GULAAL:A Sensible Insanity
iView Author: Prerna (Mumbai, India)
Email: prerna_9585[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]in
GULAAL:A Sensible Insanity ‘
Gulaal Movie Review
HAIL AK!!
No, I am not hailing him for his recent, much talked about Dev D. It is a past now.
This is for one of the most talented film makers of Indian cinema who casted his spell in GULAAL! Those who think Dev D was his best, look out for the ‘bestest’- Gulaal. I also had the Dev D hangover until I saw this one. Dev D was a journey that gets you into a trance-like state which delivers you into the world of love, lust and drugs. Just after a month, AK gives us Gulaal that drags you down to the earth, slaps hard on the face and tells you what the reality is. It is complete insanity at its best!
Ok, so my hangover suddenly vanished and I am back to the big bad world of politics, betrayal and madness. Gulaal is not about beautiful framing or technical magic. It is all about telling a hard hitting tale of men caught in their delusional state of insanity, loss of innocence and ruthless animal instincts that we never lost even after thousands of years of evolution. It is so difficult to say who the ‘hero’ of the film is. Each character plays a strong role in the story. There were many moments of unexpected twists and turns. The storytelling tells us how good or bad a film maker is and the storytelling of Gulaal tells that AK is way beyond the reach of the mediocrity lingering in our industry currently. It completely blew me!
Coming to performances, every actor and character had a charm of their own. I loved all of them but there are some that deserve a very special mention. They were not good… they were mind blowing!
RAJ SINGH CHAUDHARY: The subtly growing character of Dilip Singh is well played by Raj Singh Chaudhary. Throughout the film his character slowly grows towards a different level. He had the reminiscent of Dev being a lovelorn fool living in his delusional world of glossy romance and ignoring the real happenings around him.
ADITYA SRIVASTAVA: His character of Rananjay is a bindaas! He got some of the best one-liners of the film. His best was definitely the last line of his character…won’t reveal much about it though. He is sarcastic, real, hilarious and enchanting.
PIYUSH MISHRA: Prithvi Bana is the only ‘sane’ character in the film. He is my favorite character and I loved the way Piyush sir has performed it. Also worth mentioning are his poetry and sudden bursts of philosophies. He is completely lovable.
And now the best of the bests…
KAY KAY MENON: Man, he has never looked sexier! His performance as Duki Bana is chilling! The deadly insanity in his eyes, the powerful dialogue delivery and a very strong screen presence… The scene worth mentioning here is the one when he gets angry at his brother (played by Piyush Mishra) and fires a bullet at the closed door silencing everything. Kay Kay rocked the scene.
Besides these notable performances, the film has the finest dialogues full of sarcastic one-liners, beautiful poetries and philosophies and also the referential meanings.
The lyrics are hard-hitting and beautiful in all the songs… my favorite being ‘Duniya agar mil bhi jaye’ for the distressing poetry and ‘Ranaji’ for its balance of sarcasm and peppiness, and sensibility.
The positives of Gulaal lie in its simplicity. AK did not bombard the film with techno tricks and rainbow colors.
Even after admiring him and his work for sometime now, I was never an awestruck fan of AK but with GULAAL… hats off to him!
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
finally KK is back to what he does best and AK is still hungry….good times for Indian Cinema..hail to the revolution.
Prerna,
Not to nitpick, but isnt Aditya Srivastava playing Karan Singh – with Ransa being played by Abhimanyu Singh (he is wonderful in the trailer)!
“Aur koi chu***pa karen ko usko de bhi deta hun!”
“Lekin aisa kya change karna chahta hai woh!”
Hilarious!
Really looking forward to Gulaal. But really disappointed that the film is not being released in all theatres. no PVR, no DT Cinema.
KK is one of best actor, you can feel his expressions right in your heart.
eagerly waiting for friday
Wow, my expectations are now stratospheric.
Anurag and KK are the two actors who has done a marvelous job. i am a big fan of them.
Agree with Prerna when she says Gulaal shall be his best!
See this: http://www.timeoutmumbai.net/film/film_details.asp?code=92&source=1
ak does it again….m so happy fo him.this is a man who deserves 2 b a cult figure
but maya i remember u were so so against ak?
Waiting eagerly for the movie to release, even more after reading this one..
AK simply rocks!!
@ Rajesh R K
Hey thanx for pointing out the mistake…yes that’s Abhimanyu Singh and not Aditya Srivastava.
My apologies on that one.
WAITING 4 2morrow!!
