When Manjummel Boys became a pan-India hit in early 2024, director Chidambaram found himself at a rather unexpected crossroads. He received numerous offers, but some of the projects he had in mind were too large to be executed quickly.
The filmmaker eventually found his next film in a story written by Jithu Madhavan, the director of Aavesham. The result was Balan – The Boy, a dark and intimate story centred around a mother-son relationship.
Balan – The Boy received rave reviews and was highly appreciated by the audience, as it was a concept that felt new while also having a thrilling element. In an exclusive interview with NDTV, director Chidambaram opens up about why he took up this project, pan-Indian cinema, and what he’s looking forward to next.
“After Manjummel Boys, a lot of doors opened but I was pretty confused as to what to do next. All the films I had in my mind would take time to materialise. That’s when Jithu said he had a story and wanted to narrate it to me. He asked me about scale and I said, ‘I don’t care about scale, you just narrate the story.’ That’s how Balan happened.”
“I was immediately hooked onto the concept because it is very romantic, in a way. It starts off with a mother and son getting out of prison and we don’t know who they are or why they are in prison. That setting itself really hooked me. The mother-child emotional bond was the core of the film.”
“If you just go with the emotional side of it, the film can turn pretty much bland or unengaging. To tell the story, we chose the syntax of a thriller, so it’s engaging and cerebral and people will watch it. And for the commercial aspects as well,” he explains.
Given that Jithu Madhavan is a successful writer-director and Chidambaram is one too, how did he decide to take up the project? Chidambaram says there was never any discomfort about directing somebody else’s material because the film eventually became a collaborative effort between him and Jithu Madhavan.
“Of course, there is a trade-off that happens between me and Jithu. He knows where his limit stops and mine starts. That respect was there all the time. His draft was old – it was written even before his first film. So, we both sat together and wrote the draft of what we see today. It was very collaborative work,” says the Jan.E.Man director.
The film’s intimate scale also meant that casting was one of its biggest challenges. Almost 90 per cent of the cast consisted of newcomers, including the actors playing the mother and the boy.
Chidambaram entrusted the responsibility to his brother Ganapathi, who is an actor in Malayalam cinema and worked as a casting director on Manjummel Boys.
“My brother found the mother and the boy. It was a very tedious task. The boy had to have the right emotions and look a certain way. The mother and son should look believable. There is an older boy also (when the child grows up). We went to almost all the schools in Kerala and did auditions. For the mother, we got almost 2,000 entries,” he explains.
The casting was crucial to the film as the movie explored the relationship between a mother and her son in great detail. Chidambaram says he was fortunate that the young actors he eventually cast were able to understand the emotional requirements of the story despite their age.
“I was lucky to find them. They were all good actors. Farzana Palathingal, the mother, had done some theatre and worked in ads so she was accustomed to the process and was a good actor.”
“I got lucky with the boys – Adhisheshan KR as Balan (younger child) and Muhammad Zinaan as Balan (older child). They could understand the larger concept and the emotional aspect. They started improvising after a point of time, so they were all naturals,” he continues.
“For instance, there is a scene where the mother is asking the boy to pack his bags and says it’s time to leave. The boy is crying that he wants to go to school. Then she goes out of the house and she also cries. I didn’t call cut and the boy took the bag, hugged it and stood there. That was all him. He understood the concept of the scene,” says Chidambaram with pride.
Malayalam star Tovino Thomas was also roped in for a cameo in Balan – The Boy, and the director says the decision was partly motivated by the desire to present the actor in a way audiences had not seen him before.
He also appreciates Tovino’s willingness to take on roles that are not always those of the leading man.
“Tovino is not getting stuck into that hero image as he’s open to doing diverse roles like this. And I’m very happy that he’s going out there and experimenting with all these roles,” he says.
Having made two radically different films that were big hits, Chidambaram says he does not want to settle into a particular genre or repeat himself. His ambition is to explore as many different forms of storytelling as possible.
So far, he has worked with newcomers and big artists, but not big stars. Won’t making a film with a star in future mean he has to also cater to the star’s image?
“If the script is solid and you know exactly what you are saying, then I think it won’t be a problem. I think it’s more about embracing the star’s image and thinking what you can do differently in that. If you’re bringing in a star, it’s a big film. It’s a big load on the producer, so it has to make money. We have to get to the audience and we can’t intellectualise it. So, it is like how can we embrace the genre and what can we do beyond that. What can be new. That’s how I see things,” he explains.
Both Manjummel Boys and Balan – The Boy became hits across India, but Chidambaram says he doesn’t set out to make a ‘pan-Indian’ film.
“Thankfully, both the films had a global emotion. One guy falling into a pit and returning home, and the next about a mother and son. Both stories and emotions are very universal. I think you can make such films for the local audience and it automatically becomes pan-Indian or global. All the emotions that I’m trying to portray are automatically universal,” he explains.
But the director also questions what the term pan-Indian film means. He says ‘pan-Indian’ is increasingly becoming synonymous with scale, violence and action.
“What makes a film pan-Indian? Is it just violence and gore that make it a pan-Indian film, or is it a film that the whole of India understands? We have to define that correctly. I think pan-Indian is a film that everyone understands. Basically, the emotions. Lagaan is a film that everyone understands; it’s a pan-Indian film. What we call pan-Indian films these days, unfortunately, are films with big scale, action, set pieces and violence. There is a mix-up in that definition in my opinion,” Chidambaram elaborates.
Chidambaram is keeping details of his next project – a Hindi one with a well-known star – under wraps, but he says an announcement could come within the next couple of months.
He has already written the story, although several elements still need to be finalised.
As he bids adieu, he states, “There are a couple of other projects with different producers in the pipeline, but we haven’t finalised on what we are going with first. I want to work on as many genres as possible.”
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