Have you seen Chhal?
(Hi! My name is Tushar, and you will be seeing me often here, for reasons good and bad.)
Chhal: See it if you haven’t
Somewhere along the noisy mainstream shootouts, encounters, crime deals, narrative shockers, there comes a moment of human emotions that is brilliantly captured by a rather slick depiction, helped by the able talents of the lead pair(both pleasantly male in this case). A plot which looks rather simple from the outside unravels itself layer by layer and grows in interest levels. There is no visible attempt at gloss or glorification of evil. The film smells of visionary directorial streaks of cinematic possibilities of magic- in the slanted angled shots, the allusions to Verma’s cinema, ‘tujhe dar nahi lagta’ re-runs etc.
The music is another winner. The internal conflict of the cop in disguise is non-dramatically and realistically done by KK, in another of his unknown gems.
One can almost tell that many a scenes were improvised on the sets as they work in a natural conversational manner without any concrete emphasis on the ‘dialogues’. The undercurrent of ‘fear’ is another noticeably well captured aspect. KK flashes brilliance in his confrontational scene with Padmini, Girish’s (character played by Prashant Narayanan) sister. The splicing of sequences is ably backed by the rich and innovative background score.
The film runs a fine balance, all the more pronounced in one of KK’s lines, “Underworld aur police sab ek jaisi hain”. Narayanan gets to do an extended version of his “Waisa bhi hota hai Part II” portrayal.
In another interesting story twist, KK begins to question his own loyalty for Girish. There is also a visible influence of the Hollywood Gangsta flick genre in the themes of betrayal and loyalty resurfacing in oscillation. The characters are rich and deeply textured and finely etched out. Narayanan is comfortably settled in his madness well countered by KK’s subtle and searing anger. So who is better? Take your pic!
Tags: Direction
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
Have been looking for chhal’s dvd/vcd without any success…Pune ka koi hai yahan jo thodi madat kare?! And what is Prashant Narayanan these days?
- Chhal reminded me too much of Donnie Brasco. I think Hansal Mehta may have good ideas, but he hasn’t proved himself to be a good story teller. That’s the art which most in Bollywood keep forgetting. In Spielberg’s own words, the key to becoming a successful director is “to be able to tell a good story” to which if I may add “in the best way possible”. Not only does the story have to good, but one has to be able to “pitch”/”tell”/”recite” it too. Chhal in my view lacked energy many a time throughout the flow. Is it me or did anyone else have this feeling that in parts there was almost this “detachment”, “non interest” on part of the Chhal team.
That said it was a cut above the rest of the crap that was being served to us during that period.
Yeah… me also thinking the same – where is Prashant Narayanan these days? :-w
Even I found it in some run down rental place, browsing through the bottom-most catalogue of never rented titles. If you are lucky, you can catch it in one of the reruns on Zee Cinema, where they keep showing good films once in a while like dil pe mat le yaar, waisa bhi hota hai part 2 and sehar…
As for Prashant Narayanan, I seriously would like to see more of him. He doesn’t deserve a 2 movie fate.
i did see this one amongst a slew of really horrible films, so it definitely stood out for me. also the first movie of KK which i saw, so definitely made me sit up and take notice. prashant looked like he’d definitely fit into the varma camp, so was surprised not to see him in some of factory’s movies.. post chhal and WBHH2 i haven’t seen him at all.. apparently he was in some movie called “mudda” (just IMDB’d him), a short film “instant karma” and some german movie “schatten der zeit” with a bunch of other indians :o :-\ hello netflix queue :D
Tushar – welcome to PFC … and a great starting (and nostalgic)post ….
Chal was and is a pretty good film … i loved KK and padmini in the film … but the real ‘hero’ was the loose cannon trigger happy Prashant narayanan. He does have lots of shades of Bhikhu mhatre – Satya…. but yet he is different…. He was simply electrifying … never going over the top … whereas for me, manoj did go over the top in some scenes of satya ….
That guy(prashant) i believe was also offered RDB …. but he refused … for reasons best known to him
He was also in some ‘festival film’ – Shadows of time …. have to see that too !!!
And before i forget … What the fuck was Mudda ??? Did he need to act in it just because it was directed by saurabh shukla ????
Chal is hansal mehta’s best film … he hasn’t been able to touch the cinematic levels he reached in chal in his other films (dil pe mat ley yaar, Yeh kya ho raha hai) …. rest of his films have been utter crap !!!!
A very under rated fast paced thriller …. I also particularly liked the last scene – with a seniored KK … literally passing the baton over to Makrand despande (in his horrible hairstyle) ..
Another word for supporting actor Naved aslam, who played the police officer dealing with KK… He was also seen in Sehar as solanki …
Why don’t such actors get work ???
“Why don’t such actors get work ???”
kartik, i think you know the answer to this already :(
Striker
I saw this very late, only recently in fact. And I actually forced myself to see it. All the things were against it- a dull look, a non-happening story, an absence of any singular spark. But I later thanked my misjudgement.
Karthik
I posted this one as Don and other latest stuff was already done!Moreover, I feel this film deserves to be known more.I completely agree with your views on Prashant.Hansal Mehta, I feel, will go places with his future projects. Chhal & DPMLY showed enough promise to forget his other disasters.
Long before Prashant did Chhal and Waisa Bhi Kabhi Hota Hai Part 2, he did a TV serial called Farz along with biggies like Deepak Qazir, Manju Mishra (after this he also did Shagun). The potential this guy showed was amazing.I mean he is one actor whose talent is still untapped. Dunno, I somehow feel that if Wuthering Heights is ever made into a Hindi flick, I would like to see him as Heathcliff!
Ya even I remember seeing him in some high emotionally charged role on a TV serial. I have a feeling this guy has a theatre background. Just a feeling.
yes, he’s from NSD if i remember correctly.. can anyone verify?
I really enjoyed Chhal though it was predictable (since I had already seen Donnie Brasco). In fact, I had reviewed the film way back in 2002 (http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=032906052817).
I remember, after reading my review, the writer Suparn Verma emailed me, thanking me for a positive review, but constantly kept reiterating that his film had nothing to do with Droh Kaal or Donnie Brasco. I was like, come on dude. Get real.
Yeah he was involved with theatre group called Act 1. Dunno about NSD, though.
just came across your wonderful review on ‘chhal’… i’m particularly surprised that your review appears over 4 years after the release of the film… i’m glad you noticed some of the devices we used to narrate the story (like the ‘canted’ camera angles and the edit style). after the failure of ‘dil pe mat le yaar’ at the box-office i was extremely depressed and lost about what i should do next… suparn’s story idea gave me a new lease of life and we made the film with lot of passion and almost NO MONEY! moer about that some other day… i could go on and on… thanks anyway tushar… all the very best…
and by the way i do not own a DVD of chhal… its almost impossible to find… prashant and suparn are perhaps the only guys who have the DVD and they will not lend it to me! they’re afraid of losing the DVD forever!
hansal, thanks for coming onboard PFC! hope you can keep coming back and add an exclusive diary of your own experiences and stories in the industry… and how about a “making of” chhal from your perspective?? look forward to having you here more often
Thanks for dropping by, Hansal!
I guess finally writing the review paid off. This is special because it was my first post on PFC. I have always loved your films, and their technique-be it camera or BGM or music. I soon wanna write on DPMLY too, another gem of a film with memorable songs and performances.