Yay! Gulaal is being released in my town(with no multiplexes!)!
Any word on the film being released in the USA at all? Still waiting to see Dev D. I roll mouse over the download button for the pirated version every day but decide not to cos I want to see it in DVD. At least DVD to jaldi release karo yaar!
Any news if this film is going to have a USA release?
I am still waiting to watch Dev D. Everyday I roll the mouse over the download link for pirated version of Dev D and don’t cos I want to see the DVD. At least DVD to jaldi release karo yaar!!
not to forget the debut of ‘ayesha mohan’, she is so natural and hard hitting…
Here some reviews…
http://buzz18.in.com/reviews/movies/review-anurag-kashyaps-gulaal/120572/1
http://dearcinema.com/gulaal-a-flawed-masterpiece/
Khalid Mohamed’s review of Gulaal in Asian Age -
http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/movies/blasting-the-badlands.aspx
Jiyo! Khalid bhai
)
@ chin2 singh – u the same man credited on the film? Congrats for being part of a cult film, this film rocks. Bad scene on with wife but will try see it again over the weekend. Th first film I ever went to alone. Only 3 people in the theatre, it won’t be commercially as big as dev d ( I luvvv abhay deol – the man is our hope!), bit as a film it matches dev d and blows big! Congrats anurag kashyap – I am sure this will be sweeter at a heart level than the popularity n party life dev d has garnered. 5 yrs in the making? It was well worth it! Gorgeous film. Hats off big man – u have arrived!
Just read that timeout review. I completely agree. Tho both films look very different, rajiv rai shines for kashyap. I just hope they go nuts n give us another film soon – going to films in india will never be the same again.
the movie is borng in second half
Its either vodafone or pfc, but I posted a coupla comments that don’t show.
Just wanted to reiterate kudos to the ak-rajiv rai team. That timeout review is bang on. Tho they look completely different (dev d n gulaal), rajiv rai shines thru for anurag.
Going to indian films will never be the same again.
atheist – really? U gotta believe my man! ;)
I think the film rocked as a whole, and the end – especially THE end, with yeh duniya mil.bhi jaye made it all too superb and bloodrushing!
Brilliant! Loved it. I don’t remember when was the last time I wanted to see the immediate next show of a movie. Gotta see it again! Thanks Anurag!
Amazing….. i was so engrossed from the first scene itself … simply amazing movie…. Kay Kay is a very talented actor and proves it again and again. All the other star’s have put in a great effort. Watching AK on the screen for just a split second was also amazing!!!! AK is on a ROLL :P .. keep up the good work…
Masterpiece…definitely…flawed…cant find any! My response to the timeout review…(no malice intended) but seriously we tend to focus on trivialities too much or maybe these are things ppl like even discussing…elementary hai yaar!
The reference to “Rashmirathi” is explicit in the film as Piyush Mishra narrates the rage of Krishna verbatim from it in one of the sequences. It can also be that rather than engaging the viewer in subplots or the story matter itself, the director wanted him to just think for himself. Haven’t we had enough of characters we feel sorry/angry/loving/sympathetic about and hence lose the plot by focussing on the trivialities…? Who likes to work anyways?
@navneet
For me too, this is the first film I went to see alone. None of my friends wanted to watch it….what a shame!
The first half is bloody awesome, the last half hour was a bit of a let down but still a brilliant film. If it carried on with the momentum of the first hour, this would have been one of the best Hindi films ever.
i watched gulaal, 1st day 1st show…, and i did not have a single penny, but u know when ur at the stage of “aspiring filmmakers or asst. director , u some how managae it hook or crook i watched it with my cousin and his friends”.
after watching pyaasa(classic), anurag was so much inspired and motivated that he completed his script gulaal…. And gulaal motivated me to continue my ever struck script . My bro told me that it was the weakest of all my scripts, where are you bro ? what happened to you was his reaction on my initial drafts.., but when last night i completed 1/3 rd of the script… and narrated him… he was more amazed by AK’s influence on me i must say … so i need not be more explanatary on the effect of gulaal…
kurosawa: “movies must move”…, it Shaked me.
