Sunday, February 08, 2009
Dev D + 2
Dev D
Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, who created Devdas the classic ‘loser’ hero gets no thanks, but there are several nods to Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film, and Abhay Deol gets credit for ‘concept.’
Anurag Kasyap’s Dev D, a contemporary version of Devdas, departs from the original story on many points, but mainly, his Dev is not a victim of class and strict social norms of the time; he is just a destructive (to himself and to others), a thoughtless, emotionless, spoilt brat, who, far from deserving sympathy, is beneath contempt.
Kashyap’s film owes more to films like Requiem for a Dream and Leaving Las Vegas, than any Indian literary or cinematic tradition. To some extent, he has understood and portrayed well, the rootless nouveau riche life in North India, and its great sexual repression, that ironically gives rise to casual sex… with often disastrous consequences.
However, after establishing life in a Punjab village (during a wedding-- something of a cliché now) with cruel accuracy, Kashyap drifts off into a long, self-indulgent, oddly dispassionate odyssey with his hero, though the booze and drug joints and brothels of Delhi, where he meets hooker Chanda (Kalki Koechlin), whose life was torn apart by an MMS clip.
Earlier on, Kashyap’s Paro (Mahi Gill), is seen as a disheveled, sex-starved Juliet, pining for her Romeo, who discards her when he believes loose local gossip about her sexual adventures. Paro marries another man, adjusts to her life, yet turns up to try and redeem Dev, and ends up washing his clothes. Even in the original Devdas, it was difficult to fathom the love two women bestow on a weak and worthless man, here it is even worse, because this Dev has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Chunni (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) here is a drug dealer and pimp. (The censors have been quite liberal with the language!) There are recognizable real life incidents like the MMS scandal involving a Delhi schoolgirl, and the case of a drunk celeb mowing down pavement dwellers with his car.
Abhay Deol plays Dev with an arrogance that comes with money and entitlement, but without any nuances. The Mahi Gill (resembles Tabu) may turn out to be a find. The casting is well done and there are some good performances by hitherto unknown actors on view.
Kashyap’s film owes more, in spirit, to Slumdog Millionaire (is that why Danny Boyle is thanked?) than to Saratchandra. It is possible to appreciate the craft of the filmmaker, the simple yet luminous beauty that Kalki Koechlin brings to her role, the winning music (too much of it) by Amit Trivedi, yet dislike the film. Dev D may be brutally real, but it revels in darkness, is relentlessly sordid, and sitting through it like a punishing ride through a sewer.
Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye
Even accounting for the fact that fantasies can be totally bizarre, it’s tough to imagine anyone conjuring up a bronzed Randeep Hooda in a white feather boa.
Madureeta Anand’s Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye at least acknowledges that women can have fantasies about other men, when their own husbands are nasty and uncaring, but that’s it. Randeep Hooda in fancy dress camp mode, keeps turning up in Maya’s (Raima Sen) chaste day dreams.
Her life is a suburban nightmare of power failures, cooking, packing dabbas, cleaning, helping with kid’s homework, dowdy nighties, noisy neighbours and a husband (Arbaaz Khan), who doesn’t care for her because he has a carrot-chomping girlfriend hidden away somewhere.
The empty house across the street starts fuelling Maya’s dreams, and she now hopes to do something with her life. But a plump, salwar-kameez clad “Aunty” with no skills except bathroom singing hasn’t much of a chance in this competitive world.
But the fantasy man keeps turning up to encourage, advise and scold. Maya musters the nerve to enter a music contest with her noisy jamming neighbours and finally stands up to her husband.
What the film says is just fine—that women must make the best of their talents and strive to fulfill their aspirations, but the way she goes about it is boring and laughable. Poor Hooda must have thought he is playing a sexy genie, but every time he enters putting on what he could manage of a smouldering look, the audience erupts into sneering laughter… surely not the effect Anand intended.
Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye could have been be a sweet little fairy tale about a woman bravely rising above her problems, but the characters are so colourless, the storytelling so uninspiring, that the film turns out to be unwatchable, in spite of Raima Sen’s sincerity. For film about a band and an aspiring singer, the music is insipid too. A Film’s Division documentary about self-help might serve the purpose better.
Chal Chala Chal
TK Rajeev Kumar’s Chal Chala Chal, remake of some long-forgotten Malayalam film, looks like it has been on the shelf too long.
This poor man’s Priyadarshan film, has Govinda and Rajpal Yadav trying to run a transport business with one decrepit bus, and making a hash of it.
The story, set in some vague Malamaal Weekly-style village seems outdated; maybe in his heyday Govinda could have made it work. But now he looks bored with it all, everybody else shouts at the top of their lungs, and a full length film about a bus and union problems, with a subplot about a rat, seems like a big waste of time and raw stock.
There is an indifferent romantic track (with Reema Sen), but thankfully no dream sequences and item numbers.
Still, at the end of it, there is some point there about honesty and decency and standing up to bullies, which is more than what can be said about so many films being made these days. Not that it is any incentive to see Chal Chala Chal… better run the other way.
Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, who created Devdas the classic ‘loser’ hero gets no thanks, but there are several nods to Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film, and Abhay Deol gets credit for ‘concept.’
Anurag Kasyap’s Dev D, a contemporary version of Devdas, departs from the original story on many points, but mainly, his Dev is not a victim of class and strict social norms of the time; he is just a destructive (to himself and to others), a thoughtless, emotionless, spoilt brat, who, far from deserving sympathy, is beneath contempt.
Kashyap’s film owes more to films like Requiem for a Dream and Leaving Las Vegas, than any Indian literary or cinematic tradition. To some extent, he has understood and portrayed well, the rootless nouveau riche life in North India, and its great sexual repression, that ironically gives rise to casual sex… with often disastrous consequences.
However, after establishing life in a Punjab village (during a wedding-- something of a cliché now) with cruel accuracy, Kashyap drifts off into a long, self-indulgent, oddly dispassionate odyssey with his hero, though the booze and drug joints and brothels of Delhi, where he meets hooker Chanda (Kalki Koechlin), whose life was torn apart by an MMS clip.
Earlier on, Kashyap’s Paro (Mahi Gill), is seen as a disheveled, sex-starved Juliet, pining for her Romeo, who discards her when he believes loose local gossip about her sexual adventures. Paro marries another man, adjusts to her life, yet turns up to try and redeem Dev, and ends up washing his clothes. Even in the original Devdas, it was difficult to fathom the love two women bestow on a weak and worthless man, here it is even worse, because this Dev has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Chunni (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) here is a drug dealer and pimp. (The censors have been quite liberal with the language!) There are recognizable real life incidents like the MMS scandal involving a Delhi schoolgirl, and the case of a drunk celeb mowing down pavement dwellers with his car.
Abhay Deol plays Dev with an arrogance that comes with money and entitlement, but without any nuances. The Mahi Gill (resembles Tabu) may turn out to be a find. The casting is well done and there are some good performances by hitherto unknown actors on view.
Kashyap’s film owes more, in spirit, to Slumdog Millionaire (is that why Danny Boyle is thanked?) than to Saratchandra. It is possible to appreciate the craft of the filmmaker, the simple yet luminous beauty that Kalki Koechlin brings to her role, the winning music (too much of it) by Amit Trivedi, yet dislike the film. Dev D may be brutally real, but it revels in darkness, is relentlessly sordid, and sitting through it like a punishing ride through a sewer.
Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye
Even accounting for the fact that fantasies can be totally bizarre, it’s tough to imagine anyone conjuring up a bronzed Randeep Hooda in a white feather boa.
Madureeta Anand’s Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye at least acknowledges that women can have fantasies about other men, when their own husbands are nasty and uncaring, but that’s it. Randeep Hooda in fancy dress camp mode, keeps turning up in Maya’s (Raima Sen) chaste day dreams.
Her life is a suburban nightmare of power failures, cooking, packing dabbas, cleaning, helping with kid’s homework, dowdy nighties, noisy neighbours and a husband (Arbaaz Khan), who doesn’t care for her because he has a carrot-chomping girlfriend hidden away somewhere.
The empty house across the street starts fuelling Maya’s dreams, and she now hopes to do something with her life. But a plump, salwar-kameez clad “Aunty” with no skills except bathroom singing hasn’t much of a chance in this competitive world.
But the fantasy man keeps turning up to encourage, advise and scold. Maya musters the nerve to enter a music contest with her noisy jamming neighbours and finally stands up to her husband.
What the film says is just fine—that women must make the best of their talents and strive to fulfill their aspirations, but the way she goes about it is boring and laughable. Poor Hooda must have thought he is playing a sexy genie, but every time he enters putting on what he could manage of a smouldering look, the audience erupts into sneering laughter… surely not the effect Anand intended.
Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye could have been be a sweet little fairy tale about a woman bravely rising above her problems, but the characters are so colourless, the storytelling so uninspiring, that the film turns out to be unwatchable, in spite of Raima Sen’s sincerity. For film about a band and an aspiring singer, the music is insipid too. A Film’s Division documentary about self-help might serve the purpose better.
Chal Chala Chal
TK Rajeev Kumar’s Chal Chala Chal, remake of some long-forgotten Malayalam film, looks like it has been on the shelf too long.
This poor man’s Priyadarshan film, has Govinda and Rajpal Yadav trying to run a transport business with one decrepit bus, and making a hash of it.
The story, set in some vague Malamaal Weekly-style village seems outdated; maybe in his heyday Govinda could have made it work. But now he looks bored with it all, everybody else shouts at the top of their lungs, and a full length film about a bus and union problems, with a subplot about a rat, seems like a big waste of time and raw stock.
There is an indifferent romantic track (with Reema Sen), but thankfully no dream sequences and item numbers.
Still, at the end of it, there is some point there about honesty and decency and standing up to bullies, which is more than what can be said about so many films being made these days. Not that it is any incentive to see Chal Chala Chal… better run the other way.
Labels: Cinemaah
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