Bollywood has never been shy of being melodramatic and mawkish; it is, after all, what going to the movies is all about: an escape from reality into the world of fantasy. And yet, here is a new offering that takes the same template but offers it in so slick a package that we fall hook, line, and sinker for the quintessential message: love comes to all, no matter what your lot in life.
But Barfi! goes a step further in stretching that very message: it is not so much seeking love as it is seeking to be loved. For who among us has not had a broken heart– not because we were forbidden to love someone– the object of our affections is for us to choose of our own free will– but because we were not loved back in return. And yet, when love finds us and loves us back– to match our own intensity and sincerity of that emotion– it is perhaps then, and only then, that we are fully at rest with ourselves.
It is this embedded message that is conveyed through the classic love-triangle played by the somewhat newbie Ranbir Kapoor, and the two lovely ladies, Priyanka Chopra and Ileana D’Cruz. Having a legacy as he does, Mr. Kapoor is without doubt a reincarnation in his grandfather’s style and has got to be the rising star on the Bollywood horizon. But his talent is matched in full by his two heroines, the dramatically deglamorized Ms. Chopra and the newcomer, Ms. D’Cruz.
This is definitely a thoughtful casting that works. Stripped of all social conventions, Mr. Kapoor and Ms. Chopra’s characters evoke a free-spirited joie de vivre that is in sharp contrast to the sensible and responsible Ms. D’Cruz’s character– who discovers much to her chagrin that even though one might get second chances in life, they don’t always necessarily work out. But there’s courage even in that realization, and since what doesn’t kill you must only make you stronger, well, that’s exactly what happens to her.
But beyond the remarkable acting, attention must be paid to other aspects of this fine film. Indian cinema is fast burgeoning into an institution to be reckoned with if the directing, editing, sound, and cinematography of this film is anything to go by. It speaks volumes that a large chunk of the movie is devoid of dialog, and yet, one has absolutely no trouble following the storyline. The re-dawning of the silent movie era, perhaps?
And speaking of the cinematography, the expansive landscapes of the tea plantations and mountain-side life in one of India’s premier “hillstations” Darjeeling, is a pure joy to behold. Also, there are other modern sleights of the camera such as the scenes where simple bubbles that are blown enclose fireflies– a delight! And then there are other clever uses of imagery such as when there is a unique form of non-verbal communication with light bouncing its reflection off pieces of mirrors.
More kudos: the integrity of the period is preserved even in the small details of the hair and makeup of the women of the time– that beehive style and strong-kohled eyes evoke the Seventies like none other. The one thing, however, that I found out of place– and I truly wish someone had thought of it– was a landscape that at times looked very much like the lush state of Kerala, what with tall swaying palm trees (surely they’re no palm trees in Darjeeling?!), and a lively Kathakali dance troupe to match! Are these details not important?
Finally, a big nod to the musical score: borrowing heavily from a genre that is reminiscent of the days of the radio– the Murphy radio after whom our man Barfi is named– this is a most melodious jazz-and-pop style that you can’t help but tap your foot to, even as you break into a smile or wipe that tear that will inevitably escape at one time or another. Thanks to YouTube, some clips of the songs are included below for your listening pleasure.
So, go see it, folks! You’ll come away feeling thoroughly entertained and perhaps a little more grateful in the knowledge that there’s hope for all, at least as far as love is concerned!
Oh, and will someone enter this movie into this year’s Academy Awards under the Foreign Film category, please?
The worst of Romney’s now-infamous comments about “the 47 percent” came in this couplet: “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Put aside the tin-eared term “those people.” When he said this, Romney didn’t just write off half the country behind closed doors. He also confirmed the worst suspicions about who he is: an entitled rich guy with no understanding of how people who aren’t rich actually live.
Steve Senne/AP
The thing about not having much money is you have to take much more responsibility for your life. You can’t pay people to watch your kids or clean your house or fix your meals. You can’t necessarily afford a car or a washing machine or a home in a good school district. That’s what money buys you: goods and services that make your life easier, that give you time and space to focus on what you want to focus on.
That’s what money has bought Romney, too. He’s a guy who sold his dad’s stock to pay for college, who built an elevator to ensure easier access to his multiple cars and who was able to support his wife’s decision to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s great! That’s the dream.
The problem is living the dream has blinded him to other people’s reality. His comments evince no understanding of how difficult it is to focus on college when you’re also working full time, how much planning it takes to reliably commute to work without a car, how awful it is to choose between skipping a day on a job you can’t afford to lose and letting your sick child fend for herself. The working poor haven’t abdicated responsibility for their lives. They’re drowning in it.
In their book “Poor Economics,” the poverty researchers Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo try to explain why the poor around the world so often make decisions that befuddle the rich.
Their answer, in part, is this: The poor use up an enormous amount of their mental energy just getting by. They’re not dumber or lazier or more interested in being dependent on the government. They’re just cognitively exhausted:
Our real advantage comes from the many things that we take as given. We live in houses where clean water gets piped in — we do not need to remember to add Chlorine to the water supply every morning. The sewage goes away on its own — we do not actually know how. We can (mostly) trust our doctors to do the best they can and can trust the public health system to figure out what we should and should not do. … And perhaps most important, most of us do not have to worry where our next meal will come from. In other words, we rarely need to draw upon our limited endowment of self-control and decisiveness, while the poor are constantly being required to do so.
Banerjee and Duflo’s argument has been increasingly confirmed by the nascent science of “decision fatigue.” Study after study shows that the more we need to worry about in a day, the harder we have to work to make good decisions.
As economist Jed Friedman wrote in as the World Bank’s development blog:
The repeated trade-offs confronting the poor in daily decision making — i.e. ‘should I purchase a bit more food or a bit more fertilizer?’ — occupy cognitive resources that would instead lay fallow for the wealthy when confronted with the same decision. The rich can afford both a bit more food and a bit more fertilizer, no decision is necessary.
The point here isn’t that Romney is unfamiliar with cutting-edge work in cognitive psychology. It’s that he misses even the intuitive message of this work, the part most of us know without reading any studies: It’s really, really hard to be poor. That’s because the poorer you are, the more personal responsibility you have to take.
Romney, apparently, thinks it’s folks like him who’ve really had it hard. “I have inherited nothing,” the son of a former auto executive and governor told the room of donors. “Everything Ann and I have, we earned the old-fashioned way.” This is a man blind to his own privilege.
Which is his right. But that sentiment informs his policy platform – which calls for sharply cutting social services for the poor to pay for huge tax cuts for the rich — and it suggests he’s trying to make policy with a worldview that’s completely backward.
As president, Romney’s job would be to worry about those people, and to help them. But first he needs to understand what they’re going through.
On Sept. 20, 1878, Upton Sinclair, author of “The Jungle” and passionate crusader for social reform, was born. Following his death on Nov. 25, 1968, his obituary appeared in The Times.
Upton Sinclair 9/20/1878 – 11/25/1968 American novelist and activist.
