Gulaal Review- Indian cinema is freed.
I watched Milk and Revolutionary Road over the last weekend. From the first scene to the last, Milk looked like one of those timeless movies which even while you are watching, you know is landmark. I watched Revolutionary Road the very next day. On the basis of personal experiences, the movie was so relatable that it disturbed me immensely. It was such an assault, it took me some time to heal in the mind. It was poignant cinema at its best. Cinema of such quality, that it reinforces the faith for the medium in You. That night I was sitting on my balcony and with the gush of cold wind came the realization that we are no where. We are so far behind hollywood when it comes to milestone cinema. Cinema that has an existence of its own. What I was thinking at that point was, how our best filmmakers have to resort to making films that will surely be hits in the box office and make profit and make themselves viable and in the process let go of the depth and profoundity that they can achieve with their cinema. I know it’s unreasonable, but call it intuition or call it me being the fanboy, I somehow had hope. Hope that Gulaal was that film.
I just saw Gulaal this evening and Gulaal indeed is that film. It’s a film which doesn’t inherit anything. It doesn’t belong to Bollywood. It doesn’t belong to a genetic at all. It speaks the universal language that great cinema speaks. I’ve loved No Smoking and Dev.D over Black Friday and Anurag Kashyap to me meant great cinematic technique. Be it structure, narration, cinematography, screenplay. Style was the first quality that I identified him with and which I loved in his movies the most.
With Gulaal, it has all changed. Simply stated, I’ve rediscovered his cinema. And with it, I’ve rediscovered Indian cinema all over. Gulaal is such a powerful movie that it knocks you out. It’s a total knock out punch. It’s a movie of such immense complexity and brilliance that for the first time after having watched a movie I just didn’t have feelings that I could articulate.
I felt very sad. May be I’m a pessimist but I think this movie can never get its due in India. I felt sad because a lot of my fundamental trust and belief system has been destroyed. I watched the movie with a friend of mine who has a lot of exposure to Rajasthan’s culture but the point is, watching Gulaal, I realised how little I know my country and its people. I’ve a friend who’s leaving his software job in another three months because he wants to do civil services because he believes things need to be changed. I’ve another friend who’s already quit his job in IBM and is now studying for IAS. I see these people and I want to believe that it’s possible to change the system here. I see Milk, I see Barrack Obama and I think I’m the pessimist.
And then, I see Gulaal and I see reality so real that it blows away my belief system, my hope in the Indian society. Whether its the Rajputana of Rajasthan or the caste/creed or the quota system, Hindu-Muslim and the other numerous divides, Indian system is fragmented and killed to the core. Probably Gulaal was the perfect smack across the face for the surrealists like me who’re just suckers for hope. I know I’ve digressed a lot in this post. I’ve hardly written a thing about the movie. But I think that’s because the movie transcends its entity as just a movie. I had stratospheric hopes from the movie and still what I saw was way beyond my expectations. It just blew me off. It was at once the thriller, the unexpected, the rough, the evanescence of the poetry and with cinematic moments so profound and landmark. It was one of those rare movies where you have cinematic moments of speed which can go on overdrive at will. Some scene conceptions are just unseen in past. I’ve consciously decided to write nothing specific for the readers benifit but Piyush Mishra, Kay Kay Menon and the others just gave the best performance on screen.
In my opinion, Gulaal is definitely the best of Anurag Kashyap so far. (I’ve not seen Paanch.) In fact it’s so good it makes No Smoking and Dev.D feel like play things. It’s a product of such brilliance which I never associated with Indian cinema. Unconditionally with Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi, I’d rate it the best I’ve seen come out of Bollywood.
The fear I have is I’ll go to every Anurag Kashyap movie from now on with such high hopes that I just fear. The only wish I have is, this movie gets seen by most number of audiences and it represents India in Oscars. It’s a movie so good, I can’t do justice to it with words and I’ll not even try.
Tags: Anurag Kashayp, Gulaal, Movies, piyush mishra, Review
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
“Gulaal is definitely the best of Anurag Kashyap so far.”
Wow, Subhasish! The fire keeps burning I guess. :-)
Great write-up, will discuss the specifics on watching the film.
