Gulaal-Method Acting, Character Lighting and …..
A dream to turn Rajasthan into a titular sovereign, Rajputana for the Rajputs, the labyrinthine interplay of politics and the intricacy of emotions and pretension that all come so naturally in the apparent calm but yet turbulent scenario and the quintessential representative of the bourgeois who gets sucked into the whirlpool of these muddy affairs form the thematic thread of Anurag Kashyap’s Gulaal, arguably his best film.
A John Lenon worshipper who sings for and about the greatest Hell(o) (T)here(Piyush Mishra), an exploited Lady Macbeth(Ayesha Mohan) and her brother tugging at the puppet’s strings(Aditya Srivastava), Shelley’s (To The) Moon who teaches Nihilism(Jesse Randhawa), a King Edward who is not interested in becoming one yet living like one(Abhimanyu Singh) form the psychedelic collage around the two pivots in the scenario-the spineless bourgeois(Raja Chaudhury) and the big fish(Kay Kay Menon).
It does not have a helluva plot. Had the treatment gone wrong, it would appear as cliched as it can be. But the craft is amazing. Every frame is just perfect. I maybe woefully ignorant, but I have never seen such amazing character lighting in any mainstream Indian film. Sample this, the King lounging, and the frame is lighted with a warm halogen glow, as soon as he hears of his son’s death, the lighting changes to an intense red. So much said, yet so simply. The art direction is par excellence. Don’t miss the Neon lights outside Raja Chaudhury’s room as he is about to enter with Ayesha Menon to make out, the lights resemble the yin-yan symbol. Or the neons infront of Che Guevara’s picture that resemble a motorcycle. The alcohol brands are named Democracy, Republican, Capitalism, et al………Wasiq Khan….take a bow.
Coming to music, the lovely rustic charm of the tunes is not the only thing that lingers with you, but the masterful words that accompany the compositions. Sung and composed by Piyush Mishra, I could not believe Rick, when he told me, it’s the same person who wrote Ghajini. And what an actor! He has the best lines and the most significant scenes. One of the most dramatic scenes, where he had smeared the red gulaal on his face and asks if people could recognize him or not. When he gets the obvious answer, he demands to know what was the logic of smearing gulaal to hide one’s identity in the revolutionary meetings. Instead he suggested to wear a monkey-mask. The context and relevance is just wonderfully conveyed. Or the scene where Kay Kay dies in his arms. The misunderstood genius, the confused psyche, the conventional crackpot…..all summed and molded into one character…..it will be criminal to regard only the aspects the this character has to offer to the narrative…….but I can only stammer my praise. Prithvi Bana’s character is so……I don’t know what word to use……..I can write a whole post in deconstructing that particular characterization.
Kay Kay is outstanding as usual. Jesse Randhawa and Ayesha Mohan are phenomenal. Raja Chaudhary, Abhimanyu Singh, Aditya Srivastava play their parts well. But one must mention Mahie Gill. I have not seen Dev.D as yet(blame it on Pratimda and Jahan…..those meanos went without me…..plus pocket-money is in the pits…:P), but I must say, in her almost blink-and-miss yet important role as a foil to other characters and as a catalyst to the drama, she is simply outstanding.
This film is just too good. The amount of stuff that has been crammed in is damn commendable. Bloody brilliant!
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
Loved the first paragraph. More after watching the film. :-)
btw, I don’t think Mishraji had anything to do with Ghajini. Ask Rick to check again!
lol the first para has enough verbosity to make me puke
Will watch out for the details you’ve mentioned on repeat viewing.
Good post but Piyush Mishra wrote Ghajini? Pass me the iron rod please…
~uh~
oh oh…i havent watched the film yet sulakshana..n there seems to be a spoiler here…@ kk…:(…what happens to him…is it
man, u r a keen observer…did u observe all the above mentioned things in the first viewing…
@Rasik
yeah….I did
@Arthi
no spoilers
Piyush Mishra wrote dialogues for Ghajini!
OMGP!
amazing movie … i wasnt too impressed with the direction though story line and dialogues were good … the movie got frustrating after the interval … :P
ny way nice review su ……
well, check the last question of this interview, he himself says that he wrote it…but then again…maybe am wrong
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090317/jsp/entertainment/story_10678778.jsp
@Dpac
anything that didn’t make you puke lately?
Sulakashana,
You have mentioned about – “neons infront of Che Guevara's picture that resemble a motorcycle.”
Pardon me, but did you mistakenly identified Bob Marley as Che or I have missed that scene.There was a bicycle shown on Bob Marley’s picture.
@Negi
dat was Che….100%
Sulakshana,
Are you saying that the guy whose picture painted in three verical colour lines was Che?
I believe, that was Bob marley.
I guess, this is the picture —-
http://acrylicstetson.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/bob-marley-poster-c10000515.jpeg
Dear sulakshana,
Am yet to recover from the experience of watching Gulaal. Knew Anurag was a weird genius and was his fan after and only for Black Friday. But Gulaal is a good followup, not good great followup.
The ensemble, the script,dialogues and the very intricate and complicated plot is outstanding.
Very well written critique too.
warm regards
nd