Film Barfi Review!

Film Barfi Review!
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Illeana D’Cruz, Saurabh Shukla, Roopa Ganguly, Jishu Sengupta
Director: Anurag Basu

Silences rarely spoke so expressively. It's been a while since we saw a movie that set style at a subsidiary state to substance; put the characters' inner life ahead of the showy manifestations of self-identity in a world governed by benevolence and charm.

Just the fact that this film’s main focus is on two people who cannot communicate the way you and I do, makes it automatically unusual. ‘Barfi!’ comes out of mainstream Bollywood, whose standard idea of creating difference is to shuffle one step forward, two steps back given that context, and its subject, 'Barfi’! does take several courageous strides. It’s good in many ways; what stops it from being a great movie is a degree of vagueness, and an insistence on loveliness.

"Barfi!" is a very delightful movie. It's remarkably devoid of vanity. The story of a deaf-and-mute man who could have grown up watching Chaplin and Raj Kapoor's cinema, and an autistic girl who has certainly not seen Shah Rukh Khan in "My Name Is Khan", is told without the props of a loud background music and other prompters to get audiences' involved in the proceedings.

This is a picaresque world of artless charm which invites you in without band baaja or baaraati. "Barfi!" is an original cinema.

Barfi (Kapoor) is what a speech-and-hearing challenged boy calls himself, because he cannot pronounce Murphy. We fall in love with Barfi just the way we are meant to helplessly and happily. He is endearing and naughty, child-like qualities which endure as he steps into adulthood and the first stirrings of romance. Those feelings come to the fore when Barfi sees the beautiful Shruti (D’Cruz), who comes to Darjeeling with her parents. But there’s something about Barfi, and the way he makes her feel, that she doesn’t find with the man (Sen gupta) she is promised to. Done beautifully is the bitter-sweetness of their relationship-- a young man whose lightness of spirit makes you believe that his disabilities do not impede his enjoyment of life, and an inexperienced young girl who gets confused between the signals of the heart and head. Watching over her is concerned mom (Ganguly) in a short, but effective cameo, even though her strand seems inspired by a Hollywood movie.

Ironically, it’s the relatively conventional romance between Barfi and Shruti which is a delight, and reminds us of how the olden days Hindi films dealt with shy young lovers (most of ‘Barfi!’ is set in the 70s). It’s when the movie moves into the seriously challenging space between the young man who can’t speak or hear and the autistic Jhilmil (Chopra) that it starts missing occasional beats. Not because Chopra doesn't work hard at it. She has the most difficult part, even more so than Kapoor’s which is enjoyably bubbly and expressive, and you can see how both the director and the actor have gone the extra mile in trying to prevent Jhilmil from becoming a caricature or nauseating. But Chopra is not able to hide the effort she brings to fleshing out Jhilmil, making the part commendable but forced.

‘Barfi’ has its heart at the right place, and doesn’t dither from its intentions. There’s also a nice turn by Illeana D’Cruz in her first Hindi movie, even though I kept getting distracted by her perfectly mascara-spiked eyelashes in every single scene. Saurabh Shukla as a harried cop who spends his life going around in Barfi-shaped circles is excellent too. But all else is overshadowed by Ranbir Kapoor, who delivers on the promises he’s held out in his previous movies. His Barfi is marvelous, speaking even when silent.

Significantly Anurag Basu, a master narrator (and never mind the tormenting tepidity of his last movie "Kites") does away with the crutches of a sign language and a voiceover.

Ranbir Kapoor as Barfi or Murphy whatever!...is left to his own devices. An incredibly enterprising actor, he brings a Chaplinesque aura to Barfi's character. Blending a very physical pie-in-the-face style of comic acting with an ethereal poignancy, Ranbir turns his character and the movie into a muted celebration of life. The tears are hidden from view. But they are there.

His grandfather, Raj Kapoor, has never been very far from Ranbir's acting skills. Raj Kapoor was highly influenced by Chaplin. Priyanka Chopra as the autistic Jhilmil steals the show from Ranbir, if that's possible. Priyanka's natural glamorous personality simply disappears into her character. We don't see the actress on screen at all! We see only Jhilmil who reminds us in a very pleasant way of Sridevi in "Sadma". This is one of the most unblemished interpretations of a physical-psychological disability seen on celluloid.

While Ranbir and Priyanka naturally prove themselves the best actors of their generation, Ileana D'Cruz makes a convinced engaging debut into Hindi cinema.

As for Basu, in his previously movies "Gangster - A Love Story" and "Life... In A Metro", he proved himself a genius of the inner life. "Barfi!" too is shot on location within the hearts of the characters. Not just the memorable protagonists, even the smaller players especially Roopa Ganguly and Akaash Khuruna and Haradhan Bandhopadhyay, leave an enduring impact.

"Barfi!" comes as close to being a modern masterwork as cinematically possible.

Overall, Barfi! is a brilliant film with the soul of original cinema.