APAHARAN

On their initial release, there are some films that don’t make a big splash either by an inherent novelty/glamour factor or due to their modest publicity deals with the voyeuristic media. But then, in the long run, they stand up well enough to elicit multiple viewings from an ever so difficult to please and predict Indian audience and go on to become models for execution on alternate treatments of common themes.
Prakash Jha’s APAHARAN(dec-2005) is one such film that works marvelously well on many levels. At one level, Apaharan is an indictment of the complex socio-political system in Bihar that’s given rise to the ludicrous but lucrative industry of Kidnapping for regular profit. (The phenomenon is not unique to India, anyone familiar with Mexico City can vouch for the same in the American context.) At another level, Apaharan is the study of a souring relationship between an idealistic, senior journalist/professor (Mohan Agashe) and his rapidly degenerating son(Ajay Devgun). At yet another level, it’s a satisfying thriller (without the diversion of song/dance and regular melodrama) that hits you where it hurts and has you worrying about the ultimate consequences of at least three of its central characters (Ajay Devgun as the aspiring police officer who turns into a hardcore criminal, Nana Patekar as a corrupt MLA who’s an expert at milking the political system and his minority card to maximum effect and Mukesh Tiwari as the belittled, upright Police Inspector Salim )
So far, the plot sounds as run of the mill as anything could get. Yes, so what if the film’s supposedly based in the badlands of Bihar and has everyone talking in an authentic bhojpuri dialect? (Apaharan was actually shot in and around Satara in Maharashtra) So what?
So this. Apaharan has the most beautifully written story and screenplay that Jha could lay his hands on after his self-conscious emergence from the badly-lit art house cinema that gave his ilk such a bad name. Like his (Bhagalpur case inspired) Gangajal, Jha re-walks the thin line between reality and myth and emerges with a riveting tale of ambition, organized crime, political machinations, changing loyalties and their clash with truth, conviction and old world values. With Apaharan, Jha proves that a film need not have to be drab and boring to be making an important statement about a system on the verge of a breakdown and also that a thriller does not need to really stretch our imagination beyond the realms of reality to be able to hold our attention.
For anyone familiar with the state of Bihar, Jha pulls the dirty bed linen off the police-bureaucracy-political system and lays it naked for everyone to spit on and lament. ( Nana Patekar’s Tabrez Alam is obviously inspired by the infamous Mohammad Shahbuddin.) But unlike Gangajal, which did not have a satisfactory third act, Apaharan only gathers steam in the last thirty minutes to end in a dramatic yet logical and realistic finale.
For anyone unfamiliar with the state of disgrace in Bihar, the farcical (yet totally true) depiction of criminals/politicians periodically cooling their heels in customized jail quarters has to be seen to gauge the failure of the law and order system in the semi-rural/rural areas of the cow belt. Upstart, hot-blooded young men who spring out of no where and take to a life of crime are hand-picked by local politicians, given political patronage, protection from the police and used selectively to further their own causes. Whenever the situation becomes too hot to handle, these young-guns are quietly advised to retreat behind bars as a sign of the noble dispensation of justice. When the media uproar subsides, these young-guns are let loose on civil society again.
In retrospect, Apaharan should go down as a must watch film, especially for those mourning the demise of the art of conscentious story-telling in modern hindi cinema. Hope lives!

REBEL YELL !!

Sex,Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll


Anurag Kashyap’s Dev.D is not a film.

It is a film that may well earn no moolah at the Box-office but still go down as a remarkable achievement in Indian film history. After a spate of start and stutter projects (Paanch, Black Friday), Anurag Kashyap's Dev.D shows how its possible to make genuinely liberating cinema by simply stretching the realms of our so-called Indian tradition and venerable literature.

Dev.D is high anarchy under the strobe lights-in that it takes Shorot Chondro’s self pitying, weak, emotionally unstable Devdas and turns him into a horny, psychedelic, cocaine snorting Dev-grass of sorts who doesn’t have to die to disapprove of the evils of over-indulgence.