“if it cant hold your neck, it will hold your balls”
regards
Bunil kumar
Bangalore
@navneet
i agree gulaal is differnt and performances by kaykay,pankaj jha,ddepak,abhimanyu were over the top but i think the movie lost its pace in 2nd half…..imho
kay kay menon in full form…… abhimanyu singh and deepak dobryal are just brrrrilliant……
Hi Anurag sir, i’m Sunil from Bangalore, there are few things which i cannot discuss on PFC. So sorry to use you this way. ok before i start what i wanna say , let me introduce the character “sunil” – i ‘ve born and brought up in bangalore, did my engineering here as every 2nd child in bangalore has to … i’ve written, directed and performed for amateur theatre group of my college, and i myself lead the team too, which nearly performed 100 shows (Streetplay, Mad ads, Spoofs, one act plays,etc…) Although this 4 yr experience was good enough as any other struggler, even i did not know where to start. By then i had dropped my engineering (thank god now i’m out of it) and a small turn happened, when i met Rakesh Om Prakash Mehra , who had come to bangalore for RDB shoot, they shot in my college, (u can see my college, and Me staring like a juniour artist) but that was when i decided i shall move on…. and the result of which in an year i was in AAFT, Delhi (pls dont look at aaft as one crappy institute sir , cos i say you, for an undergrad like me FTII’s door is always closed). Anyways, after completing my studies, and my Project Film “CHECKMATE” Which was critically well recieved(only by the college and few other festival ppl, who dont even bother to inform the director , that his shortfilm is being screened) Anyways , having studied in a film school doesnt guarantee a job, i first tried in kannada, luckily i got to see how a bad film is made(that doesnt mean kannada films are all bad, there are some really great films that every filmmaker shud watch). Anyways , after that i came out of that project, and somehow i got to meet a talented young director from chennai called “Mysskin(original name Raja )”(in fact Sir, you might be knowing him, when you had come to chennai once he was an asst. director to dir. Kathir then during the shooting of Youth… ). So, now i’m one film old as an Asst. Director (ah, what a relief, if i look back) Anyways, the reason why i’m mailing u is to share few things about Anurag Kashyap ,your movies and the effect of your films in my life, which i cud not share it on PFC. Black Friday effect – I’d never got an oppurtunity to see Black Friday when it released, i watched it last december, on my comp on a pirated VCD (as u know we cant afford for a DVD, but can spend lakhs for engineering, what a waste) Ok, i was suppose to meet my friend Smriti, who lives in mumbai, and now u know the reason why mumbai?? i was suppose to leave on december 30th or sometime, so the day i was suppose to book the ticket… i happened to watched Black friday, and also i watched it again 3-4 days later with my cousin. And now u know the effect of AK (not an ordinary man he is, nor was the film)… you will not believe, i went to the railway station and returned back, cos Black Friday left me with the Fear of Mumbai… and it happened twice. and later i went sometime in jan, smashed,boozed,partied i mean Dho din me aur Kya ho saktha hai sir.(mumbai rocks, i loved the place).
No Smoking -Even before joining film institutte, even before i knew that there is a ‘cut’. i had written something, a small dark tale.., and few years later…. i saw No Smoking, the i saw the co -incidence , it was abt a “man who quits smoking on his death bed “… But i was more than happy to have seen No Smoking. Another co-incidence, not with AK, but with 2 of my scripts, Once again, those scripts which i had wrote before joining an institute, one called Checkmate, which carries a reference with Ingmar bergman’s Seventh Seal, thanks to my friend who later introduced me to world cinema through Bergman’s films. And another one abt a reverse world … and that turns out to be last years Oscar winning David Fincher’s “Curious case of benjamin button”- what is common In these two is that ” a child born looks old, and grows younger and dies infant “. Now u know i’m a science student even my email id sir (sunil_blackhole@yahoo.com)…. Gulaal Effect -It was on 13th and that too Friday (triskaedophobic) i dint have a penny in my pocket, and you know asst. director’s life. But i Had this in mind khi, i have to watch it 1st day 1st show , i cought my cousin and his friends and then we watched it in one of the oldest theatres in bangalore REX (its only 3 films i’ve watched FDFS , dev d, gulaal, lakshya). Anyways by the time i came out.i decided to start working on my unfinished script , its that script which my brother considered the worst of mine, untill i narrated to him last night (just the outline, and few changes). And then i cud see in his eyes the Influence of Anurag Kashyap and his films on me, and the way it motivated me. Anurag Kashyap Effect Today – i feel Kurosawa should have been alive to see Black Friday, Gulaal.Kurosawa once said “Movies Must Move”… i say it Shaked me.
“a film should either hold the neck or the ba11s”. And thats what blackfriday & gulaal has done to the world.
Love You
Sir. Anurag Kashyap
Regards
Sunil Kumar.