Monday, April 03, 2006

Being Cyrus

Last weekend I saw Being Cyrus, which is a movie in english, practically alone, as the theatre was almost empty, with hardly 15-20 people inside. It was an eerie feeling. It was almost 6:40 p.m, when I reached the theater. The man at the ticket-window told me `abhi chalo hua hai saab'. When I went inside the auditorium, the opening credits were on, and it was very dark. I had an errie feeling that I was alone in the auditorium, as no torchwalla came to show me my seat. But actually there were few people inside, as my eyes adjusted to darkness after a few minutes.

Well frankly, I could not follow much of the english dialogue. The feeling of being alone in the theatre never left me during the movie. The plotline of the movie is something like this: it is about a dysfunctional Parsi family, Sethnas. One son Dinshaw (Naseeruddin Shah) lives in Panchgani with his wife Katy (Dimple Kapadia) and another son Farooq(Boman Irani) lives in Mumbai with his wife Tina (Simone Singh) in a large and old building, in which in a small room also lives their father. Cryus is Saif Ali Khan, who first enters into home of Dinshaw as an apprentice, and is seduced by the nagging Katy. Next we are shown he comes to Mumbai and tries to befriends the father of Dinshaw and Farooq. It seems he has come with the motive of murdering their father, and he does kill him and also Farooq. Why he kills both of them, I don't know. In some scences, in black and white, the eyes, mouth, teeth, nose, but not the ears, of Saif, with some dialogues and some very loud background music, were shown. These scenes were shown quite some times. Strange. The movie had a very good dialgue, which is also repeated towards the end of the movie: when the game is over, the queen and pawns goes in the same box. And I almost forgot, there is a proverbial twist in the tale, towards the end of movie, which I should not tell you here. Maybe you should see the movie and find it out.

Saif Ali Khan was at his usual casual self. But among the actors, I liked Naseeruddin Shah, who as always drunk sculptor was quite natural. The movie was quite short -- about one and half hours, which was quite good.


One of the producers of this film is Ambika A. Hinduja, who I read somewhere is daughter of one of the famous Hindujas. Maybe she should title her next film `Being Bhagchand', about a dysfunctional sindhi family in Ulhasnagar!

The review of the movie is here .

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