Too much of BARFI!

Rating: ★ ★ ★

Yes, after a very long time Bollywood has something to offer (not forgetting GOW). From the picturesque cinematography to mellifluous music, to lovely flow of emotions, Barfi is sweet, feel good and honest cinema packed with strong performances that will remain in the hearts of people for a long time.

Barfi (RK) is a deaf-mute, naughty, carefree, and likable lad living with his single father at exquisite town of Darjeeling. He has nothing to do/give except maybe love to people and pain in the ass to Mr. Dutta the Police Inspector of the town. Now one day, as it generally happens, Shruti (Ilena D’Cruz) a bubbly, and charming girl comes to Darjeeling to live her life before getting trapped in conjugal vows. Quite predictably she gets enamoured by our cute boy and the boy reciprocates and even decides to marry her. Girl’s mother says NO, the girl agrees and marries another rich guy. All set, enters Jhilmil (PC), an autistic, and loveable girl belonging to an affluent family. Her parents don’t love her but she is the apple of the eye of her grandparents, that’s a bit hard for me to digest.

After that I don’t even remember what happens, it becomes more like a game of lawn tennis with Barfi being the ball and Jhilmil, Shruti (after ditching the rich guy) being the players. Most importantly I think it doesn’t even matter to the film makers how the story shapes up because no one gives a shit, when the biggest heart-throb of the nation is imitating Charlie Chaplin on the big screen and time and again few good jokes are thrown in, but for me it takes away a lot.

RK has been immaculate, stunning, and looks deeply engrossed in his character throughout the movie. Maybe there is still some room for improvement but will that be asking of too much from an Indian actor? Don’t know. PC, I really loved her, besides few instances of over acting and pretentious dialogues I think she’s has played her character as realistically as one could. Oh sorry, I forgot to talk about Ilena, well she’s is very beautiful and attractively lean. Do I need to say anything else? Being the narrator of the movie she had a lot of responsibility on her shoulders, and her character depicts many qualities like jealousy, selfishness, avarice but somehow I feel not enough redemption has been given to her character which leads to a certain dislike towards her. I don’t think we can blame her for that, maybe the writers.

Enough said Movie is definitely worth a watch, maybe a couple for its music and few unprecedented scenes that are to die for (one’s that made my eyes wet). I think too much content has been superfluously merged in the film, its wide in scope but not enough in depth, and that has been a fundamental challenge with contemporary India cinema. Characters need time to grow, there got to be rhythm that has to be consistent in a movie, a mood that has to be more or less similar throughout. You can’t put comedy, drama, tragedy, musical, terror, mystery everything in a movie if you are not Shakespeare, so please don’t.  Adding more characters and moving them from one city to another won’t solve this problem, only increase the length of it; you got to think more about the human nature. I think it would be better if directors could spend more time in developing a story rather than spending big bucks to shoot in picturesque locations but I am highly sceptical if that’s what an Indian aam aadmi wants.