Dev D on V-Day
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(Statutory warning: This reviewer has got an incurable Nostradamus complex and is prone to spouting pseudo-profundities just for the heck of it…..)
Valentine’s Day is not my favourite part of the year……. I have an extraordinarily strong mush-radar, which was going haywire at about midnight on the 13th of February. My college(IIT Kharagpur) stands out for its laughably skewed sex ratio(at last count, it was about 8 per 100 in my year), and because of that, guys who do have girlfriends on campus, feel obliged to throw bucketfuls of mush right in my(and every other blissfully single guy’s) face. So, as I was saying, around midnight, there was a buzz in the air. I was walking along the long stretch on campus which has most of the hostels on it…..
I felt like some poor sod victimised by the living dead in a zombie flick. There they were, in twos, sometimes in groups of four or even six. This was a cold-blooded, calculated attack. These were professionals…. the worst part was these were guys and gals I actually hung out with on an average day, who felt compelled to subject me to this.
Well, that was that. The severity of the attack left me with two options: grab a saffron headband and join the Sri Ram Sena…..or grab the first local train out to Kolkata. Tempting as the Ram Sena was, I decided to go with the latter. I didn’t even return to my room…..I phoned a friend who was similarly reeling under the attack, and we just headed out to the station…..and we decided to watch Dev D.
Now this was one film which I had been looking forward to for months…… following Anurag’s posts on the making, then the “Emosanal Atyachar” wave which swept us all, after the music release … my expectations had started reaching ridiculous levels….never a good sign. Films have flattered to deceive all too often for my liking, and given my own propensity for hero-worship….
Nothing of the sort happened 
Dev D lived up to all my expectations, and then some. Anurag Kashyap has raised the bar a notch higher, confirming his status as one of the finest minds in Indian cinema today. Years from now, when we talk about the films which changed the face of Indian cinema, the name “Dev D” will slip off easily from our tongues. At nearly three hours long, the film seemed if anything, a little on the shorter side to me, believe it or not.
But Kashyap’s brilliance, combined with a masterclass performance by Abhay Deol, kept me hungry for more.Dev D is that rare kind of film, which clicks on so many fundamental levels, and draws you deep into its world……the film excites, infuriates at times, tickles you silly, is intimate one second and shuts you out the other.
To say Dev D is audacious is like saying Salman Rushdie likes to scribble little somethings every now and then. When Heath Ledger died, I remember Chris Nolan wrote a stirring obituary titled “Charisma as natural as gravity…” . Something of the kind is in play here. It is in vogue to be tongue-in-cheek nowadays, slipping in rookie double-entendres in otherwise anaemic screenplays which are meant to underline their wannbe status as “alternative” cinema. But in the hands of someone like Kashyap, it works magically, never once do the sleights-of-hand seem forced or fake…..and believe me, he gets away with plenty here…..
Since this is not your average Taran Adarsh review, I will not try to break the film down into manageable quarters, which can then be converted to BO collections. The initial portions focus on Dev’s return to Punjab after his padhai-in -vilayat. Right from the beginning, it was obvious that nobody was gonna pull any punches. I might mention at this point that I had a girl with a very annoying ringtone sitting beside me(I hate the Black Eyed Peas more than any band after this…). When Dev asked Paro if she touched herself, the female in question dropped her cellphone, after the most audible gasp I’d heard in some time. There is some justice in this wicked world after all…. After I saw Oye Lucky Oye, and its superb usage of the rustic lingo, unlike its usual abuse in Bollywood for cheap thrills and a quick
chuckle or two; Dev D gives us Paro, who is the Punjab-di-kudi from hell, when she wants to, that is.
And yes, the much-talked about mattress-in-a-khet was every bit as awesome a scene as you’ll ever see.
A word about Amit Trivedi’s soundtrack here. The music is used in liberal doses here, throughout the film, sometimes nearly back-to-back. Of course, big fat Punjabi weddings do give you license that way. But the score is just so versatile, you are surprised constantly. From the earthy strains of “Hikknaal” to the wistful “Dhol Yaara Dhol” , we segue merrily along to the special from Patna Ke Presleys…… “Emosanal Atyachar” has achieved cult status on my campus, as it has, I’m sure on college circuits elsewhere in the country. The in-your-face brashness, straight-laced parody and cool-as-you-like Hinglish has struck a chord, and I dare say it has already become an oft-used catch phrase. However, my personal favourite is “Nayan Tarse” , the slightly-wasted sounding vocals of Trivedi himself resulting in a very grunge-like effect on this soul-meets techno track.