ITS UR AWE DOING THE TALKING, THE ONLY THING I PERSONALLY FEEL ABOUT ANURAG IS THAT HE KNOWS HIS WORK/JOB/ART VERY WELL BUT THAT NECESSARILY MEAN EVERYTHING HE DOES IS PATH BREAKING AND WORTH SUCH AN HIGHLY PRAISED REVIEW,, BUT AGAIN AS ANURAG HIMSELF HAS SAID IN SOME OF THIS POSTS ‘to each his own’ movie is good,,but the shock factor which was expected was big failure, u could feel while watching whos gonna end up being what????i am not a good writer, well finally what i mean is can watch the movie for some very well written/directed/performed scenes,and for piyush mishra, ….for abhimannyu singhs performance… first half is amazing!!!
Subhasish, wonderful!! Truly a piece that makes me even more sad that Gulaal is not being shown in the US. Why? Bad distribution, a fear that people here won’t understand it, money, perhaps all of the above and much, much more.
Ultimately, both Kashyap and Mishra are not really products or produce the kinds of films one would associate with Bollywood. Just as Milk and RR are not really products of Hollywood. They may come from the west, but these days the fab Hollywood is mostly making films like Watchmen – we’ll leave that discussion for another day! – and The Last House on the Left… Films for mass consumption. Just as you fear that Gulaal will not be understood, in a world where films are made to please the masses.
But while you write that you feel like the pessimist in the room when you are with your friends, I don’t see that at all from your writing. It’s so full of enthusiasm for this film, thank goodness for people like you! I read an acquaintance’s update on FB that read “Gulaal 2 1/2 stars out of 5″. I am thinking of deleting him from my list!
i can overlook the not-so-great/predictable last 30 minutes or so of Gulaal … for a fabolous 1st half and towering performances from each and everyone involved..
@ team of gulaal..agar end thoda aur noir-ish mil jaye..to kya hai?
yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye ..got me spell-bound.
I just saw Gulaal. This review is hilarious. Gulaal is an utterly ridiculous and reactionary film. It is also a proof of Anurag Kashyap’s latent sexism. The male audience lapped up Kashyap’s indulgent use of male vulgarity. THe film is also overtly moralistic. I don’t see Kashyap going anywhere from here. I am very sad about Piyush Mishra. His revolutionary lyrics and music has been mercilessly put to waste. His character in the film also doesn’t create the necessary, powerful impact, but gets lost in the subtle, internal valorisations of the Rajputana cult. It’s a tragic failure of a promising film maker. Or was there a promise?
I haven’t seen either Milk (talking about movie,of course) or Revolutionary Road so don’t know much about it but have read good reviews about them. I completely agree with you when you say that we are so far behind hollywood when it comes to milestone cinema and that there are a lot of movies that never got their due in India. I hope to see Gulaal pretty soon and hope it gets what it deserves!
I thnk urs is a very well written article .. maybe for the first time I dint find anything wrong with the review,
This is wat a review shud be according to me… not a description of the movie but a description of how it moved you ..
Your realization about indian movies not living upto international cinema and how different reality is when you accept it touched a chord with me …
Incidently I am also from Rajasthan and am a Rajput and when I heard about the concept of this movie one thing struck me .. its not far fetched … I can totally see people doing this ..
Anyways …its a good write up ..
Awesome review…cant wait to watch…unfortunately not released in US…gonna wait long…
guys any idea when is paanch releasing?
may be kashy can answer this question?
what is with writer’s on passionforcinema?? why are everyone such emotional wrecks?? take it easy my friend…in the words of Boris Becker ‘no one has died’
i must agree that Gulal is a great movie… Milk and Revolutionary Road are good movies too.. but the latter two made more than 100 million dollars at the box office…the west has cracked the system of making money out of movies like this..
the time will come for Indian cinema and for movies like Gulal to make money from the rest of the world audiences…..remember no one wanted to touch this movie after Jhamu Sughandh passed away.. Zee came forward and released it on a decent marketing spend…
’small acorns make an oak foundation’… there is hope…
Good passionate write-up but seems a bit exaggerated to me. Have been a big fan of AK and went for Gulaal with too much of in-built hope, the movie itself raised the bars in first half (guess that was shoot before the production hiccups appeared, don’t know), second half, messed up…all wayward kind of story telling, perhaps that was intentional but then it shld be purposeful which IMHO, was not. KK rocked while Piyush I sensed was eccentrically underutilized!
