Kathmandu:

Being Cyrus (Experimental/Psychological Thriller)

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Naseeruddhin Shah, Dimple Kapadia, Boman Irani, and Honey Chhaya

Direction: Homi Adajania

Showing at Kumari Cinema

If you are one of those Stephen King buffs, this psychological thriller just might be the dose of thrill to add to your routinely mundane lives! If Rage established Stephen as a master writer, Being Cyrus establishes the meritorious metier of our own daring desi director, who tells an intricate psychological narrative with a candid cheek and the perfect blend of cathartic dose. And all this with loads of deadpan humour only to paint that wicked smirk on your face till, both the King and Pawn are thrown back into the box once the game is over. Hats off to Saif who has peeled off the chocolate-box coat to reveal layers of sinister lurking beneath those spruce looks.

Even as we get an insight into a dysfunctional Parsee family, Saif links the ordinary characters in a series of vignettes to a more complicated end and towards a more universal calling. We soon realise that in the pretext of the Parsee family, he takes us down to the dungeons of our own infected selves that just looks for some perverse gratification. Cool! And we participate in the plot and revel in the blood and gore without getting our hands bloodied.

The Parsee household is headed by a beleaguered father, Fardoonjee Sethna (Honey Chhaya) who’s stuck with the empty nest syndrome after his two sons Dinshaw (Naseeruddin Shah) and Farokh (Boman Irani) and their wives Katy (Dimple Kapadia) and Tina (Simone Singh), part ways to live in separate households. Cyrus (Saif) visits Dinshaw to work as his apprentice. Dinshaw is too much of a dreamer to doubt this dandy dude from the dark and his own wife who harbours dirty desires.

Apart from Saif and Narureeddhin Shah (the less said about him the better), Irani showers comic relief just at times when we desperately need it. And you just won’t believe how Dimple at her dusk still gets her oomphs right! While Being Cyrus is essentially a psychological thriller, the plot itself is too dark and at times too complicated for most ordinary viewers.