In the last year or so, a new type of cinema has emerged on the Indian screen -- small, offbeat films that don’t have either the glamour and glitz of mainstream blockbusters or the stark realism of art films; nor are they similar to the middle-class romantic comedies of the 1970s. Films like Page 3, My Brother Nikhil, 15 Park Avenue, The Film, fall in this category. These films don’t fall into any pattern, in fact, the only thing they have in common is the ability to hold the audience captive with a fare that is ‘different’. Homi Adjania’s directorial debut Being Cyrus is one such film. Officially described as a fresh take on the classic Film Noir genre (a term originally given by French critics to the dark American thrillers of the late 1940s and early 50s made by filmmakers like Orson Welles and Billy Wilder), Being Cyrus is completely off the beaten track as far as Hindi films go. Here, the director takes us into the dark corners of the human psyche to explore dysfunctionalities in social and personal relationships.

Katy is bored with the drudgery of living in a small town and craves for attention and excitement. She uses every opportunity to seduce Cyrus, who is smart enough to figure out her game and plays along. Cyrus is the narrator cum protagonist of this tale, and proceeds to give us a little information at a time, shedding light on one facet of a complex situation while covering up another. We don’t really know who Cyrus is, or what his real intentions are! We just know that as a child he grew up in foster homes, feels an outsider wherever he goes and is constantly and obsessively struggling to find himself. How and why he has landed up in the Sethna home remains a mystery to us till the very end!

In the Sethna household, we find Cyrus doing odd jobs around the house, having philosophical discussions with an eternally doped Dinshaw and amicably giving in to Katy’s advances. Soon, he gets drawn into some kind of vague plot hatched by Katy that takes him to Mumbai, where the other half of the Sethna family lives. We have no idea what this plot is, but we are now introduced to a new set of characters with idiosyncrasies of their own. These are Dinshaw's aged father Fardoonji, younger brother Farokh and sister-in-law Tina. Cyrus witnesses old Fardoonji's pathetic life where his son Faroukh keeps him captive in a tiny cramped room in the swanky apartment complex that he himself is the owner of. Faroukh is another weird character who seems to take pleasure in picking fights with his neighbors, bullying his meek wife, terrorizing his senile and paranoid father and flirting with Katy over the telephone, yet buckling down and cringing with fear when threatened.

Cyrus befriends Fardoonji, but we are unsure whether it is out of genuine sympathy for the old man, or as part of Katy’s plot, or if he has an agenda of his own. The first half of the story meanders along without going anywhere. The narration is non-linear, comic sequences are interwoven with bleak images, the setting changes as constantly from Panchgani to Mumbai, juxtaposing the real world with a surreal one of Cyrus’ hallucinations. All the characters seem to be hiding some dark secret, leaving the audience completely mystified as to what exactly is going on. Cyrus himself has a strange, black and menacing side to him. As narrator he often leaves us to figure out the story on our own based on what is left unsaid and the red herrings he throws our way. It is clear that he is playing an elaborate game of chess, where he himself uses the other characters as pawns in his game just as he is a pawn in theirs. At times, I felt that Cyrus wasn’t even a real character, but a catalyst, whose arrival brings to the surface the evil that lies hidden deep within the recesses of the human mind.

The entire film is a mind game where the characters play with each other and the director plays with the audience. After a relatively slow first half, suddenly, the story unfolds and picks up pace. Violent crimes take place, but we don’t know the real motive and the specifics of the plot till the very end. The tone changes from a social satire to a psychological thriller and we are faced with a shocking twist in the climax. All the odd shaped pieces fit in and the puzzle is complete. And as Cyrus tells us in the monotone he uses to tell his story, “Once the Game ends…the King and the Pawn go back into the same box.” Life has changed for the Sethnas forever, but the game continues, maybe to begin somewhere else.

Homi Adjania has put together an interesting cast to tell this unusual story. Bollywood hunk Saif Ali Khan in the lead role of Cyrus seems an unlikely choice in this role. However, over the years, Saif has matured tremendously as an actor and has started experimenting with different roles. It is refreshing to see him in this small offbeat film playing a complex multi-layered character. He underplays Cyrus’ oddities, making him restrained and subdued compared to the flashier Katy and Faroukh. He is not too convincing as a Parsi, but again, my knowledge of the Parsi community is mainly through Hindi films, so when I look for authentic Parsi traits, I am probably guilty of stereotyping. On the whole, Saif delivers a fine performance of a young drifter, haunted by his past, trying to come to terms with the shadows of the present and managing to turn the tables on those who use him for their own ends so that he can survive. 

Naseeruddin Shah is a class apart, and plays with natural ease the spaced out aging artist in search of beauty and abstraction, oblivious to the ugliness that surrounds him. In comparison, Dimple Kapadia’s Katy is disappointing: an exaggerated caricature of a manipulative and lascivious harridan. Boman Irani is good as the obnoxious Faroukh, but he too tends to ham and overdoes the boorishness at times. But this over-the-top character is likely to be the biggest crowd puller in the film. Simone Singh playing his docile wife Tina is effective in her role, her silent acquiescence and secret subversion bearing testimony to the fact that there is more to her than what we see. Honey Chhaya as the deprived old Fardoonji craving for chocolates and whiskey is excellent, and Manoj Pahwa in a small but significant role of Inspector Lovely plays his comic-brutish part with the right amount of manic energy.

Homi Adjania gets ample support from his crew to put together a well crafted package with good cinematography, a tight script, slick editing, and a decent background score. The Parsi ambience is painstakingly created with a lot of attention paid to detail. The use of English as the medium of communication is effective and for once the conversation is spontaneous and not pretentious. The language of the narration is tongue in cheek, the dialogues are witty, they make you laugh one minute, and shudder at what follows. The feel is farcical one second, macabre the next. Every single character is unpredictable and bordering on the bizarre. Imagery of food, claustrophobic rooms, dusty furniture, closed doors, dark stairs and stairwells are repeatedly used as metaphors of doom and foreboding that heightens the fatalistic effect of the film noir. The complete emotional detachment of the narrative voice from the chaotic and often traumatic events that are occurring adds to the chilling tone of this psychological thriller. 

Whether the film will be a commercial success or not is difficult to say. The avant-garde look and feel of the movie and the abstractions in the plot may drive away audiences who like more traditional forms of entertainment. The uneven pace may also act as a deterrent to viewers looking for a ‘timepass’ movie, who definitely don’t want to put in any extra effort to decipher the convoluted plot. But it is an interesting, engaging and well made film that is noteworthy because it is so different. Hopefully, the presence of Saif Ali Khan will pull the younger audience in and as long as they don’t expect Cyrus to break into a jig, they will like what they see.