Barfi!
 
    
Director: Anurag Basu
Year:  2012
Music: Pritam
Duration: 151 minutes
Rating: 8.0
Last year I watched one of director Anurag Basu's other films - Jagga Jasoos (2017) - and it bowled me over with how visually clever it was. But I had also seen his film Gangster from 2006 and though it was decent enough it had none of the surreal magic of Jagga Jasoos. So I went into this hoping for more Jagga and less Gangster - and I got it. I am not sure where along the line Basu found the secret elixir, but Barfi is an astonishingly original, inventive film that immerses you in pure cinema. I love his eye for the screen. Every frame has a purpose and is so well thought out - the colors, the camera angle, the activity in the background - that you can just sit back and allow it to wash over you. It feels like the one director who may have influenced him since Gangster was Wes Anderson in his style and droll absurdity. And like Anderson he can be accused at times of being a bit precious, a bit too quirky, too in love with his imagery and his kookiness but he is part of a changing Bollywood - in a good way. Oh, and much of this film takes place in Darjeeling.




It is above all a love story. A unique one that on paper sounds like Movie of the Week material but it is infused with so much empathy, emotion and good fun that it escapes the bounds of its story. The love story takes you in one direction and then half way through flips it around and then circles back. There are gut punches along the way. There is some very funny stuff along the way as well. With fine performances from everyone but especially from the three main actors. Ranbir Kapoor of the Kapoor family though I forget from which lineage - he also starred in Jagga Jasoos - and is amazingly gifted here; the lovely Priyanka Chopra as you have never seen her and newcomer to Bollywood after a few Telugu and Tamil films, Ileana D'Cruz of Portuguese heritage and an absolute knock-out. The kind you take home to mom and dad.




It begins in the current day - Shruti (Ileana) gets a phone call in Kolkata that her long time friend Barfi (Kapoor) is dying. On her journey to Darjeeling her memories pour in beginning in 1974 when she went to visit her family on the train. She was engaged at the time though not really in love to a well-off son of a good family. As the train nears the station a man on a bicycle looks in the window and falls in love. Until he does a header. But he collects himself and runs to the station and tells her that he loves her. In the only way he can. Through pantomime. Barfi is deaf and mute. And the film takes on two personalities with a silent film being played within a sound one. Barfi is at times part Chaplin and part Raj Kapoor. For the entire film Kapoor has to act out his feelings and often does little Chaplin routines. City Lights in a modern world of sound and ravishing color.



In another thread the story turns to Jhilmil (Priyanka) an autistic as described in the film - but one in which she is as much a child as anything - helpless, tortured, jailed in her own body, unable to communicate. Barfi knew her when they were both children and was able to get her to smile with his antics. He still can. A very tentative smile, almost ashamed of itself. Not to get into this too much but their lives cross when his father needs a kidney operation, she is kidnapped, Barfi hears about this and asks for a ransom to pay the hospital bill, another ransom is asked for, Barfi gets accused of kidnapping, finds the girl and they go on the run together across India.




The country they traverse is stunning as is Darjeeling with its incredible crisscross of streets, hills and fields. There are two wonderful chase scenes with the police after Barfi - one in Kolkata and one in Darjeeling - that are so clever and inspired by the comedy of the silent era. But underneath all the activity, all the beauty is a layer of sadness - hearts are broken, death is a constant, Jhilmil is what she is, Barfi will always be deaf and mute, Shruti never finds what she wants - and yet as corny as it sounds love is what people can desperately hang on to in order to survive. A lovely film and ultimately very moving.