Being Cyrus…:|

Being Cyrus is a story about how a brother and a sister, who have had a dreadful childhood, perceive the life around. They have spent their childhood in foster home. They have been deprived of the usual love, care and affection every child deserves and luckily gets when it’s required the most – in the growing years. These two work as a team and make plans to loot vulnerable families, the elder sister playing the boss and the brother doing just what he is asked too. Most of the time they succeed. However, the plan, which is shown in the movie, gives them lump sum booty so that further they do not require leading such a distressful life any more. But here is where the two heads think differently. The sister is the greedier of the two and wants her brother to get ready for the next kill. This agonizes the brother who just leaves his sister, not to meet her ever in the future.

Having said all of the above, you are to know all this only at the end of the movie. The presentation of this simple-but-intense story is worth applauding. Story telling is an art and the director Homi Adjania has surely mastered it, to say as of now.

The plot shown in the movie goes like this. The two plan to rob the Sethna family. The family head is Fardoonjee Sethna (played by Honey Chhaya). He has 2 sons – elder son Dinshaw Sethna (played by Naseeruddin Shah) and the other son Farokh Sethna (played by Boman Irani). Dinshaw’s wife Katy (played by Dimple Kapadia) is quite an ill-mannered ridiculous woman who is just bugged up staying in a dilapidated house in Panchgani with her retired sculptor husband. She wants to breakthrough the bondages and be a free bird. Farokh’s way-too-young wife Tina (played by Simone Singh) is constantly bossed by her coward husband.

Enter Cyrus (played by Saif Ali Khan aka SAK)… he takes shelter at Dinshaw’s Panchgani home to learn pottery. Katy keeps mingling with him. They plan to kill Fardoonji and Tina and thus get all the property. Cyrus goes to Mumbai to meet Fradoonji and gain his confidence, only to betray him in the end! Does Cyrus kill them? Do they get the property? That’s for you to see and find out!

Taking about performances. Let’s go from worse to bad to good.
Dimple Kapadia has overacted, sadly though. Naseeruddin Shah does not have much to do, whatever he has performed is so-so. He and Dimple are a bit irritating with their not-so-sophisticated-in fact-disgusting body language and mannerisms!
All the other characters are really impressive. Boman is best when it comes to comic timing. His scene with the pup biting him is really a humorous one.

SAK plays Cyrus to the T. This guy has loads of talent. Agreed I praise him too much… but then one can’t mostly always be the perfect actor to play such varied characters, just by fluke. His eyes do most of the speaking… very expressive, very impressive! By playing just the character he has been asked to do, he proves that he isn’t too greedy to grab every scene, be in every frame. His dialogue delivery is superb. He seems to be too comfortable with English as well!

The most pleasant surprise of the movie is Simone Singh. She has got a great role to show her talent. She is very much the most sorted-out performer who really steals the show.

The screenplay, editing, background score, music, dialogues, voice-over, Parsi touch and Mumbai locales of the movie are good. The cinematography appears to be amazing as the movie unrolls but by the end… the same frames, same camera angles are repeated. A bit more variety would have made wonders!

One of the dialogues from the movie, which at least I couldn’t stop pondering on, is probably this one:
Leo Tolstoy once said: “All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

However, the actual quote is” Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

Wonder how many agree with the literal meaning of the above? I am yet to figure out what it really means!

Overall it's a movie with a different kind of treatment. Not a typical masala movie, but then the ingredients it has are quite palatable

Just a thought:

The brother has faced same turmoils as his sister, still he is more humane than her. Agreed he killed innocent people, still the vulnerability he has doesn't make you feel angry about him. The small gestures, like that of leaving sweets for a road-side beggar, make you wonder how complex human mind can be!

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Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back

into the same box.
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### 8Apr2006-10AM-ESQ