When a noun assumes abjectorial connotations-legends are born. Shorot Chondro’s Devdas is one such cursed character that keeps re-incarnating itself every few years, just to remind us what being a spoilt rotten Bhadrolok meant during the turn of the 19th century. Hence the phrase- ‘Devdas mat ban’. Its a line reserved for every whiny lover-boy who has ever wallowed longer in the inevitability of lost love than his machismo would allow him to.
So when dealing with Devdas, the overall storyline and setting is irrelevant prima-facie. But characterization in those very settings and plot treatment is of utmost importance. As is narrative voice and filming technique.

Kya naya hai picture mein?
Does anyone who’s going to watch Dev.D really care what happens to the alcoholic loser this time around?
It’s a done to death theme. The last time we met him, this dude had the choice of Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit but still ended up convulsing to death in a frilly dhoti.
What a pity.
Hindi cinema’s enfant terrible Anurag Kashyap pulls Devdas’ veneer of decency off, garbs him in jeans/T shirt/Dark glasses, pumps him with LSD and lets his testesterone loose on every the girl that he comes across in his neighbourhood, family circles and even the loneliness of the dark and dingy drug joints of Pahargunj in Delhi. Though Anurag Kashyap stays faithful to the overall theme of Devdas and even makes it a point to include a Chunni Lal drinking buddy, the salute to Danny Boyle in the opening credits should give the audience of what’s to be expected.
Dev.D is replete with social indiscretions like digressions into the ills of electronic communication, paid-phone sex, leaked MMS scandals, BDSM behaviour, BMW car crashes and totally guiltless exchange of body fluids. In fact, Devdas’ hitherto chaste pining for both Paro and Chadramukhi is successfully subverted to nothing less or more than just lust. The audience who still remember Sanjay Raam-Leela Bhansali’s version cannot be blamed for wondering-OMG, did bengali men ever have libido?

Maybe not-but AK’s Dev.D is punjabi, so there you go.

After all that, is it any wonder that the film’s got every puritan’s proverbial goat?
So then, with all its in your face sedition, is the film deliberately disrespectful, immoral and insulting to women?

Not in the least. Dev.D’s Paro and Chanda are wonderfully characterized as women with personalities that offer alternating crutches to his spineless existence. They are women whose lives are not devastated either by romantic rejection or the loss of their treasured hymens. There is no revel / reprimand cycle that underscores their actions or rules their lives. Their characters are so brilliantly sketched out –that for once they appear as real people and not the Ghore-Baire dichotomy that the Paro/Chadramukhi parable has been granted vis-à-vis Devdas’ relationship with the other sex.

Casting coup- Though Anurag Kashyap is the first person to credit Abhay Deol with the idea of a post-modern Devdas, the credit of moulding Devdas into a gentlemanly, Gen X prince of perversion goes to AK himself. Eventually, Dev.D stops wallowing in self pity and plunging his face into icy blue wash basins to realises that he can never, ever love anybody. This is the coup-de-grace of the movie. He learns to let go of his inability to be involved in true love and moves on. Mahie Gill (Paro ) and Kalki Koechlin (Chanda), who were both picked out of total obscurity for this film, suit their characters even more than Dev.D and deliver performances that would put last year’s Filmfare award winner(Priyanka Chopra) right in the…gutter. The scene where Paro returns from the sugarcane field with a mattress on her back and tears in her eyes does more to define her personality than anything else.Ditto for the scene where Chanda casually slips into a conversation on the semantics of her profession. If these scenes aren’t life defining moments for the Hindi film heroine-what is?

Music- If Aamir was anything to go by, Bollywood should have expected a Dev.D coming from music director Amit Trivedi. In this film, he crosses and mixes genres like a true master and comes up with a uniquely refreshing hybrid sound that’s difficult to pin down-much like Dev.D’s libido. The official audio release of Dev.D has 18 songs on its soundtrack. Yes there are18 numbers, all of which aren’t songs as such but musical pieces that form the backbone of Dev.D. Be it the folky Dhol Yaara Dhol/ the super cheesy-spoofy Emotional Atyachaar/the grungy~new age rock Nayan Tarse/or the trancy Paayaliya, Amit Trivedi shows A R Rahman and Shankar/Loy/Ehshan what being different actually means. His daringly original musical arrangements (like a brass band for a rock song) and the usage of previously unheard of voices is highly commendable. After 2007’s METRO-Dev.D is the next truly rock based musical score that scores. In fact, the whole album has Rock written over it in such big letters that you have to be Javed (Rock On) Akhtar to not notice it. The effect of the songs and background score is such that in hindsight, the whole Film appears to be a psychedelic dream sequence based around the stupendous soundtrack.

