Taare Zameen Par : Every director is special

A few days back, someone forwarded my writing (reply to a serious forward in a funny way) to a group of which I was a part without quoting that it was written by someone else (to put it more clearly, without quoting that it was written by me). I did not like it as people started appreciating his work. I could not stand it and mailed the group that it was I who had written that piece. I did not think about it then, but now I feel that was not a good way to react. It was arrogant, it was self praise at its worst from me. But the other option of not bragging about it and being happy in the fact that people were appreciating my work was even more difficult. It takes a lot of courage and character to behave that way, which I didnot have then.

Oh!! what crap!!! we want you to tell us about Taare Zameen Par and you are throwing this self centered talks on us. Come to the point

Amol Gupte's TZP

Well the point is I want to start writing about this movie, talking of the real person who I feel is the creative father of TZP, Amole Gupte. He is the one who conceived the whole idea of a movie related to a child suffering from dyslexia, he is the writer of the movie, and he WAS the director of the movie until a point in time, when a (good) man came with his open heart and told him, I understand this is your child, but I think I can nurture him better and being a weaker person in this game of power, he agreed to lend his child, his work. He gave it to a friend who has thanked him whole heartedly, but has not given the same media space as himself.

Its not that I dont like Aamir Khan, its only that a truly talented writer, who spent 8 long years working on this story with his wife Deepa Bhatia, researching on these special kids, researching on everything to make a movie that will bring them their day in the sun. But TZP is now called Aamir Khan's TZP. It must have been really painful for this man, who has not uttered a single bad word about Aamir in media, but has thanked him for producing the movie and making it a reality. I know Amole, it must have been painful. Amole Gupte is the creative director and writer for this movie. He is the one who had worked with Shankar Ehsaan and Loy to create the music of this film (he is also a music composer) and he weaved it around an art that he liked ( he is a trained painter). He gave tribute to his teacher mr. R S Nikumbh by giving his name to Aamir's character. And he gave R S Nikumbh, his soul, everything that he has been doing for last decade is what R S Nikumbh does in the movie. Amole, to me, you are the star of the movie. I salute you for having such great abilities, courage and character. Your Film is too good.

The Movie

Coming to the movie, here comes a movie that has the power to touch your heart in one way or the other. You will identify yourself with atleast one of the characters in the movie. And depending on which character do you identify yourself to, you will feel the movie in a different way.

Its not just a story about a boy who overcomes a problem he has with help of his teacher, but it is in many ways a story for everyone to understand children, to understand that they, their imagination should not be curtailed. It has a strong appeal that says "please don't make your children run in the rat race of the world, identify his special ability and nurture it.

A subject that everyone who had to do something else against their will, because people around him wanted to do that (which is almost 90% of us) will identify with. As Amol Gupte puts it, “It is a film about abilities, not disabilities. Adults need to unburden their children from the crushing weight of their own ambitions. The film stresses that and the fact that all children have their own hidden abilities,”

The Plot

The movie is a simple story of young Ishaan Awasthi (Darsheel Safary), who struggles with his academics while still in std.3 and whom parents, teachers and friends, write off finding him dumb. The movie beautifully starts with young Ishaan fishing in the dirty puddles with his socks. You go on to find how he likes the dogs in his building, how he is so attracted to the colours around him, as he sees the red, blue, green, move around in life, as he feels the breeze of air, the sound of people, reflections and ripples in puddles on the road, as he sees the world with his own eyes.

He has his own special abilities of bonding with the nature around him, playing with the small tadpoles and fishes in dirty water, building his own little aquarium, watching the world around with his own imagination, walking down the roads that kids fear to walk alone "bindaas (with a wink)", as he himself puts it. He loves painting and his family. But he can't read properly and cannot write properly, he cannot identify what he writes and reads, he is dyslexic. He struggles in class, he is slow compared to his classmate and that makes them scoff at him. He bravely goes through all of it.

His parents (Tisca Chopra and Vipin Sharma) don't understand this, they want him to be good at his study, score good in his exam, and be like his elder brother yohan (Sachet Engineer). He starts avoiding and disobeying everyone around him.

Anger and frustration works on the simple mind of the kid, he cries, he fights, and ends up in a boarding school which he never wanted. A boarding school which wants to teach young Ishaan to be disciplined which as per them essentially means study. Which ruins the freedom of young Ishaan, he can no more feel the enormity of the world and the colours that keep pouring around. He has to be one of the thousands of clones that this boarding school has produced. Its a burden too big on this small shoulders.

He loses all his liveliness, he is no more happy. Colours tell him a story of despair, he is still not able to do well in academics and that makes the matters worse. He is not happy as everyone laughs, scolds and scoffs him. The free bird gets captivated only to be freed by a person who understands him.


