Another addition to the several, recent well-done movies by a new and adventurous breed of Indian film-makers, Being Cyrus must be watched once, and must be watched closely. It promises you insight, a view, a disturbance. But, in my opinion, it falls short of its promises on two fronts. But first things first, let's agree that it has some really impressive performances, especially Naseeruddin, Dimple, and Boman. On Saif, let's hold on for a while! Intense and riveting cinematography, taut dialogs, and an elating flavor of art bursting from the frames, make this movie what it's worth. The characters have been crafted well, and performances are to match. Naseeruddin takes the cake, however, as the artistic dope, who lives in his own world of images and beauty. The movie takes you to a certain height with an easy flourish, and all you eagerly wait for that eventual flight into another world, another view, a different take on life...but you keep waiting, and the movie self-aborts.
This brings us to the first front on which the movie fails. The movie promises a closer look at the darker side of our lives, the twilight of good and evil that makes our daily, mundane worlds. But the closer look it offers remains just a trailer, and doesn't touch the breast...as they say. One remembers '1947 Earth' in this light.... That good and evil coexist and the intermittent tussle between the two, now noisy, now miffed, haunts our lives, doesn't hit you in the face. The movie ends up being an exalted thriller-like stuff. The other front, related to the first, is a more serious failure. The pain of recognition of the good and the evil within oneself, to which Cyrus is doomed; the trauma of 'being' Cyrus, living without the illusionary scaffoldings of goodness that support us all, doesn't seem to trouble our protagonist (except in a 20 seconds dream)...at least till the very last scene when he realizes that he has had enough. We do not get a glimpse, leave aside feel, the internal strife in Cyrus. We don't know what goes on inside Cyrus' head, what his heart says; to us, he is opaque. Hanging to this half-bloomed plot, the character of Cyrus, evidently enough, doesn't shape up.
Now, about Saif. With a weak plot, the main character becomes undemanding. While all other characters are so well defined, the fuzziness of Cyrus' character hits you even more. Nothing much can be really said about Saif's performance, then. He is indeed excellent, but imagine and replace Saif with anyone of the new breed: Abhishek, Akshay Khanna, even Rahul Bose, and you get the same results! Being Cyrus, you must watch, because it talks of crucial things, at least it claims to! But forget about returning back home with that gnawing, disturbing heaviness of an idea stuck in your head.
Another trivia seems unavoidable here. The multiplex-enabled experimentation in Indian cinema has created an upswing for movies with a certain, vaguely definable texture. Remember the various NRI movies? In this upswing, where we get really outstanding and new stuff, we also tend to overrate plots/characters that are not all that new, or impressive. In fact, the experimentation going on is in fact too confined in its sweep to urban, middle class India, and the images that it believes in and identifies with. There is lot of hype, and intellectual feel-good about such movies, a buoyancy that is not necessarily substantiated by content.
This brings us to the first front on which the movie fails. The movie promises a closer look at the darker side of our lives, the twilight of good and evil that makes our daily, mundane worlds. But the closer look it offers remains just a trailer, and doesn't touch the breast...as they say. One remembers '1947 Earth' in this light.... That good and evil coexist and the intermittent tussle between the two, now noisy, now miffed, haunts our lives, doesn't hit you in the face. The movie ends up being an exalted thriller-like stuff. The other front, related to the first, is a more serious failure. The pain of recognition of the good and the evil within oneself, to which Cyrus is doomed; the trauma of 'being' Cyrus, living without the illusionary scaffoldings of goodness that support us all, doesn't seem to trouble our protagonist (except in a 20 seconds dream)...at least till the very last scene when he realizes that he has had enough. We do not get a glimpse, leave aside feel, the internal strife in Cyrus. We don't know what goes on inside Cyrus' head, what his heart says; to us, he is opaque. Hanging to this half-bloomed plot, the character of Cyrus, evidently enough, doesn't shape up.
Now, about Saif. With a weak plot, the main character becomes undemanding. While all other characters are so well defined, the fuzziness of Cyrus' character hits you even more. Nothing much can be really said about Saif's performance, then. He is indeed excellent, but imagine and replace Saif with anyone of the new breed: Abhishek, Akshay Khanna, even Rahul Bose, and you get the same results! Being Cyrus, you must watch, because it talks of crucial things, at least it claims to! But forget about returning back home with that gnawing, disturbing heaviness of an idea stuck in your head.
Another trivia seems unavoidable here. The multiplex-enabled experimentation in Indian cinema has created an upswing for movies with a certain, vaguely definable texture. Remember the various NRI movies? In this upswing, where we get really outstanding and new stuff, we also tend to overrate plots/characters that are not all that new, or impressive. In fact, the experimentation going on is in fact too confined in its sweep to urban, middle class India, and the images that it believes in and identifies with. There is lot of hype, and intellectual feel-good about such movies, a buoyancy that is not necessarily substantiated by content.