Across a palette of painstakingly detailed scenes unfolds an
enchanting play of tragic comedy in Barfi. The unfair blows of fate and the
pain of unrequited love are juxtaposed with Chaplinesque sequences and the flames of romance that warm the heart as much as it aches.
Ranbir continues his spree of bravura performances with the portrayal
of a boy who, despite being deaf and mute, is practically all sunshine and
laughter. If the concept seems unbelievable, Ranbir injects it with just the exact note
of melancholy and self-deprecation to avoid going over the top. This
performance is right up there with Sanjeev Kumar of Koshish, Sridev in Sadma or
Rani in Black.
The foil to him is Ileana, the new girl from the south.
Though her porcelain complexion and wide eyed wonder brings back echoes of
Manisha from 1942- A Love Story, she helps us quickly forget that comparison by
expressing a surprising level of depth as her characters evolves.
But the surprise is Priyanka. In a role that has less screen
time and scope for physical beauty than the other two, she plays an autistic
girl, unloved by her immediate family, with a gauche awkwardness that appears
as real and appealing as some of her recent performances appeared robotic.
Without the pressure of being made to carry the film on her shoulders, she acts
the perfect third angle to this “triangle”.
The story moves at its own pace, cocking a snook at the
recent spate of frenetic melodramas. The screenplay goes back and forth across
decades and cities (Kolkata and Darjeeling )
with consummate ease and a solid knowledge that the audience watching this
movie will not get irritated by complexity and in fact may welcome it. The same
confidence is displayed by presenting the turning points of the movie in some
of the most sublime moments ever seen on the screen – whether it be the death
of a loved one or the unification of lovers.
Through all this, the music often takes the place of dialogues,
communicating light-heartedness and pathos with equal intensity. The production
values are classy, playing with colors in a muted way, yet not restraining from
giving us a panoramic view when the screenplay deserved it. The verdant hills
and the chaotic streets look equally appealing, yet never in a plastic,
re-touched way. Each element of the movie forces us to question our fundamental assumptions about love and tragedy, and and our own experiences, leading us to that all-too familiar question - Have we loved at all? And if we did, what did we lose? And if we didn't, do we have the courage to?
After losing his way with the big budget Kites, Anurag Basu
returns to the world he had got us familiar with in Gangster and has now
polished further – a world where each gesture speaks a thousand words, and
where hopeless romanticism blooms in a world of commonsensical reality,
reducing us to tears in the midst of laughter.
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