In Comes Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Aamir Khan), who believes in freeing these captivated young birds.He identifies the problem with Ishaan, and could see his dyslexic childhood in him. He could feel his suffering.

He wants to know what is it that Ishaan is good at and make him self confident through that. He goes to his house, tracing his roots. Meets his parents. He understands how naive were Ishaan's parents to not understand such simple things and making their child a "me too" ranker. (some beautiful dialogue will enlighten the parents in this scene :) )

Ram finds Ishaan's painting skills. He sees some of his beautiful paintings, his flip book, while in his class he did not draw anything. He sees through the above average caliber of the child and gets permission from the prinicpal to help him overcome his learning disabilities.

And Ishaan paints, he paints his way to success. There comes an art mela where Ram organizes a painting competition between teachers and students and the Ishaan wins the same over Ram and regains his self confidence. Beautiful simplicity of this plot of the film has then been detailed in a series of interesting episodes. The movie is made of some beautiful scenes, which adds up to making these episodes beautiful.

There are many scenes in this movie that made to the list of favourites, the 3, i really liked are :

• As Ishaan bunks the school and move around watching the world. Colours all around, a small child sitting on his father's back eating the "ice gola" as the colors drip, a small white drop of point that falls through air (with beautiful camera movement) from a workers hand painting a wall on to Ishaan's cheeks, a painting of a school boy, people sleeping on streets, enormity of the vast ocean. Its a beautiful sequence.
  
  
• The scene where he scares a boy bullying him by lighting crackers and throwing at him, saying that " I am not afraid of anything". Its the frustration that makes you think, that our understanding and thoughts of many things like, what is good? what is fear? what is a good profession? what would you call achievement?, is so manipulated. Its so cliched.


• The song "Maa...", it makes you cry, especially when the flip book made by Ishaan is shown for the first time, as he disappears from the painting and his mother's tear falls on that place. Beautiful direction.

But ....

There are a few things that i did not like :

• The biggest thing that I did not like was, the story needed a painting competition to make Ishaan accepted in the class. It shows a race which eventually Ishaan wins, and that is exactly what the makers did not want to portray.


• The total lack of understanding that both parents of Ishaan shows towards him, I felt the apathy part was a little overdone.

Acting by young Darsheel Safary as Ishaan Awasthi is outstanding. He has acted very well and he seems to me like director's actor giving each expression and dialogue with exact requirements. welcome boy!!

Aamir khan, as always has acted well. He has done very very well in emotional scenes with parents. Portraying joy of Ishaans learning and coming over could be seen through him.

Tisca Chopra as Ishaan's mother delivers a beautiful performance while Vipin Sharma as Ishaan's father overacted at times.

Other kids are good while the teachers in the school did a below average acting job.

Technically,

It was a movie by a first time director, Aamir Khan, and he does very well in making it. I think his direction as a debutant was fabulous. Though the movie was a little edgy in certain parts, it had the power of touching the audience. It gave audience what they can relate to. His handling of emotional scenes was very different from what we see usually and over time I am sure this is going to improve. Aamir will be a director to watch for in future.

Amole Gupte as I have already said, made all this film what it is. And he deserves a big credit firstly for penning such beautiful characters.

Deepa Bhatia did very good with concept and research, but the editing part of his job was not good, I found it just about average. Editing was jittery with jumping scenes at many occasions. Moreover the colors that were the heart of the film, were not as beautifully presented as they should have been in parts. Cinematography from Setu too, i thought could have been better.

Special effects were very well done in the movie. They did not over do anything. I loved the calvin-type cap.Ishaan's flight merging Planet 3, earth in to planet 9 Pluto, to let the world survive ("bindaas" with a wink again).

But the biggest winner in the technical department was the Music. Shankar Ehsaan Loy does it very very well. Especially the background score. The music composers and the film director knew exactly the point when the audience will feel a surge of emotion and have placed apt music on those situations. Even when the colors splash across the scene, the music supports it beautifully. I appreciate this music directors to get their songs sung by other music directors, true camaraderie. Jame Raho song is sung nicely by Vishal Dadlani (Vishl-shekar duo).

Add to it the magic of Prasoon Joshi, (I want to learn about his career shift and want to make one like him :)). He has written the best lyrics of the year for sure.

Watch it with your family, you will like it for sure.

I wanted to give a little above 3.5 * to the movie, 3.5 * would be injustice to the movie and 4* will be a little hyped. So am leaving the ratings at that.

P.S. : 3 movies impressed me a lot this year, and surprisingly all three had children as their central character (Parzania (which I still feel is the best movie to release this year), Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (Italian film) and Taare Zameen Par).