BARFI- Sweet and Sad.

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Ileana D'Cruz, Akash Khurana, Sumona Chakravarti, Saurabh Shukhla, Rupali Ganguly, Ashish Vidyarthi, Jisshu Sengupta, Haradhan Bandopadhyay
Producer: Siddharth Roy Kapoor, Ronnie Screwwala
Story and Direction : Anurag Basu
Cinematography: Ravi Varma
Music Director: Pritam Chakraborty
Genre:  Sad Comedy, Romance, Social
Rating: ***.5(3.5/5)
Review: Birjis Adeni Rashed

(The aim and intention of my reviews is to critique and recommend while not revealing the whole story to enjoy the movie when seen. But minor details have been divulged for a proper review!)

 Title Song: Ala Barfi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_oyI0C2kBRc

 Picturesque setting of beautiful Darjeeling  in its  old world charm of the hill station with lush green hills, tea plantations and chugging train is very mesmerizing, refreshing and beautifully captured in  “Barfi”.  As against the recent fast paced Bollywood movies set in exotic international destinations with racing screenplays, this slow paced movie in quintessential settings featuring three very individualistic protagonists with excellent performances is very charming, sweet, yet sad.

The protagonists are the sweet and charming deaf and dumb hero, Murphy/Barfi ( Ranbir Kapoor); The beautiful and emotionally expressive heroine Shruti( Illeana D’Cruz) , and the Autistic strong-minded heroine, Jhilmil (Priyanka Chopra). Yes, there are two heroines and one hero; it’s a kind of triangle romance, yet not. Since the movie is not about romance, but a story of these individual characters in relationship with each other in different circumstantial situations of life! 

The movie stands out for its brilliant acting. All three protagonists had stellar performances. Ranbir Kapoor is exceptional as Barfi and oozes of charm despite his impairments.  His actions and expressions say a lot in this movie.  Priyanka in her role as  Jhilmil, an autistic strong minded girl has some excellent performances. And Ileana as Shruti engages you into the story with her emotive expressions and captivating face.

The magic of the movie was the silent movie kind charisma with beautiful soulful music.   The movie has many vignettes of sweet and captivating moments, light hearted and Chaplin-esque like slapstick comedy which cloaks the sad and bittersweet part of the story. Besides these episodes of genius, the director sometimes looses focus and direction through the movie. The reasoning got lost when too many factors and variables and silly subplots were added to the story. Having two lead characters with disabilities, may have lost the story’s focus too.  The story jumping through three timelines in flashback mode also added to the perplexity.

The music in this movie is very soulful and the lyrics of some of the songs are interesting and playful, which brings a lot of light heartedness to the movie.

Though the director walks us through the poignant life and emotions of characters with disabilities, their struggles for normalcy, their daily hurdles and society’s negative attitudes towards them; the director sometimes has inaccurate depiction of the characters with disabilities. Though only a medical professional can tell how accurate the autistic characteristics were, but the hearing and speech impaired Barfi is shown as soft in his head at times, broadening the depth of disability for no reason!

 Its sad, what could have been a brilliant movie with some amazing content, performances and cinematography, is not, partially because of its dragging end, plot digressions, improper editing, and not working to bring any societal change in attitudes towards disabilities!