Barfi! - A Celluloid Poetry

Movies set in the backdrop of hill stations always entice me regardless of the plot, director, case, crew etc. Barfi! kicks off in Darjeeling with cool green visuals backed up by soothing music. I have always had a special liking to the movies that spoke more through visuals and Anurag Basu tried just that and at times I felt it was almost he forced the protagonist to play dumb and deaf to achieve that successfully. Movie starts off in a period where it has to convey the past in 2 stages. The first one portrays the romance between Ranbir Kapoor(WAAOH he is a scream!!!!) and Ileana beautifully and the second one portrays the relationship between Ranbir and Priyanka. Of course there is a future which leads to the climax. It is a very interesting narrating style and a good attempt by Anurag Basu even though he struggled at times to connect seamlessly. 

Ranbir Kapoor, clearly the best actor in Hindi cinema of his generation, shoulders the movie at ease and what a performance by this young actor. Ileana was apt and pretty.  Priyanka, i thought was going to be the weak link but, didn't disappoint !!!! 

Anurag Basu, other than Ranbir, relied heavily on Ravi Varman(Cinematography) and Pritam(Music). This is probably the best of Ravi Varman to beat his work in Cheran's Autograph and Gautham Vasudev Menon's Vettaiyaadu Vilayadu(both the movies had Kerala to play with) and likewise, this is easily the best work of Pritam till date despite of holding accusations of plagiarism. In Barfi!, he scores big time in the background score and elevates the movie tremendously especially in the first half comic scenes. However, the score for dramatic/emotional portions should have been more haunting. Songs are apt and good but i feel the album is short of an haunting melody. Nevertheless, I'd take this any day when compared to his usual junkie style.  

The movie was narrated beautifully in a lovely pace with no rush which is THE appropriate way to capture this kind of screenplay artistically and this to me is a terrific pace without fast cuttings, unneccesary bomb blastings, multiple images of the walking hero in slow motion(and hero face changing to lion for a sec), flying jeeps, punch dialogues ..you know it all!!!! Just for that, Great Job Anurag Basu!

While i liked the pace of the movie, i felt many scenes did not had that depth to justify the pace. A slow narration can either go straight into the hearts or to the irritating brains. That separates the classics apart. Also, the genre of the movie is such that the incidents and intentions should have been conveyed implicitly rather than dramatically. Anyone could understand Priyanka was an isolated kid and always laughed at by the society and still the director explains that in a scene (Kids mock her singing and her  "don't laugh at me" cry in a party). However a good example of an implicit scene and the one i liked the most was when director conveys Priyanka's joy (and her isolation perhaps!) when she was around the baul tradition folk dancers(Similar to kathakali?) before she completely got used to Ranbir. Priyanka's character was the golden egg and i thought the director did not fully capitalize it.

As the movie progressed, I don't know for some reason, i started drawing parallels between Moondram Pirai(Sadma) and Barfi ....may be because - both the movies are set in the hill station; The protagnist embraces and lives with a kiddish woman. But, it will be extremely unfair to say both are similar :). However, I somehow think Barfi! missed a good chunk of what the climax(Sreedevi not recognizing Kamalhassan, pain of Kamal etc.) did to Moondram Pirai .  i.e the agony and pain and the depth in the relationships (for e.g could have capitalized Ranbir's agony of losing Priyanka when she is gone missing, hmm...it was not good enough). The only problem in the movie is the lack of the depth in the relationships and may be it was intentional by the director and wanted to convey the story in a lighter vein. 

Kudos to Anurag Basu and Ranbir Kapoor!

Verdict - 3.75. Barfi! is a celluloid poetry. A refreshing Hindi movie after a very long time in this genre. May be after Black? A big welcome and congratulations to the entire Barfi! team for giving this movie ad mist of all the bull crap that Bollywood has been churning out. Barfi! has its moments, copied scenes, inspired characters but still a very valiant effort.