Movie review: Barfi - a masterpiece from copywood

Spoiler alert!

Take a couple of Charlie Chaplin films (The Adventurer and City Lights), add a little dash of Mr. Bean, a healthy helping of The Notebook (2004), a mixture of assorted foreign films and a little of Benny and Joon. Next, get Ranbir Kapoor onboard and ask him to play a cross between Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, then get Pritam to do what he does best (read steal music), there you go! That’s Barfi for you. In retrospect it seems that the only reason Ranbir Kapoor’s character was mute was because almost all the films that director Anurag Basu was copying from were either silent, or in a foreign language, hence how would he figure out dialogues for the lead?

Sitting through the two hours and thirty minutes of Barfi is the ultimate test of one’s patience. The plot is all over the place; there’s about a million different subplots that don’t eventually lead to anything. The premise of the story is so simple, it could be shown three times over in thirty minutes, the extra two hours are not only completely unnecessary, they are so boring; they make the food sales in the cinema skyrocket. The non-linear editing certainly doesn’t help the cause either; instead it ends up confusing the audience into imagining a story that does not in fact exist. On the positive, Ravi Varman’s outstanding cinematography paired with the wonderful art-direction results in dazzling visuals. The question however, is, how long can a person watch beautiful visual imagery that is on a complete tangent from the story, without wishing to slit their wrists? Not very long, trust me on that. All said the last thirty minutes of the film are extremely intense and heart-warming. You might actually find yourself shedding a tear or two, either at the warmth of the film or at the loss of two hours of your time, not to mention the couple of hundred rupees you spent on the ticket.

Ranbir Kapoor as Murphi/Barfi makes you wonder whatever happened to the guy who did Rockstar. Whenever he’s not being Charlie Chaplan, Buster Keaton or his own granddad (Raj Kapoor), he is being his silly, old, Ranbeer Kapoor self that we have already seen in Saawariya, Wake up Sid, Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani etc. Priyanka Chopra, however, is a different story altogether. She is extraordinary as Jhilmil, but then again, that’s neither surprising nor new. This is exactly what Priyanka Chopra does. Ileana D’Cruz delivers a first-rate performance, it is unfortunate that ultimately her entire character’s on a tangent from the plot. Saurabh Shukla as the police inspector is brilliant; this has to be one of the best performances of his career. It is heartbreaking to see so many actors work so hard for a film that is plagiarised from beginning to end.

A filmmaker who deserves to be sued for stealing is receiving accolades from critics who don’t know any better themselves and are proudly sending the film to the Oscars. Such is the state of South Asian affairs. If Bollywood (and I say Bollywood because I mean Bollywood and not the entire Indian film Industry) had any respect for originality, or any self respect for that matter, it would not have been possible for Barfi to be India’s official entry for the Oscars. Let’s hope the Oscar jury is slightly more informed than our film critics.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, October 7^th, 2012.

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