Dev D.: Sarat C. is Smiling
Anurag Kashyap’s new film is a mixed package for me. I had thoroughly enjoyed the sub-text in Kashyap’s ‘No Smoking’ (see review), and, I admit my preoccupation while watching Dev D. was again how Kashyap and Abhay Deol (who ideated the adaptation) have interpreted Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s classic novella Devdas.
The setting in modern day India is spot on. It is Punjab, so Dev’s bourgeois family derives its moolah from sugarcane business, he himself goes to England for studies, and Paro on marriage moves to Delhi and Dev ‘follows’ her there and ‘sluts around’ in brothel and hangs out at a smoke & drug-filled underground pub that recalls No Smoking. Also Punjab’s mustard field and marriages recalls Yashraj’s home territory, only the romance here is somewhat corrupt and laden with sexual undertones. There is also a brilliant touch of transforming Devdas’s friend, Chunni in the novel to a pimp here who supplies Devdas with whores, drugs and occasionally acerbic truths about life in the city and who’ll desert Dev when he is in trouble with police.
Thematically, Anurag Kashyap takes the brave ‘liberty’ in brushing aside parental and societal pressures that had given Sarat Chandra’s Devdas a reason to not marry Paro (in the film, his father actually advises Dev to marry Paro and is disgusted by his apparent preference for skinny, ‘un punjabi’ babes). Instead, Dev latches on to a rumour that is floating around about Paro, betrays her with another girl, does not marry Paro and thus precipitates a tragedy to which he is both the conspirator and victim of. The film has the clear most focus when Dev plays the righteous and the injured party, punishes himself, and wallops in self-pity and destruction. This clarity would have been the biggest achievement of the film had it not been for the end where a down and out Dev suddenly goes for a U-turn. This change in character – where a traffic accident makes him end his ambivalence on love (a high point of the novella) and he decides to return to Chanda – is unexplained and unwarranted. After setting the sights high – a candid and modern interpretation of the book – Kashyap seems to have heeded to some popular call seeking power of romantic love and an urgent need for the hero to be imparted with redemption.
‘Reality must be torn apart’, said Picasso, and Devdas provides an excellent format to delve within, so it is tad disappointing to find that midway Dev D. starts to crawl back towards the mundane reality gasping for breath. (I am all for the modern Devdases not dying at Paro’s doorsteps and moving on with life. After all, every generation of Indians have had their share of Devdases, and surely most survive their self-destructive phase, but in doing so they first come out of Devdas’ world, of Paros, Chandramukis and Chunnilals and then do the ordinary things. In choosing Chanda, Dev is killing his own cruel joke he was writing, and where, unseen to others, he was smiling from the depths of his despair).
Kashyap’s treatment of Paro is full of sympathy and not unlike the novel’s author, Sarat Chandra who too had championed women rights and condition. In modern India, Paro won’t take shit from anyone (parents or lover), will be open about her sexuality and on rejection take the next best option, make best use of it and given a chance will even show an ex-lover who rejected her his place in the larger scheme of things. Indeed re-reading Paro’s character is an original attempt and, thematically, the second most important thing that the film attempts to do. However, this aspect is undermined in Paro’s last meeting with Dev at his unkempt lodge. Here, she rightly puts Dev in his place but it is baffling that she goes around his room doing his bed, washing his clothes and then leaving in remorse, all tear-eyed.
The film starts on a steamy note and you remain on a breathtaking ride up until Dev wrests himself out of Paro’s life and locks himself in this masochistic situation, described splendidly by ‘Patna Presleys’, the lead singers of the brass band at Paro’s marriage, who belt out ‘emosional attyachar’ [emotional blackmail] (Kamal Swarup’s underground movie, Om Dar Badar is acknowledged for this song’s inspiration). However, now, in the time that Dev could’ve been seen ‘realizing’ his mistake we instead cut away to a long back story of Chanda, the child-prostitute who would enter Dev life next. From a highpoint that the film was at, Chanda’s story meanders to areas not essential to Dev’s story and worryingly provides a clich'© background for a prostitute (exploitation, desertion, penury). The story again gets somewhat kicking when Dev is at the whorehouse in his most decadent and indulgent avataar. The pimp, Chunni and the binges at the pub are the highlights, while his relationship with the college going prostitute, Chanda has an improvised feel and never quite generates the on-screen chemistry that Paro and he had. The final lap of the film is another appendage to the original story and is a take off from a real event (so was Chanda’s back story). Here, Dev accidentally drives over and kills several men sleeping on a roadside pavement. This incident spurs Dev’s final decline and reversal, which, as noted earlier, are unsatisfying.
With Anurag Kahsyap in the director’s chair, Dev D. always seems to be in sure hands. Abhaya Deol as Dev D. superbly plays the ‘weakness as strength’ factor (the only match I can think of is Dilip Kumar who had brought more shades to his Devdas, e.g. his uptightness, and, the rage & veiled embarrassment over the mistake he had made in losing Paro). To me the highpoint of the film, however, is Mahie Gill as Paro (again, the great Suchitra Sen comes to mind, but, right now, I will give Gill the first here). Both Chunni (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) and Chanda (Kalki Koechlin) are inspired casting choices. The film is beautifully shot by Rajiv Ravi. The drug and booze filled world of Dev looks strikingly kitsch and psychedelic. The music director, Amit Trivedi has provided a background score that runs parallel to the film’s narrative and competes equally for your attention. His original score is real first-rate albeit one that is often overbearing and makes it difficult to think above the din.