A frequent complaint about the film I’ve heard since then is that Anurag Kashyap has slipped back into uber-indulgent No-Smoking-territory again in the second half. To them I say, “Kaun kambakht bardaasht karne ke liye peeta hai? ” Dev’s descent into the seedy world of “connoiseur bars” , seedy undergound bars, and one psychedelic pharmaceutical after another is wonderfully captured here, in some virtuoso cinematography and camerawork. (To know more about that you can read a post by the man himself, about how Danny Boyle advised him to use a special camera technique…..no wonder he is credited in the film). Dev and Chanda’s first encounter is filled with deliciously funny dialogues, where newcomer Kalki Koechlin more than holds her own against Deol’s carefully cultivated rage and indignance.
That brings me to the two women in Dev’s life. To call the interpretation radical would be stating the obvious…. Paro in particular was brilliantly sketched out as a character. Mahie Gill is quite a handful, for both Deol and the obvious. If Paro was supposed to be a docile, demure character, nobody told Mahie…
“These boots are meant for walkin’ ,
And that’s what they’re gonna do..
One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you!!”
This is what she seems to tell Dev with every fiery glance, every defiant silence, and every sailor-like outburst of the choicest… check out her balls-out shaadi-ka-dance in the Emosanal Atyachar number(did I mention it’s her own wedding….?) Anurag sir, if you’re reading this, please cast her again in your next!
Chanda is alternately vulnerable and dominating. Half-child and half preying-mantis-seductress, Dev is intrigued by this strange and exotic creature who seems to be just as damaged as her. The use of the DPS MMS-scandal in Chanda’s backstory is a masterstroke…and tells us some very inconvenient truths. Kalki makes a solid debut with an utterly believable, if not compelling performance.
Which leaves us with the Curious Case of Abhay Deol. With every movie, the man has utterly reinvented himself. Perhaps fittingly, he was likened to a young Johnny Depp, by Anurag Kashyap in a blog post. Here, he has delivered the performance of his fledgling career. He has already put together a very impressive filmography, what with Manorama and Oye Lucky Lucky Oye….I have no doubt that he is the one Indian actor to watch out for in the days to come…would love to see him share screen space with Kay Kay Menon, another Kashyap favourite.
The great Frenchman Francois Truffaut first coined the word “auteur” in a famous essay, arguing that the director was in fact, the real “author” (auteur means author in French) of the film, leaving his handprints on each and every frame of the movie. He said that all great directors had a distinct visual and narrative style, which is unmistakeable, which is something separating the truly great from the merely good. I am not fond of singing paeans to anybody, but with Dev D, Anurag Kashyap has earned the right to be called one of India’s few true auteurs. I’m eagerly waiting for “Gulaal” and with every passing day, curse our luck and the Censor board for “Paanch” (someone, anyone please get in touch…how does one watch “Paanch?)
After this wonderful cinematic experience, I bummed along Park Street for a while, browsing through bookstores, munching down junk food……and come night, returned to a post V-Day Kharagpur, which was still as endearing , and still as much a pain in the ass as ever.
And now it’s my turn to annoy people, especially the committed kind, asking them about their V-Day. When they politely ask me about my own, I put on my best I-know-what-you-did-last-summer smile, and answer “I watched Dev D in Kolkata.”, like it was the most obvious, the most natural thing to do. Most of them give me a “what am I missing here” nervous chuckle, while their partners stare at me with undisguised loathing.
Come to think of it, at midnight on that Friday the 13th… it seemed the most natural thing to do, after all.
Tags: Abhay Deol, Anurag Kashyap, Dev D, Valentines Day
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Paanch will get an April release I read Anurag Blogging that.
:):) I’ve already made up my mind on going down to Bombay and watching it with old buddies!! and its a mad crowd I tell you 
Mahi Gill is cast in Kashyaps next…check out the Ranaji Video on PFC. This girl can dance too!!
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@Aditya Mani Jha,Career in engineering leads to the path devoid of girls.Valentine looks like a brutal celebration or freedom in the jail house. Availbility of daru and suttaa just compensates it.Dev D is an easy ride down the lanes of self destruction.DPS-MMS case seems to be so real and ugly from this movie point of view.But AK is carving a niche for himself.All great artist had their past either filled with love or completely devoid of love.I think a pain in life which an artist could never forsake, and hence which would always prompt him for searching for greater things, for finding love and meaning in life.just wanna say, good post on mixing pathos of valentine day with dev d….
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I haven’t yet watched Dev D yet but my expectations are rising ridiculously high as I read reviews. I can’t even wait for “Gulaal”. Damn this part of the world. But hey, at least I don’t have to bear the annoyance of black eyed peas ring tone from a female who apparently never played with herself or was shocked to see that someone can actually dare to talk about it on a big screen and hence the gasp. Did you happen to watch her hands by any chance?
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hehe, nice one sonofabeech! btw, fyi…paanch is releasing april 2009. ne idea when is DevD DVD coming out in the market??
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@Yayaver: Thanx, man
Nice blog, by the way, and glad to see so many IT-BHU bloggers out there..
@Sonofabeech: Which part of the world would that be, my friend? And, the girl’s hands were busy texting when the scene in question came….
