Gulaal – The Beginning Of The End
I have just returned after watching this movie and I am spell-bound. The movie was fantastic; a genius is definitely at work and that makes me happy that we can look forward to more such mature movies for a mature audience by a mature film-maker, Anurag Kashyap.
I will not call the film multi-layered, because that has become a cliche. Instead, let me just say that the film is as many layered as there are characters in it. Every character has a definite role to play and unravels a layer of the movie. One after another, characters appear like onion-peels, and adds their own hue to it. The film could have been basanti, neela, haraa, kaala[but obvious]; but gulaal seems to be the flavor of the season, and rightly so. The color of revolution is red, so is the color of blood, so is the color of veins filled with passion.
The movie starts with Dilip Kumar Singh being taken to a den where Dukey Bana is delivering a fiery speech, rousing the patriotism of Rajputana and asking them to support the movement and make their revolution a success. I was glad to see KayKay, playing Dukey Bana, with such strength and vigor after a long time. Dukey Bana is living with a false sense of Rajputana pride and he wants to fight the system to create his own establishment of which he wants to be the uncrowned king. He gathers money and muscle power to strengthen his delusional cause of being the mai-baap and bringing freedom to Rajputana from India. He is the Senapati of the movement and he one day hopes to rule the place, replace the skewed democracy with his autocracy.
Dilip comes from Bikaner to Rajpur, the fabled town where the movie unfolds, to study law; and never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined becoming a part of a political sandstorm. He comes in contact with Rananjay, brilliantly played by Abhimanyu Singh, who was born in a princely family but refuses to lead a high-life of His-Highness. Some of the dialogs exchanged between Ransa, as he is called, and Dilip is just too good; like when he offers a drink to Dilip and says legaa, Dilip refuses the drink and Ransa retorts meri legaa. Ransa infuses courage into Dilip and eggs him to take people on, not accept things as they are and to question people.
Dilip gets mislead, used and abused by everyone. First, he suffers a 3 day ragging where he is pushed naked into a darkroom ad locked-in, and then to seek reveng for this he is led to Dukey Bana by Bhati, Dukey’s right-hand. Deepak Dobriyal, after his superb performance in Delhi-6, is back as Bhati. He is loyal to Dukey in all respects; and although he gives his suggestions he follows his master’s instructions. His silent actions and body-language conveys more than the dialogs given to him.
Dukey convinces Ransa to fight the college elections, but as the situation changes, Dilip ends up fighting the elections and Dukey puts in everthing to win the election so that Dilip can serve as his puppet. The first woman who shows Dilip love and affection, a wily Kiran, ends up becoming the love of his life, for whom Dilip can do anything; not realising that like others, she too is using him.
Kiran, played handsomely by Ayesha Mohan in her debut, stands against Dilip in the college elections. But after losing the election she gets close to Dilip in the pretext of joining him. She manipulates Dilip’s emotions because she has an agenda of her own, she wants to become the General Secretary of the college and weild power. She drains Dilip of all his emotional prowess and turns him into a mad recluse who refuses to believe anyone who tries to tell him about the ugliness behind Kiran’s innocent face.
Jesse Randhawa plays Anuja, the only person who actually understands Dilip and accepts him with all his flaws and weaknesses. She had been with Dilip, stark naked in the dark-room during the ragging session, and that emotional bonding brings them closer to each other. But Dilip refuses to listen to her as well when she asks him to see the writing on the wall, because he is so blinded by Kiran’s love.
We have a UK returned man, Prithvi Bana, who is the elder brother of Dukey Bana. He is a lunatic genius who could have been one of the pillars of the movie to propel it forward, but he has been under-utilized. He lives in his own world, composing songs and coming up with wonderful lines to dilute the tense situation. Prithvi tells the truth, speaks the words which Dukey does not want to hear. In a mockig gesture, Prithvi also does a Hail Feuhrer to Dukey because he realises the worthlessness of the revolution, the rebel without a cause, and how this all would amount to nothing. This basically is the theme of the movie, and Prithvi churns out two songs to illustrate this. First he comes up with a sarcastic version of Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna and then he re-creates the Ye Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To Kya Hai in the current scenario.
Prithvi, played by Piyush Mishra, is a key person. He has written the lyrics, composed the music as well as lent his voice to a few songs. His haunting words reek of revolution, coming from his pre-theatre days where he performed lots of plays, and he uses them well here. The Ranaji song is more of an anti-autocracy song than anti-American. The numerous autonomous decisions taken by US, which they did, playing Big Brother to the world, has actually caused us much harm. In the same manner, we have a Dukey Bana trying to replicate the Big Brother appraoch, in Rajputana.
The unspelled person of the entire cast is Aditya Srivastava, playing Karan. He is Kiran’s elder brother and the mastermind behind Kiran’s actions. He aspires to become Senapati someday, but for that he needs recognition and a legitimate name among the Rajputs. He cannot claim legitimacy because he is the mythological Mahabharat character Karan, in all senses. The only way he can get respect in the society is by tying up with someone known. So, he uses his sister to achieve his ends; and he eliminates everyone who comes between him and his misguided sense of success.
In all this, we have an innocent Dilip who is crushed between Dukey Bana’s false ambitions, Kiran’s feigned love, Karan’s unclaimed legitimacy. He is a man from the past who believes in goodness, in the utopian world of idealism and ethics and in pure and pious love. He does not drink, does not smoke, but when he loves… he loves with all his heart. His love becomes his weakness, leaves him disillusioned and shattered. And still, he loves Kiran.
