Dev D for the Oscars?
Sushmita Bose -
Sunday, May 17, 2009 4:31 PM
I admit I am incredibly un-cool and unfit: I've not watched Black Friday. In fact, I didn't have a run-in with Anurag Kashyap till very recently -- when I watched Dev D -- but there's nothing personal about that, just blame it on bad planning.
Dev D, as far as I know (I may be wrong), did not release in Dubai, and I'd have probably given it a go-by, had it not been for my one-time boss, Aditya Sinha.
Aditya is a Stanley Kubrick and Ian McEwan kind of person; he'll also probably go down in history as being the one person who hated Omkara -- and had the temerity to write about it in Hindustan Times, where he used to work with me before moving on to seek sambhar and southern comfort in Chennai.
His no-holds-barred trashing of Omkara was his swansong for HT. I know he did not write out the critique to garner eyeballs and depart in a trail of hate-glitz; he genuinely disliked the film. We were, predictably, flooded with angry mails; a few readers even claimed decisively that this was ‘IT', that they would never, ever read HT again. Such was the power of Aditya's toxic keyboard. I watched Omkara soon after, and didn't quite agree with Addy's take, but that's a different story.
About three (or was it four?) months ago, Addy called me all the way from Chennai, while taking an idli-sambhar break at work, and ordered me, very tersely, that I must, at any rate, watch Dev D. "There's only word to describe it: superb."
So, on one of my whistle-stop weekend trips to Delhi, I asked Tiger to get tickets for Dev D (the movie was playing in Delhi at that time). He got tickets for Delhi 6 instead, and insisted I had wanted to see Abhishek Bachchan croon masakhali, masakhali while Sonam Kapoor flailed her arms about and a pigeon (called Masakhali) chortled contentedly in the background. Of course I hadn't, but that was Tiger trying to cover his tracks.
I almost fell asleep watching Delhi-6, it made no sense to me, Monkey Man or no Monkey Man -- but again, that's another story.
Dev D was still playing in Delhi theatres when I visited this time, and when I wondered why that was so, given that the DVD was out for Rs 149, I was told the sale tale of how the film industry in India is bearing the brunt of the recession. New films are hard to come by, and multiplexes are running at huge losses showing old films that audiences have already seen.
I brought back the Dev D DVD with me from Delhi, and watched the film sometime last week, two days after I landed back in Dubai. I was sleepy as hell, and not in the best frame of mind, but here is what I thought.
Dev D did not overwhelm me in the way, say, The Reader did; but then The Reader, to my mind, is by far the best film that emerged from the Oscar stable this year. Having said that, I maintain Dev D was a fascinating film, despite its overdrawn bits. This year, it should definitely be India's official entry to the Oscars -- not, God forbid, Rab Ne Banaya Jodi or Dostana (let's hope no one tries to pass it off as Bollywood's making of Milk).
Anurag Kashyap could be our Baz Luhrmann meets Quentin Tarantino: he makes his point by being funky, he uses colour like a true artist, and he's fast and furious. On an international stage, he wouldn't be politically correct like, say, Aamir Khan, and will have much more to say than point out, with a contrived look on his face, that modern-day India is all about a triumph of democracy, and that is what is reflected in Bollywood (I know Aamir has not said that, but I wasn't really being specific here).
Dev D almost belongs to the independent genre in the filmi republic. The hero is not a rock star; the heroines are not virgins/virginal. It bucks the basic trend in the most in-your-face manner ever -- and nobody gives a damn. In a sense, it is a triumph of democracy. It's the story of real India.
The movie's soundtrack by Amit Trivedi takes the pants off Slumdog Millionaire (of course, that's a personal opinion, and anybody is free to differ). I'd heard the CD before I watched the movie, and didn't pay much attention to it (other than Emosional Atyachar) -- but club the soundtrack with the moving picture, and it's pure gold.
Abhay Deol is the next big rising star. I don't know if he'll ever be a Shah Rukh Khan or an Amitabh Bachchan, but he's plain Jane super. If someone like Abhay doesn't become a superstar, then that would be Bollywood's biggest tragedy, much larger in scope than Mughal-e-Azam.
Mahi Gill -- is she related to the eminently forgettable Priya Gill (they look similar)? I even did a Net search. She's pretty darned good, and in the DVD cover of Dev D, she looks a lot like Suchitra Sen, the original Paro in the Bimal Ray version.
All in all, guys, I think we have a winner.
I had thought I'd write about my Delhi trip. I'll do that (hopefully) next week. This week, I just wanted to tell you about the single-most important physical takeaway I got back from India: the DVD of Dev D -- that beats the tranche of Terracotta shade of Color Bar lipsticks I bought for myself hollow.