The movie was quite good. As an aside my only regret is the brilliant declamations by Piyush Mishra in the movie are not part of the officially released soundtrack.
It is worthy enogh to be reconsidered as an addendum as a subsequent release.
The surpise package of the movie beyond all else is Piyush Mishra – musical composer, lyricist, singer, actor.
Who the F*** are U???
Just came back after seeing Gulaal…and everything i wanted to say has been said by you word-by-word….
or may be not….i am so overwhelmed…its like whtever i say is never gonna be enuf…i hv gone speechless anyways….i can’t talk abt the movie….may be a bit abt the experience..
Gulaal has shaken me to the core…it has brainwashed whatever little optimism i had abt changing the system……but i m not able to feel sad at the loss of innocence…not nw atleast because i feel so good abt hving seen cinema redefined beyond my extremely high expectations
i hv seen a lot of hindi cinema….and i donno if i am saying this under a spell (which was the last hindi movie anyways to hv done tht to me!!)…but this one is right thr at the top…and personally i don’t give a damn if it gets it so called “due”….its so fucking good…AK doesn’t hv anything left to prove anymore now to this sub-optimal world..
every work of AK so far smwhere smacked of smkind of an in-ur-face arrogant attitude (u may find hard to believe nw…but i m not a fanboy)….but this one has been made with so much luv n affection…tht u cud see a true artist and craftsman at work at every little piece of it……
quite agree UJ that piyush mishra was underutilized and second half was not as impressive as first one.But the overall movie is really good.I do not know what people like cleopetra expects from the movie.Had if ever watched 5 films of manmohan desai,he would have died of heart attack.We should appreciate the work of AK and must measure the movie relative to other movies.The yardstick principle is always relative.Cleopetra must be having good taste of world class cinema but the ground reality of making commercial films in India must be taken in acknowledgement before judging any film.400 blows or rashomon are created not just 1 in 10 but 1 in 1000,000 type of films.
I agree with you that after seeing the film it is very difficult to come up with opinions or words as they all seem inadequate and trite a response. Even the so called flaws in story-telling only strenghthen it further. It is true that this film will probably not run in the theatres, even for it to be hit would be to trivialise it. As for the Oscars, damn, this film does not need such meagre endorsement
If Indian Cinema is freed, then was it slave earlier? If it is freed, it is freed from what? who was it slave to and how this freedom has been bought about? I think you are in extreme hyperbole . No doubt Gulaal is a good movie with excellent narrative and music and lyrics not associated with todays times, but project it as freeing of indian cinema is too much, i guess. I have seen Black F, No S, Dev D, Gulaal and plan to see all anurag movies. I think he still has to make the cut. He is not able to engage the audience and that is why all his movies lose steam after some time. I would rate Vishal Bharadwaj and his movies like Maqbool and Omkara higher than the above Ak movies. Who can forget Pankaj Kapoor and Deepak Dobrial in Maq and Om respectively? I think you should take a glass of water and take a deep breath to calm down your nerves.
just finished watching gulaal for the second time in a gap of 2 days …
this time i liked it even more.. and the shortcomings (that i thought were there in my first watch ).. seemed to disappear .. and everything made more sense .. tell me if anyone else found the second time watching more enjoyable .. or it was me who was dumb … the first time ..
@cleopatra … there has been another movie that releaed for you – jai-veeru.
Hey Subhasish,
I just came out of the movie hall having seen Gulal, and guess what I said to my friend. “After Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi here’s another film which portrays Indian ‘rural’ politics’ exactly as it is. And maybe its no coincidence that Kay Kay stars in both these.”
After a long time I had this experience where at the end of the movie, I simply wanted to sit in silence. No words came out. Brilliant. Anurag Kashyap, take a bow.
As for wishing that this movie goes to Oscars the next year, Subhasish, my friend, I am sorry but you would be disappointed. Indian entries to Oscars are decided by a bunch of jokers sitting in the ministry. Some years ago, our official entry to Oscars was – hold your breath – Jeans! What more can one say?
