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Being Cyrus
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'Being Cyrus' Offbeat

By Nikhil Kumar
Film critic, ApunKaChoice.Com

‘Being Cyrus’ is certainly a piece of good quality cinema. However, it’s offbeat subject and arty look may not appeal to the masses.

Much unlike the Bollywood films where everything is open and in your face, ‘Being Cyrus’ speaks in subtle metaphors. Several threads in the story are interconnected at various points of unraveling and the denouement is sure to take you by surprise.

The

movie’s story unspools at a rhythmic pace with dream sequences interwoven at crucial moments in the screenplay. The background music and the story’s ambient setting have a haunting feel.

The film tells the story of a Parsi family, the Sethnas. Dinshaw Sethna (Naseerudin Shah) is a retired sculptor living with his wife Katy (Dimple Kapadia) in a secluded, neglected house in the hills of Panchgani.

Cyrus (Saif Ali Khan) comes to the Dinshaw household to work as an apprentice in sculpting and pottery. During his stay there, an intimacy develops between Cyrus and Katy. Katy feels she is tethered to a loser (her husband) and the arrival of Cyrus sort of kindles up her feelings that could never find a vent with Dinshaw.

While Katy is all over him, Cyrus has other things cooking in his mind. He keeps shuttling from Panchgani to Mumbai where Dinshaw’s brother Farokh (Boman Irani) lives with his father and wife in a Parsi locality.

While Farokh doesn’t treat his father well, Cyrus tries to befriend the old man. This is when the threads in the story begin to connect together and you slowly get a hang of the game in Cyrus’ mind.

‘Being Cyrus’ hardly looks like a debut attempt at direction. Homi Adajania has made a very slick movie that has elements of Film Noir. Added to that, the movie deftly balances its grave and pessimistic shades with quaint humour, courtesy Boman Irani and Manoj Pahwa.

Irani needs a special mention for his performance in the film. He is the contemptible, loathsome, uncaring man who also displays moments of satirical, derisive humour. Particularly worth noting is the sequence in which he picks up fight with his neighbor.

Equally impressive is Manoj Pahwa in his marginal role as the police inspector. Pahwa chips in some good comic moments in this otherwise serious fare.

Saif Ali Khan fits extremely well into his complex character of Cyrus Mistry. He brings a strange mix of an adolescent’s charm and an adult’s fatalism in the personality of Cyrus.

Naseeruddin Shah, as usual, excels in the role he portrays. Playing Parsi characters is particularly Shah’s forte.

Dimple Kapadia is adequate, but there are certain scenes in which hamming is quite apparent.

‘Being Cyrus’ is a film that nudges you gently into the world of a dysfunctional Parsi family, exposes the cracks in it through the eyes of a character who has his own idiosyncrasies. The movie’s conclusion will catch you off guard.

Offbeat but enchanting.

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