How Balachandar is different from others? Why is he considered a wizard of emotions? Why the ace film maker turned mentor for innate talented actors of whom South Cinema boasts of? Simple. He brought middle class life alive on screen with no artificial make up adding glamour or unrealibility to his characters. South movies’ making can be broadly classified into two categories; before Balachandar and after Balachandar.
Before Balachandar, hero always had larger than life image. He wore glitzy clothes and even in action sequences, he would sport spot clean uncreased clothes. And whatever might be the story, finally it would have a happy ending. After Balachandar, middle-class life became the subjects of films. Heroes sported shabby and rusty ungroomed look very near to real life and these heroes are even failures and did nothing heroic to change fate. But they are accepted by audiences.
His ‘Maro Charitra’, introduced Kamal Haasan to Telugu Film Industry, the most talented actor of the Indian Cinema. The love story shocked audience because of its tragic ending. Still audience couldn’t sway themselves away from his magic and the film made roaring business at the box-office. When it was remade in Hindi as ‘Ek Dhuje Ke Liye’, Bollywood danced to his tunes.
Rajnikanth and Mammooty, the superstars are made in his school. The yesteryear screen divas, Sridevi, Jayasudha, Jayaprada, Sri Vidya, Saritha and many others learnt their basic alphabet of Cinema in Balachandar’s school. He gave a ‘Rudra Veena’ to Chiranjeevi, the film which exposed the other side of megastar who was restricted by his own image. ‘Rudra Veena’ stands aside special amongst megastar’s movies. How can we forget Prakash Raj, a very talented actor South Cinema can boast of.
Rajnikanth, Kamal Haasan, Prakash Raj, Sridevi and Jayaprada became all India stars and are examples of his mentoring skills to bring out the innate talents of born actors. He has introduced more than 20 actors to the industry and all of them have proved themselves good actors. There are three directors in South, who are path-makers and even path-breakers aka Balachandar, K Vishwanath and Bapu. Balachandar stands tall amongst all the Indian Film Makers for all the 100 plus films, he gave to cine lovers, the films which tell our own story. Physically he isn’t there among us. But he lives on.