Saurabh: Googling Paanch doesn’t yield any evidence about its release in April 2009….if however this is the case…..then tere muh me ghee shakkar!
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@the other pov : This is great news, man! And yes, Mahie rocks in the Ranaji number…had completely forgotten about her being in Gulaal… Anurag Kashyap had mentioned this in a post about Dev D….
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8/100???…better than us…
at out time we had 4/100 in NIT…
Nice review anyway….
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@Aditya : No, google won’t give any results. But Anurag himself said this on NDTV, there was an interview a couple of weeks ago (Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar, Anurag Kashyap and the director of Manorama)… there he annonced that Gulaal releases in March and Paanch in April. There was a link to the interview on PFC as well…
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@jitaditya : NIT Rourkela was even worse … spent 4 years of undergrad in complete ‘banjar’ land…
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There are some movies which are to be seen alone and savored for their directorial excellence and dialogues. Dev D is one of them.Too name a few more in this category we have cult film like Gunda, not so popular “Kyaa Kool Hai Hum”, similar to Dev D “Dil Dosti Etc” and few more.
I can only say that when you have no other work or when your girlfriend has dumped you or your proposal has been turned down do try out these movies. I don’t consider using this space more but would end with saying that “DEV D” has given Hindi Film Industry a new dimension known as “SEX”.
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nice post aditya. u say u roamed abt on park street and browsed thru the bookstores later. and tht brings back so much of nostalgia of my ‘vella-days’ roaming around tht area. btw, which theatre did u watch it in?
try to be in kolkata on the next friday, the 13th. thou shalt be welcomed with GULAAL..!!
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I saw an ad on Sony few days back… Anurag Kashyap is directing a serial (forgot the name..with lady underworld or something of that sort..for 12 weeks. If somebody knows more about this…please let us know… the details… feeling bored watching all the stupid reality shows… and if it is indeed directed by AK then its a feast..for us daily :-)
If AK is reading…please reply…. thanks
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Aditya, your review rocks! I have seen the movie twice. And i must say you have captured pretty much all the high points of the film. Actually not. How is it possible, when the film has a highpoint every five minutes.Apart from the scenes you have mentioned , the one that shatters me is the scene whee Lenny is talking to her mom on the phone, ” Mom, please take me from here. I will do anything you say.”. You can touch heartbreak by reaching out to the screen. Then there are three music moments apart from the ones you have mentioned. The one where Dev is throwing the galss at the wall and Chunnin clutching the pillow, and the scene cuts to the rock version of Emotional Atyachar. Then there are the two songs O Pardesi and Kahan Gayi Saali Khushi. God, those moves, those expressions!
Yes decades from now, when the history of Hindi movies will be written, this film will have a chapter to it on its own.
By the way, IIT, Kharagpur is my alma mater too. But I was thee way back in 72-77. Looks like some things never change there. Like the gender ratio!
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8/100, a welcome change. My batch had 30/600… do the math.
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Yawwwn. A humble request to PFC content editors, plz stop publishing any more reviews of Dev D & Delhi – 6, unless the writer has to offer a new viewpoint.
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@ Jitaditya and Saurabh : Tough on you, mate
@ Utkal and Neeraj: Glad to hear from old boys… u know what, in many ways, Kharagpur is a place frozen in time….
@Satyendra: I watched it at Fame multiplex at South City Mall..
@Ashish: I don’t quite get if you are serious or sarcastic, my friend…
@Tatya Tope: I’m really sorry if I bored you, sir. Hope this doesn’t put you off PFC…it’s a wonderful place, it really is..
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@Tatya Tope
Humko Ranaji maaf karna, galti hon gayi.
Sirji zyaada kuch hain nahin na in din discuss karne laayak. Thoda sehlo na. :P
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Actually I’m serious…..my point is that these movies are a great delight to watch when you want to enjoy each and every moment of the film…..these are unconventional…..and I like them
….sorry for my confused comment earlier…..I should be more clear with my comments 
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@Ashish Gourav
You said it mate. The business of entertaining through unconventional or for that matter conventional forms is serious business. It takes alot of talent to put a circus together too, that doesn’t make the circus a frivoulous form of entertainment. Art in any form or taste should be appreciated and there is no set rules about what is genius and what isn’t, as long as you have a market and do what you set out to do…it will be appreciated. Dev D doesn’t pretend, the unconventionalism is not forced.
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@Aditya Mani Jha
I am in a nation of unethical dick shooters,lol. I am in Aridzona. Seriously, it’s as arid as the name suggests when it comes to releasing such movies in theater. You’ve done a good job writing the review. I hope to watch the movie soon.
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@sonofabeech..
Where in AZ? I am in phoenix, Varun another author on PFC is visiting here as well this weekend…we should meet up..
mail me at
cinemaismypassion(at)gmail(dot)com
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@OM,
I am in tempe. Just dropped you an email.
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