So don’t foster any such hopes. This movie will not go to Oscars. Going by this year’s ‘Film-unfair awards’, I am sure it will not even feature in the Filmfare awards next year, leave alone the Oscars. I am sure AK is someone who makes movies because he wants to tell a story, and wants to do so in his way. He does not make them keeping any awards in mind.
Lets just celebrate the fact that in the midst of all the Johars and Chopras, there are still people like AK, Sudheer Mishra and Neeraj Pandey.
Intense stuff, acting, dialogues, direction, great work. But one problem, it becomes overwhelming at times, Anurag Kashyap got inspired from “taxi driver”, but does not understand the direction of martin scorsese, or even Majid Majidi. Not every scene in the movie, needs to be super melodramatic, he needs to let it go a little, everything should not be so loud. Sorry to say, over effort in a lot of ways, he was painting a picture than making a movie. The plot didnt have it, it didnt develop…must give movie a try, Indian cinema is looking good, still has some way to travel…One last thing, I think Ashish is a bit bitten by the world too much, he seems like a guy who is very upset…
Like every passionate cinema lover, I too look forward for good cinema in Hindi. After reading the reviews done by the lovers of good cinema lovers on “Gulal”, I feel a great enthusiasm to watch the movie. For the last 2 to 3 years, Hindi cinema lovers are able to watch good pictures, sorry to say, after a huge gap of time, when we were bombarded with trash like mega cinemas like “Coolie” etc. Thanks for the reviews done by all of you.
“In my opinion, Gulaal is definitely the best of Anurag Kashyap so far. (I’ve not seen Paanch.) In fact it’s so good it makes No Smoking and Dev.D feel like play things.”
It is surprising how I felt the exact same thing. I saw Dev D. and then Gulaal in the next 24 hrs. Now I am unable to praise Dev D. Every thing that was great in Dev D. is greater in Gulaal !
(Also, my review here : http://iyerdeepak.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/gulaal-movie-review/)
strong review … its almost on the same path as my review of the movie …
its an epic … srsly ..
Subhasish,
I wanted to watch this movie, then i read your article….and then I wanted to watch the movie as soon as possible.
I just now finished the movie. K K rocks. AK is as usual … above expectation… Outstanding..
The way Piyush Mishra’s character has been shown, it is just out of this world.
I dont know whether to feel happy that not every one is power hungry… or to feel sad that there are so many people who are power hungry…..
There is not much left to say, You have said it all…
Great Review.
@19, Pushkaraj, My whole point about Gulaal representing Indian Cinema in Oscars was not about Gulaal, it was about Indian Cinema. I also know it won’t happen. But my point is, it won’t be Anurag’s loss. I also know why he makes movies. If the audience of the world don’t see Gulaal, it’d be a loss for Indian Cinema. That’s my whole point.
Swami ,
I watched this movie last Sunday and was really feeling out of my place and time , was immensely surprised whether this is a bollywood movie or I am experiencing something else . It was exceptionally bold as you rightly and beautifully explained in your review , immensely powerful in its essence and KK Menon’s acting was the best of the lot . I read your review of Hazaro Khwaish Aise ………… That review was even better , but having said that even if you did not analyse this movie technically in that way , but as you very tightly mentioned , this movie is to be taken and discussed in its entirity and not just script by script analysis .Overall , I am really amazed at the importance you rendered to this very strong movie to make Indian Cinema free of its age-old steriotyped features . Hope Indian cinema will be really free hence-forth .
Good films in parts. But very well told indeed. Performance were par excellence. Nothing groundbreaking though. Several issues were spun quite nicely. Overall the story of root level politics in tatters was the final line that anurag did well to narrate. Packed with powerful dialogs and good music, I think it is more than watchable. I would give it 3.5 out of 5. One cant compare with Omkara or Haasil but these are early days. I hope we would get a nice treat to watch from Anurag some where down the line. All his films are different and certainly not run of the mill stuffs. That makes it good. A good entertainer which is not run of the mill stuff is very rare. Or we would have seen quite maqbools till date. So rather not disparage the film. It is interesting enough and entertaining enough to be above most of the films we have seen like Ghajini, RNBDJ and likes. Atleast some directors dont treat audience as fool and are doing something different.