet again. The connections may have been obvious, at least in the first two occasions. But in the third, it’s when she’s looking at a heart-shaped earring as she finally tries to smile that she’s interrupted by the most painful blast from her past.
We’re reminded every so often that it’s this mother that’s bringing up this boy. At first, when we see this mother teaching the boy to lie and to make up stories about the past, wherever they go, you feel like analysing the film from a moralistic point of view. We worry for the boy being brought up by an emotionally erratic mother like Indhu and the effect her teachings would have on him as an adult. But as we move from one place to another, and as we grow to understand the both of them a lot better, we realise that morality is a distant dream for the likes of them. They’re still too early into their respective fights for survival to be able to think about far-fetched concepts of a common good, of what’s right and what’s wrong.
It’s also these “lessons” that must have taught the boy to always remain on his feet and to never trust anyone. As the film moves into its later portions, we see this tale of parenting move into another debate. The instincts this boy has developed begins to help him later on when we witness the birth of a young criminal. But even here, the film remains special because it never allows us to judge him or his ways. He’s trained to do whatever it takes to survive and that’s what we see him do, even if it means betraying someone. In any other film, you’d think you’re witnessing the origins story of a brutal criminal. But when you’re watching Balan, it feels like a lesson on empathy, that of the most brutal kind.
Strangely, it’s also in these portions that it feels like the film meanders a tad too far away from the core emotions that made this about the boy and his mother. The third act feels too forced and unnatural, deviating from the narrative elegance that brought it thus far. The subtle narrative of a complex psychological drama fades away to the take the form of a more traditional thriller. It remains entertaining even here, but it loses the intimacy through which these characters mattered to us, forcing us instead to focus on plot.
What keeps the film grounded through it all is how this mother and son duo begins to exist at a deeper place within us. Their actions stop affecting us as we too get trained to look the other way, as long as it’s about survival for these two. Shyju Khalid’s visuals and Sushin’s gentle score work overtime to make us feel the full impact of the scenes at a deeper, more primal level than anything that pops straight at us. And finally, it’s a film that belongs young Adiseshan and Farzana who plays their mother; credit also to the casting decisions that led to these two. With the same big bulging eyes and with the same ability to conjure the imagery of the big bad world through them, we’re not only watching a film about the loss of innocence but also about the kind of children who are never even given a choice to remain innocent. Boyhood has seldom felt this painful.