Barfi

I had first heard of someone named Barfi in Satyajit Ray's immortal classic called Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. Barfi was the evil magician who was concocting some evil potion or the other to help the villainous king. Played by Sarojini Naidu's brother Harindranath Chattopadhyay. This review is about another Barfi.The last film that director Anurag Basu attempted was Kites (2010), which floated out of the multiplexes without lingering long enough to register. I loved his film Life In A Metro (2007). He has also made movies like Murder which gave Bollywood Mallika Sherawat and Emraan Hashmi. Gangster followed and Emraan Hashmi was here to stay. Anurag Basu has teamed up with Pritam to give us some nice music especially in Life In a Metro. In Barfi, Pritam has excelled.The lead character Ranbir Kapoor is named after the cute "Murphy baby" who was the mascot for Murphy radios in the seventies. Since he is deaf and mute the young Barfi lip reads and mistakenly thinks his name is Barfi - not Murphy.  "Murphy" morphs into Barfi (shouldn't that be Burphy) in which case? The film is set in the seventies ('72-'78) in Darjeeling.  And then straddles between Kolkata in the present day. But more of that in a bit.The movie begins with the cop (Saurabh Shukla) chasing the fugitive Barfi. A breathtaking chase that sets off the film like nothing else could have. It reminded me so much about Harrison Ford being chased by a gigantic rolling rock that threatens to crush him in the opening scene Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom. Ranbir is the charmer who is everyone's darling because of his pranks. I swear the character is modeled so closely on Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful) that I had to keep reminding myself that I was watching Barfi. In the sequences when the cops are chasing Barfi, the sequences had the unmistakable slapstick humor of Charlie Chaplin or for that matter the scene with the ladder reminded me of the Laurel and Hardy humor.Barfi falls hopelessly in love with the soon to be married to someone Shruti played by the Telugu actress Ileana D'Cruz. The film captures the nostalgia and charm of Darjeeling in the seventies. The cinematography by Ravi Varman deserves special mention. The toy train - though overused as a prop - and the nostalgia around Keventers restaurant, Ghoom station, the Capitol Clock Tower and the Planters Club all work to build the magic. The love story of Ileana and Ranbir is just right. Though Ranbir gets to keep the bulk of the celluloid footage, it is Ileana whose performance is understated and memorable. Priyanka plays an autistic girl Jhilmil Chatterjee who also falls in love with Ranbir. That is what the story is about.To have Ranbir and Priyanka play disabled people is a bold move. Since there aren't too many films in Bollywood where the leading actors are people with disabilities, Ranbir and Priyanka make every effort to keep reminding you through exaggerated actions that they are deaf and mute or autistic. This hamming actually takes away from what could have been two sensitive portrayals.The music is awesome. The lyrics by Swanand Kirkire and Neelesh Misra are apt and beautiful. The song Kyon sung by Papon and Sunidhi Chauhan is powerful because the music stays understated in the background. But my vote for the best song of the film will certainly go to the reprise version of Phir Le Aya Dil sung by Arijit Singh. I would buy the CD of this film just for this song alone. The lyrics are by Swanand Kirkire. I do wish that in the interlude of this song,  Pritam would have stuck to the minimalism and restraint he showed in Kyon instead of using every electronic sound in the studio just because he could. But the music is certainly one of the reasons I will remember this film.I have reached the conclusion that giving a film an overall rating is a limiting idea. Majority of the films do a good job in the first half and limp away into the second half. Some begin with a whimper and end with a bang. So we need to evaluate both halves. So ladies and gentlemen let this be the dawn of a new era of rating movies - a rating for each half of the film.So let me start by breaking one part of the suspense and say I rate Barfi at a four out of five for the first half. In the second half the story gets really clumsy and the narrative timelines move between the present day and 1972, 1978 and all the years in between. The location sways between Darjeeling, Ghoom, Kolkata (with the predictable Howrah Bridge in the background to tell the audience like a tour guide, "We are now passing through the city of Kolkata with the Howrah Bridge in the background."The music and cinematography are awesome. Ranbir and Priyanka get a brave B+. Ileana gets an A. The story gets a B.The first half would get a rating of 4 out of 5The second half of the film would rate at best as 3 out of 5----------------This blog first appeared on the Times of India blogs <click here>