Sunny Pawar Lights Up Every  Frame Of Chippa

Chippa(Netflix)

Starring  Sunny Pawar, Chandan  Roy Sanyal

Written and Directed  by Safdar Rahman

Rating: ** *

Very few of our films cast children in  the   main role. It is  a pleasure to see little Sunny Pawar  who stole the show from Dev Patel in Lion, roaring again in a small film with a big heart.

In Chippa  again,  young  Sunny Pawar is lost  in Kolkata.This time the city  of  joy doesn’t look  as irradiant as  it did in Lion. The  frames are  palely lit and the narrative’s texture has a  drab feel to it.Also, Sunny playing a street urchin  named Chippa meets only kind-hearted people on the deserted night streets Kolkata.

 A ten-year  old boy  roaming all alone in  Kolkata all night? One trembles at the thought, But writer-director Safdar Rahman is an optimist. He  lets his little hero loose in a Kolkata filled with  football-playing, drinking, reminiscing  Kolkatanas  of every age.

Out little hero negotiates his way  through the  langorous labyrinth in search of a father who has sent him a letter in  Urdu after ten years  of absence.

“Tu mussalman hai  kya?” a drunken potential  driver asks Chippa. Wisely the boy doesn’t reply. This  street survivor knows when to hold his peace, and when to speak  up. When  a kindly newspaper  hawker takes Chippa home and tells him to  go upstairs and meet his wife, the boy improvises  his  introduction to the lady  with  a  sly compliment. This boy  is  charmer trapped in a film that doesn’t match up to his charms.

 I looked  for  more such  moments   of  epiphany in  the  picaresque  plot. Sadly most of the film plays  it flat. Not one  of  Chippa’s endless  encounters with  Kolkatans  is specially interesting  except the last when he meets his  father in a union scene so bolstered by a wild coincidence  it feels  as like  an improperly manipulated moment in a story so  free of artifice  that it doesn’t feel like  a film at  all.

 Ten-year old Sunny Pawar holds  the  film together as  though to the camera  born. Playing the little boy in wonderland  Pawar is wise, cocky, innocent and clever all at once. Chippa is worth our time for Pawar’s  authoritative performance. The  rest  of the cast except  Chandan Roy Sanyal who comes  very late,  comes and  goes without creating any lasting  impression.

With more meat rather than  gravy in  the plot Chippa  could have  what Mira Nair’s Salaam Mumbai was and what  Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire could never be.