The Unbearable Lightness of Being Cyrus

 Being Cyrus (2005) is not a typical Bollywood film. Being Cyrus isn’t a typical anything, really; it’s a film that defies easy classification. Is it a family drama? Is it a black comedy? Is it film noir? I don’t know. It’s a pretty good movie, though.

Cyrus (Saif Ali Khan) is a drifter and self-confessed sociopath (”distant from the emotions of human life”, as he puts it.) After a miserable childhood with only his sister for company, Cyrus is searching for a place to belong. His search lands him at the front door of retired, drug-addled sculptor Dinshaw Sethna (Naseeruddin Shah) and his wife Katy (Dimple Kapadia.) Cyrus claims to be a potential student for Dinshaw’s pottery school (total student body after Cyrus joins: 1) and soon he is living in the house, enduring Dinshaw’s marijuana-fueled ramblings about life, and Katy’s desperate come ons.

Cyrus narrates the film, and he is the archetypal unreliable narrator; it’s very clear that he’s up to something, and he admits (to the viewer) that the thing he likes about Katy is that he knows he can manipulate her.

Katy seems to have her own agenda as well; she receives mysterious daily phone calls which she says are from her brother, and she seems very keen to move to Mumbai and reconcile with Dinshaw’s estranged brother Farokh (Boman Irani), their senile but extremely rich father Fardounjee (Honey Chhaya), and Farokh’s much younger “mail order” bride. Soon, at Katy’s insistence, Cyrus is acting as the ambassador between the two branches of the family. Through his eyes, we get a good look at just how deeply messed up these people are. And then it all goes horribly, gloriously wrong.

And I’m brought back to the difficulty of classifying the film. This is a dark movie about very flawed people who do some very bad things, but it has a curiously light touch. On the other hand, while there are funny moments, it’s not really a black comedy; the film doesn’t really laugh at its characters. Even Farokh’s tirade after having been bitten by a dog goes on just long enough to make it sad rather than funny.

Regardless of genre, though, Being Cyrus is a good movie. All of the leads put in very strong performances, including and especially Saif Ali Khan. It’s an achievement when the emotional heart of a film is a self-professed sociopath.