Cinematography- Like Dibakar Banerjee’s Oye-Lucky,Lucky- Oye, Anurag Kashyap shoots the first half of Dev.D in the garish, real colours of rural Punjab (without any artificial lighting). Then, when the story moves to the underbelly of Delhi, the usage of strongly contrasted, surreal lighting and zippy camerawork ~( especially in the song sequences ) is nothing short of stunning. Notably, the camera does not resort to the meaningless quick cuts/ zooming / gimmickry that Sanjay white-feather Gupta keeps resorting to but still delivers special Fx that wow you without taking your attention away from the characters. The squiggly neon lights that keep haunting a zonked Dev.D like an unholy Halo and his unsteady in/out of sanity movements truly are a joy to behold. My more learned friends tell me that the overall look/feel is close to Wong Kar-Wai his Chungking Express. I only found some stills online-but the analogy seems fair enough. ;-)

Screenplay- The film is told from three linear, discrete POVs. Paro. Chanda. Dev.D.- that are inconsistent in their weightage of screen time distribution but engaging all the same. After their initial lovers’ spat, Paro and Dev.D are mostly missing from Chanda’s descent from the life of a cocky convent school girl to the inescapable existence as a brazen street prostitute. The Paro portion of the film is clearly the best in terms of defining the characters and the Dev.D part suffers from a bit of excess-especially when Dev.D moves away from Chanda’s life and decides to do some back/pack soul searching ~ where ever the roads may lead him to. The trip may have been necessary to complete the character arc and bring him around to getting over himself-but the film certainly slackens that little bit in the third act. Apart from that, the screenplay (in English, Hindi and Punjabi) does well to liberate Dev.D from every other film that’s been made on the same theme.

Direction- Unlike No Smoking, where he was accused of being too obtuse for Indian audiences, AK makes it a point to keep Dev.D’s characters as humane as possible without compromising on his bigger statements on pseudo morality and crippling social mores. In the end, Dev.D is loads of fun (with references galore to SRK’s Devdas) but is still executed with amazing maturity and existential insight. AK makes it a point to pay his tributes but still dance with the devil while he’s tipping his hat and spinning on the dance floor. It’s a helluva romp to be able to pull through successfully, especially in the light of the baggage attached to its precedents and the dark clouds of doubt that were hanging over AK’s head after Paanch, Black Friday and No Smoking.

Dev. D’s other interesting bits and pieces-
Nugget one- The Twilight Players are the trio that breaks into groovy open-hand dances under frosty blue neon lights of an underground drug joint in Delhi. As Dev.D sinks deeper into his hallucinations, they reappear with their gravity-defying gyrations in the songs Nayan tarse and Pardesi, lending the moments their psychedelic stupor. These super smooth guys are a group of three brothers from London, who are currently visiting their ancestral home in Phagwara, Punjab, and basking in the success of Dev.D. Christened Gurpal Singh Phgura, Amrik Singh Phgura and Sukjeevan Singh Phgura, the three now prefer their “trade” names — Sinbad, Ammo and Jimmy. A smart move given that their clients are often some big international names—they’ve performed with Michael Jackson, Madonna and Kylie Minogue. “Our style is inspired by a number of dance forms and is always about attitude, never just dance,” says Sinbad, 42, the oldest, in a heavy Brit-American accent.

Nugget two-When she takes refuge at her Grandmother’s place, Chanda keeps reading a book called Contempt by Alberto Moravia. The namesake movie is an all time art-house classic and the overriding themes of the Italian author’s books being-Moral aridity, the hypocrisy of contemporary life, and the substantial incapability of people finding happiness in traditional ways such as love and marriage.(source Wikipedia)

Watch it and you may discover more!

