Balan: The Boy team breaks down the film’s music ahead of theatrical release

MUMBAI: Balan: The Boy hit theatres today, and within hours, some of Indian cinema’s most decorated names had gathered on Zee Music’s YouTube channel to pull the film apart, in the best way possible. Legendary filmmaker Priyadarshan, director Chidambaram, writer Jithu Madhavan, composer Sushin Shyam, cinematographer Shyju Khalid, editor Vivek Harshan and Sujal Parekh, chief business officer at Zee Music Company, sat down together for a conversation that went well beyond the usual promotional puffery.

The film, produced by KVN Productions and the Thespian Films, is built around identity, belonging, survival, and the fierce, complicated bond between a mother and her son. It released today across five languages, Malayalam, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada, and from the sound of the conversation, the team is betting heavily on the music doing as much storytelling as the script.

Zee Music Company, the film’s official music partner, has been pushing that soundtrack hard across regions. Thaakkol, the recently released track, leans into a nursery-rhyme register, all innocence and wide-eyed wonder, sung by Nila Raj, written by Anvar Ali and composed by Sushin Shyam, while quietly seeding the mystery at the film’s core. Then there’s Engotta, composed and sung by Sushin Shyam himself, written again by Anvar Ali, an aching ode to unconditional love and the leap into the unknown, mirroring the mother-son journey at the film’s heart.

Chidambaram didn’t hold back his admiration for his composer, pointing to Sushin Shyam’s score for Manjummel Boys as proof of the man’s range, and calling the Balan collaboration nothing short of a privilege.

Sushin Shyam, for his part, revealed the team had deliberately kept the soundtrack intimate, particularly around the mother-son dynamic. For the track “Makane Makane”, he went further still, working with the Shanka Tribe band and Neha Nair to capture the specific sonic world of a fisherman community, rather than settling for a generic backdrop.

Priyadarshan, visibly moved by the film, called the mother-son relationship one of the most touching bonds in existence, and praised Balan: The Boy’s melodic instincts. He also used the moment to tease his upcoming film Haiwaan and reflect briefly on Bhooth Bangla, proof that even in a room built to talk about someone else’s film, the old guard can’t resist a plug for what’s coming next.

One film, five languages, and a soundtrack doing the heavy emotional lifting. If the trailer didn’t already have you reaching for the tissues, this conversation certainly will.