Bum Bum Bole

The gifted Darsheel Safary apart, Iranian minimalism just can’t be stretched to Indian melodrama.

What strikes you about Children of Heaven is its rootedness. Apart from the story of the bond between siblings, it is a fascinating tour through the by- lanes of a section of Tehran that looks as old as Persia. The film uses this labyrinth of criss-crossing paths to tell the story of how a brother and sister share a single pair of shoes to go to school. She goes first, he waits for her to run back, slips the shoes on and races to his school. It’s like the passing of the baton in a 400 metre relay and turns him into a champion runner.

Priyadarshan’s adaptation is no match because he has no interest in society and culture. Bum Bum Bole is set in the tea gardens of Assam, but the film is shot in Ooty, has barely one murmured line of accented Assamese, and no ambience whatsoever of the Northeast. Then, as if to prove it is Assam, he brings in insurgency and terrorism in a sub-plot that practically derails the beautiful story.

The casting of Darsheel Safary as Pinu is one of the few things that works in Bum Bum Bole. He is a naturally gifted actor and his interactions with his sister, Rimzim, are cute though Ziyah Vastani, who plays her, is too young to be cast in the role of the personable and persuasive little girl who collaborates with her brother to save their hard-up father from buying a new pair of shoes when he is so broke.

For the father (Atul Kulkarni), education of his children is top priority, and he sees this, quite rightly, as an escape from the cycle of poverty. The characterisation of a man so obsessed with making ends meet that he has lost his sense of humour and proportion, is well etched. Also neat is that in Rimzim’s Catholic school they wear head scarves, just as school girls do in Tehran.

But the hitch lies in the treatment. Priyadarshan selects the canvas of minimalist Iranian cinema and stretches it to accommodate the breadth of Indian melodrama. It just doesn’t work.

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Ajit Duara