GULAL

When was the last time you saw a mysteriously metaphorical figure that was half man /half monkey do to tandav to the tune of utterly exquisite old and new poetry in a film?:-
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai,

Dekhna hai zor kitna baazuay qaatil mein hai;
Waqt aanay pey bata denge tujhe aye aasman,

Hum abhi se kya batayen kya hamare dil mein hai.
When was the last time you heard coarse words like Bhosdi-ke, chuti-yapa & laundiya-baazi being mentioned in a hindi film without the director being accused of cheap exploitation? Gulal gathers a dozen odd characters under the spotlight of college politics and holds up a mirror that strips everyone naked in the harsh, charged atmosphere of casteism, ambition, deceit and violence.Gulal is topical,stronlgy atmospheric and harsh but definitely recommended watching for its sincerity of purpose, powerhouse performances (Kay Kay Menon, Abhimanyu Singh and Raja Singh Chaudhary) and truly exceptional use of music( lyrics and music by Piyush Mishra) as a means of propogation of political thought. In fact, Mishra’s lyrics themselves make Gulal worth a second watch. It’s dififcult to absorb the full weight and significance of songs ranging from “Jaise Dur Deshke Tower Mein Ghus Gaye Aeroplane”/“Iraq Mein Aake Bas Gaye Uncle Sam” to “Yuddh hee to veer ka pramaan hai” in a single viewing.
For a film that been more than five years in the making, Anurag Kashyap’s Gulal holds up surprisingly well for its riveting two and half hours of viewing time, its somewhat predictable third act and unrelenting intensity non-withstanding. Gulal starts with the abominable ritual of hostel ragging, moves onto the treacherous machinations of campus politics and ends with a bitter endictment of love, life and everything that the material world may have to offer. Yeh Duniya agar mil bhi jaaye toh kya hai? Apparently, Sahir Ludhianvi’s song from Pyasa was the sole inspiration for the film’s story.
The metaphor of Gulal as the red-mask-of-revolution is slighlty off-sync and the context of rajput-revolution half/baked in the context of their relative affluence in the state. (Yes, there have been upheavals in Rajasthan in the recent past-but that was in the lower gujjar community) Gulal is conceived as a bloody tragedy of Shakesperian proportions and AK almost pulls it off with a nihlistic, relentless screenplay where every character exists in shades of gray. Perhaps, the film's only flaw lies in its lack of dramatic-relief and its related scope of ambition. There are far too many complexed, flesh and blood characters who are drawn out and then not resolved as well as they deserve to be. The exact stakes and advantages that are up for grabs upon becoming the College General Sec are never elaborated and the character of the teacher (Jessy Randhawa) who is stripped/humiliated in the beginning of the film is abandoned half-way through. Also fluttering unnecesssarily in and out of the second half of the film is Mahie Gill ( Dev D’s Paro) as Kay-Kay’s nachne-waali mistress.
All in all, Gulal re-affirms the status of Anurag Kashyap as one of the few brave new Indian filmmakers who have the talent, vision , courage and conviction required for standing out in the glut of dynastic dip-shit that hails itself as the tuxedoed face of indian cinema. Karan Johar- chal side hat!

Anurag Kashyap has arrived.

A tad late –but he has definitely arrived.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

If indie director Danny Boyle had known that his modest film would rake in millions at the box office and win brownie points at every award ceremony with its shameless display of poverty porn, he'd have surely struck that exalted jig in a putrid pile of shit instead of his igominable six year old protaganist and scream 'Jai Ho!' in his cutesy British accent.
Like Vikas Swarup's Q&A, Slumdog Millionaire is a one trick pony where the screenplay is an episodic apology as to how a Call centre chai-walla could get all the questions right at the Karod-potty show after getting his toes nicely twiddled by electric jolts the night before. Granted that the film had to be shot exclusively in Mumbai's dirtiest underbelly to underline the harshness and hostility of life in a slum, why did Danny Bhai have to shoot India's most famous monument with the same 'creative vision'? The first shot of the Taj from across the sludge on the banks of the Yamuna is unforgiving to say the least.
But momentarily resurrected National pride aside- I have two other problems with the much celebrated SlumDawg.