There are now more than half-a-dozen film adaptations of Devdas. One thing one can be sure of is that Dev D. won’t be the last one. Sarat C. is smiling.
Tags: Abhay Deol, Anurag Kashyap, Dev D, Kalki Koechlin, Mahie Gill, Padmaja Thakore, Rajiv Ravi, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’
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
one more solid and well written review in the favour of Dev D on passion for cinema
MAKING OF DEV D -
Enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVXsNe_hCMs
@mcmohan, thanks for the link;scenes behind the screen is far more important than in front of it.It reveals the inherent concept inside the minds of film makers and actors.Film making is one of the non glamorous effort and to shoot a making of a film is really good marketing approach.The cinephile like me also liked it..
Bhai sahab, aapko picture samajh nahi aayi. But as the Konkona Sen character explains in the movie Luck by Chance at the last, “Ismein tumhara koi kasoor nahi hai. Kuch log hote hi aise hain”.
I shouldn’t really try to explain away your bafflement at Paro’s last meeting with Dev, while she goes on cleaning him up. But I guess better people than me have worked hard at writing and analyzing it as cinema already. Read Brangan’s review here. He ‘explains’ a lot of quirks.
http://www.desipundit.com/baradwajrangan/2009/02/07/review-dev-d/
But even that is not the point of the movie. If you just admire separate parts of the movie, you miss the whole.
Both Padmaja and brangan reviews are positive. You don’t notice when rangan criticizes
Dev D. They both have more good things and occasional bad things.
Loosen up behen ji.
http://www.desipundit.com/baradwajrangan/2009/02/07/review-dev-d/
And yet, perhaps it’s a bit much to expect uninterrupted audience investment when a lethargic actor settles a little too comfortably into a lethargic part. About two-thirds of Dev.D works marvellously, but once Dev is cut loose from his heroines, — it appears that the film itself has been cut loose. — Kashyap tethers these free-floating vignettes to disappointingly tangible motivational ends. At this point, he tweaks the original story structurally – earlier, the tweaks were more conceptual – and I didn’t buy these changes. I could go along with the public accident that Dev causes and his subsequent conviction – where, earlier, Devdas was a menace merely to himself and the ones he loves, Dev is now a menace to society – but the wake-up call, at the end, is an insult, a dreadfully inappropriate encroachment of morality and responsibility in a movie that was faring so well without these patronising qualities….
ANYHOW i enjoyed the film and agree with both reviewers that start is better of the film than end. i kept wondering why so many reference to Bhansali Devdas in the film. Anyone?
First of all dude, it is not a behenji. It is a bhai saab. Second of all, I did not point out Padmaja to the Brangan review because it resonates with what I feel. I did, because he did a better analysis of things than Padmaja does, and she was/is baffled.
My views are here.
http://theevilp.blogspot.com/2009/02/emotional-atyachaar-dev-d-scorches.html
First things first. It is not a behenji. The Dude, or the dudeliness or whatever.
For seconds, Aw geez, and defensive baffled movie watchers. The reason why I pointed out Brangan’s review to Padmaja, because he explains away the quirks that were baffling Padmaja. A sort of horses for courses thing you know. Jab isi track par daudna hai to achhe se daudo. That kinds.
My views are here,
http://theevilp.blogspot.com/2009/02/emotional-atyachaar-dev-d-scorches.html
I don’t know why Chanda’s character is being less discussed by everyone. Is it only me who found chandas character equally strong, equally important and kalki’s performance is equally good?
i think u hv articulated the movie very well..& though i ws completely blown away after my first viewing..the second viewing ws nt as exciting but still exciting enough & i feel Dev.D is an incredible movie & a superlative attempt anyway(and performances r top notch)..both the time one thing i observed after comin home frm the movie ws that while watching the movie i never thought of the Devdas story..i ws watching it as just another story instead of a story that we hv seen & heard several times before – the only thing that i ws sub cosciously waiting fr ws ‘the climax death scene’..I feel Dev.D works even as an independent story..thanks
@ Brown skin, I think all these references were there, because maybe AK wanted to show him that how devdas can be interpreted. If you guys remember, it was AK’s piece on Black in Tehelka that had stirred a hornet’s nest. And even though it was too much in your face, but then that’s been a recurrent feature of AK’s public persona.
Padmaja, I agree with most of what you have to say. Except that kalki was an inspired casting choice. To me, except for Mahi and Abhay, the rest of the performances were really bad. And with western girl as the fallen woman being one of the biggest stereotypes of hindi films, by casting a white girl , I am not sure what Anurag Kashyap was thinking . But whatever he was thinking, I felt that the performance was completely ameteurish and bland.
Have you actually read Sarat babu’s Devdas in the Bengali original? You hardly discuss the novel at all. I’m yet to see Dev.D. but from all the reviews it seems to me that Anurag may have not exactly been very loyal to the novel’s original premise.