Of the cast, everyone has performed excellently. Kaykay is outstanding in his portrayal of a man walloped in his creation of a new world order. Abhimanyu Singh is dynamic and has great screen presence; his justified anger and cocky humor makes for a heady mix. There is also an extended guest appearance by Mahi Gill, the paro of DevD, who thinks she is a look-alike of Tabu; she has the two mujras Beedo and Ranaji, and a couple of shots as the mistress of Dukey Bana. AK has extracted the best out of everyone and the casting has been of top-notch. Raj Singh Chaudhary, playing Dilip, has shown a brilliant transition from a guy who could not lift a hockey-stick to a guy who goes all guns blazing towards the end. He is also the co-writer of the movie, along with AK. The cinematography was good, but the editing was disappointing. It looked like a job done in a hurry as the release date came closer. The dialogues were rough, with a lot of cuss words and foul language; but is very situational because the movie demanded it. The director, AK, nothing to say about him because all that I have written above is due to his efforts, his faith in the subject, his conviction, his attitude and his anger towards everything around.
And why I titled the post as beginning of the end…because just when I thought the madness would end with Dukey Bana, somebody else begins their journey of futility and lost cause. Tumhari hai tum hi sambhalo ye duniya …
Tags: ak, Anurag Kashyap, Gulaal, kaykay, piyush mishra, sarfaroshi ki tamanna
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
Holy COW!!! How on earth will I be able to watch this movie in US?? Someone help me out plz!
rals: watched the movie last night, and couldnt agree more with you on wht u hv written. i guess the best part of the movie are its dialogues… crisp, topical and so today’s.
i think the best part of the movie was while Ransa is on screen. his acting was too good, and the way he deals with his father or with dukey bana, or even with jadwal was really good acting & gr8 direction.
and mahie gill just accepted what the world feels abt her looks…
I saw much awaited Gulal on the first show in a morning on friday.Performaces in Gulal are awsome no doubt about it.But i found the pase of the film was bit too much and may be that is the reason why the film becomes bit superficial and does not remain in you.Piyush Bhai was outstanding in all the departments wheather its singing,music,lyrics and not to mention acting .Overall it was good film.
I have watched this movie yesterday and it was quite enthralling experience.The casting was superb and the transformation of Duleep from silent student to violent gun blazer enchanted me. I am not from Rajasthan but the university election system was same in most of the universities of u.p. in early 90’s.The most brilliant scene is the small talks given by Piyush Mishra.He was showing the underline statement of movie with one liners.This movie can be more associated by people from hindi heartland which is quite ignored now in days of metro culture by bollywood film makers.The universalism in this movie about politics and puppet leaders really impresses me.A must watch movie…
@joyjit
You can make noise on public forums that get high traffic and are likely to attract attention. Facebook, Myspace, popular blogs. I don’t know what else would be effective. If anyone knows, pray tell us. Are there people to whom letters that can be written or phone calls that can be made?
OK, just as a heads up, this entry should have had a spoiler alert! It’s enthusiastic and great in tone, but once I started reading I knew it would give a lot of the story away so I had to stop. Sorry…
its a good film.
Great movie saw it yesterday, but why did you (author) have to give away almost the entire plot of the story?
Just one question – how has Anurag Kashyap survived at all in mind-numbing bollywood?
It is great that the film has reached an audience.
Just one more point: It brings alive a creative contemporary idiom of Hindi that was refreshing to hear. I missed the name but kudos to the dialogue writer/s and also the art director/s.
cant wait to watch the movie. Have a morning show ticket. As usual the review details out the excellent characterisation which is Anurag s forte. Will reserve my comments till tomorrow
is it releasing anywhere in NY? please tell me.
Yeah, seriously. I didn’t read past the fourth paragraph because you were giving away too much information. Please put out a spoiler warning!
@Shruti,Nina,Sriram: i have not given anything away in the review, just a few plot points which would excite the ppl to go watch it. any review without mention of characterisation and plot-points will fail because i cant keep talking abt camera-angles, cinematography etc. moreover, ifelt it was a pretty balanced review, not from the point of how it impacted me; but from characterisation point.
in fact, this is the least i cud have written abt it. i felt like writing and discussing more, but with not many ppl around having seen it i chose to keep it short and sweet.
do me a favor, watch the movie and comeback to this post. let me know wat i cud have put better and wat i shud not have revealed. tat will help my writing and ur reading too.
I have to agree with the others. You shouldn’t give away so many things in a review. Just explain the foundation
@siri: if i were to just talk abt the foundation/premise then it wud be a preview and not a review. in fact, i just told a few essential plot points which wud enthuse ppl into watching it. i refrained from giving away the metaphors and the underlying meanings for the same reason. read it again, all u will find is basic characterisation and nothing else
When I read a bit of the post before watching Gulaal, I was cynical and thought it is another of the AK worshippers. But I was wrong, the movie is *that* good.
My 2 cents here :
http://iyerdeepak.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/gulaal-movie-review/
@Deepak : read your blog…nice short little capsule u have written, looked like it was a review for some newspaper or a magazine. i m glad u realized tat i stated facts and am not among the worshippers, just an admirer of good cinema…tats all
Why the hell you want to tell and explain the story? I dont understand the logic.
@Raj: so, is story everything?? then ppl should never watch remakes or movies tat are made out of books because going by ur logic, since ppl already know the story then they will not watch the movie!
so, wat wud happen to movies like devD and slumdog millionaire?? relax, its not just abt the story. plz go watch the craft, the way the story has been told, the way characters shape on-screen. when u watch, u will realize tat i have not even said 1% of wat the movie actually is.