One- Simon Beaufoy's screenplay holds no intrigue because of an obvious framing problem. Right from the start, you know that the grimy, scrawny urchin Jamaal who metamorphosizes into chikna Dev Patel is going to get not just the last question, but every friggin question right on the karod-potty show. That's like knowing that a double-fisted hero is going to win every street-fight (with single punches too) before he gets to bash up the main villian in his den. How utterly predictable is that? You're also dished out anomalies like an impromptu riot brought in (without explanation or resolution) just to justify how an uneducated muslim child could know about hindu religious symbolism and sexual come-uppence between teenage brothers to justify the remembrance of the revolver's inventor. The three slumkids around whom the entire film revolves keep falling into one life-threatening/ gut-wrenching calamity after another but manage to somehow escape to unexplained obscurity-only till their destinies conveniently collide in accordance with the lame-ass questions on Anil Kapoor's quiz-show monitor. Suspension of disbelief and a naive Alice in Underworld vision is one thing; a disjointed narrative and exploitative socio-cultural pickings are another.

Two- Danny Boyle decides to toss the issue of Language as a key to cultural identity to the winds. Like most other Phoren film makers who've dared to venture into India-exotica to shoot their jewels in the crown, he deals with the issue by disregarding it totally. As a result, Jamaal the multilingual slumkid speaks in street-lingo (hindi) in his first two (more absorbing) avatars but switches to stiff Brit upper lip quips as a suit-boot Dev Patel. Ditto for his lady love Latika(Frieda Pinto) and older brother Salim(Madhur Mittal).
Pardon my questioning the verisimilitude, but isn't speaking in English supposed to be the passport to a life that's actually beyond the clutches of these impoverished urchins?

Without a doubt, this overhyped film is an angrez-aadmi's 'vision' of Mumbai and Maadher-India not how he sees it, but how he would like it stitched together in two hours for maximum mileage in whatever quarters the cow's worth milking. And it owes its success abroad to its clever extension of the idea of poverty-tourism, some excellent slum-casting by Loveleen Tandon, bare-to-the-bone cinematography by Anthony Mantle and ultimately the newness factor of its cross-genre theme.
Even without Rahman's peppy music-that's an awful lot of things to get right.

Luck By Chance

Thank Heavens, Zoya Akhtar’s much anticipated film Luck By Chance is not a let down. In fact it’s the first decent film of the year. If Zoya’s written the (admirably feminist) story screenplay herself -she’s inherited the better part of her father’s storywriting skills and if the film’s ghost written by papa Javed Akhtar-then he’s certainly saved his most honest, sincere and fresh material in recent years for his daughter’s directorial debut.
Engaging stories about the mores and morals of the film industry are rare in Bollywood for obvious reasons. The idea is a double edged sword that more often inflicts self injuries rather than cutting through unchartered territory. As they say, the world just behind the camera that creates magic on the tinsel screen is better off not seen.
Hence the Akhtar family deserves kudos for taking up the ‘Chala Murari Hero Banne’ theme afresh and rendering it with wonderful characters ( Rishi Kapoor as a garrulous but lovable film director and Dimple as a domineering & calculating the star mom), astute situations and plausible yet interesting plot turns. The lispy Farhan Akhtar and petulant Konkona Sen give good performances as struggling actors in the film industry who get by on bit roles, borrowed money and the false promises made by exploitative, matlabi big shot producers and directors. After years of waiting for the proverbial big breaks to come their way, their fortunes change as do their relationships as friends, unspoken lovers and kindred souls.
The film follows the couples lives as Farhan gets picked for a big budget launch and konkona is relegated to doing TV serials despite being a good actor . Farhan turns into a chaploos smooth operator for a while to make his way up the slippery ladder of stardom till a few wise words by SRK bring him down to earth. Yes, SRK. LBC features cameos by at least a dozen A grade film stars-most of whom are well placed/used as their original selves. The screenplay is peppered with small, sometimes seemingly random and distanced scenes but the film holds together pretty well as a whole ; especially in the second half when Farhan’s success becomes a barrier between him and everything/everybody that helped him reach there.
If LBC doesn’t do really well-it would only be because of its ironical lack of glam-star power and maybe its lacklustre soundtrack. The songs’ lyrics, though relevant to the script are tacky/unimaginative and the music perhaps suffers in comparison to the sparkling screenplay which is contemporary without being casual and relevant without being blaise and cliched.
As they say in Hollywood, Luck By Chance is good ‘property’( script/screenplay). Well worth a two hour investment , too.