The object of his affections is a young Bengali girl new to Darjeeling, and from what we see and the loving way Basu and his superbly fluid cinematographer Ravi Varman capture their actress, we can't blame the boy an ounce.
And one fine, bracing afternoon, this Barfi falls quite madly in love, hook, line and sinker. He introduces himself with an eventually shrill but sweet "brrpheee" sound, and thus the world calls him Barfi.
An exceedingly sprightly fellow - the sort who would constantly whistle if only he could hear himself do so - the film's leading man has much silent-movie charisma as he, goofily and gorgeously, wins over everyone from townspeople to audience members. Named after the once-ubiquitous old-timey Murphy Radio sets, the deaf-mute Murphy is born in Darjeeling to a chauffeur and his wife who dies moments after childbirth.
The film's naïveté starts to wear thin, previously cast spells now appearing repetitive as the movie tragically falls into the very traps of mawkishness and manipulation it avoids so, so adroitly through the start.īasu has always been a very solid storyteller, but here the germ of the story - the very chunk of plot the film is woven around - is what lets him down, proving to be predictable and ineffective, paling in comparison to the dreamy dalliance he forges so smoothly early on.Īnd yet so impressive and earnest are most parts of Barfi! that one is inclined even to forgive its flawed centre we want badly to overlook the film's peach-seed heart, and concentrate on the rest of its juicy joys. Instead, it creates genuine characters and a truly charming relationship before, alas, one of his lead characters chooses not to follow the director's example and instead mistakes sympathy for love, making for a lesser film than it deserved to be.īarfi! might have started off a certain way, but pulls up well short and - as we were told before the beginning of (500) Days Of Summer - "this is not a love story."Ī well-crafted script with an intriguing back-and-forth narrative - set in the present day, 19 - Barfi! intrigues, right to the point somewhere down the middle, when it becomes more than apparent exactly what the film's story is, after which all goes south. He is then to be commended for his latest, Barfi!, a film that admirably refuses to yank the sympathy cord. He can roll up his sleeves and whip out one peachy moment after another, keeping things wonderfully endearing while poking the audience ever so forcefully in the gut with a monkey-wrench.
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