Three Theories of Interpreting No Smoking
Name: Devayon Das
Email: Witheld
City/Country: Pune/Guwahati, India
Three Theories of Interpreting No Smoking
I’m not going to do a review. We have Taran Adarsh for that. I’m writing this for all the well intentioned people who went “Huh?” after the movie and deserve an explanation. Till they find Anurag Kashyap’s relevant post somewhere in the archives of PFC, try my theories of interpreting No Smoking.
Theory Number One: Anurag Kashyap is a copycat and ‘No Smoking’ is all about a guy who is forced to quit smoking by a supernatural baba, and all the fancy special effects required to do so.
Yeah, right. Theory Number One. The problem here of course is that if you are willing to digest this interpretation, you’ll have to ignore and forget the more bizarre parts of the movie. And skip the rest of this post.
I’m thankful that this is not really the plot of the movie. Otherwise Anurag Kashyap would have really been a cheap copycat. And the trailers and posters really made me think that. I was afraid, really.
So try…
Theory Number Two: ‘No Smoking’ is about being forced to lose your independence at the hands of an all-powerful, twisted power, which decides for itself what is right and wrong.
People at the censors must be hitting themselves on the head coz they just passed a movie which equates smoking with being independent. (Wondering what to do on Independence Day, huh?).
I came up with Theory Number Two while watching the film. After all, K is an independent man.
Nobody, [repeat after me] nobody tells you what to do, K.
Wait, Spoliers Ahead!
K meets his friend Abbas and sees that the guy has lost it. His independence, his mojo, his whatever. So K tries to fix it (forcing Abbas to smoke) but Abbas violently resists, because he can’t bear the cost of not conforming. The cost smoking has been too great for Abbas, and is something which makes Abbas conform. The same Abbas who was once his own man is now part of the System. A bit like the Borg, la Start Trek.
Abbas-the-System manages to get K to meet Baba Bengali. A bit like the borg trying to assimilate people into itself. But a major question is, is K doomed from then on or was he doomed from the time he started smoking?
Baba Bengali, an all powerful entity who is very much capable of making mistakes, abusing dwarfs, and muttering gibberish has made a successful career out of forcing others onto a contorted path of pseudo-morality. And yes, he claims that only Re1 is his fees while the bloody 20-something lakhs he’s charging is only for K. Swwet.
Bengali’s process of addiction reduction does not involve beating with a jharoo. But it just happens to involve some major mind-fucking, fingercutting, and brother-killing. This patented process is not a case of ‘my way or the highway’. It’s just ‘my way’. There is no alternative. Think about it. There is no question of you denying your lack of independence. You never had a choice. The only choice is to delay it. And pay the cost of delay.
K struggles, in many ways, throughout the movie, to avoid his fate. Flying off to random foreign locations is a profound allusion to that. To remain in the dream. But reality is destined to crash down. He struggles, but in the end he succumbs. He becomes part of the System.
Simple enough interpretation, and deep enough too, provided you read my theories in a grim and serious state of mind. Like the movie. And it conforms to the writing of Franz Kafka as well (do not mock those who don’t know Kafka, he is/was a writer…start with his work Metamorphosis, I’m sure you’ll like it).
I think the above interpretation covers almost all the madness in the movie, except the recurring dreams and the Annie/Anjali connection. I’ll try to put it in me third theory.
So here goes Theory Number Three: K is not real.
We perhaps see a less distorted glimpse of what K really is, in real life, in the sepia toned sequence…a nerdy, unsure guy. I might be stretching this a bit. But humour me. K is actually is nerdy unsure guy whom everybody bosses around. He has no freedom. And oh, he happens to be crazy and imagines himself to be K. The audience laughed, I did too, seeing John in the nerdy get-up. But maybe it’s not John in the nerdy get-up, but the nerd in the John get-up.
Whoever K is in real life, he wants to think he is cool, he wants to look like John Abraham, he believes it so much that he is. His (imagined) reality is that he’s K, a guy who is not pushed around. A guy who is never pushed around. A guy who dictates, and is not dictated to. A guy who is independent. But the truth is different, quite different.
There are times this illusion breaks for K; there are times K sees that he is in a cold place where he is being ordered about and his attempts to act the way he wants to, there are people trying to bring him down, rather literally, as he gets shot. The same factors which let the man imagine himself to be K also confuse him. That explains why his wife is also his secretary and all the other strangenesses.
If that’s the case, at the end of the movie, its not just K’s independence which dies but K himself dies. Whatever K stands for, vaporizes.
So who was K? I couldn’t tell you even if you wanted to know. Because there is a K in all of us, a K who strives to do his own thing. And everyday thousands of K’s die while many more survive, only to die tomorrow. I hope we remember K. I hope we remember that he fought, no matter in feeble ways, but he did resist, before he lost his fingers and soul.
As a film though, No Smoking has some flaws. Any movie which jumps into the surreal must ensure that the acting and technical details are either flawless, or that every person who watches the movie doesn’t see these shortcomings, because their brain should be too engrossed with the mind-fucking madness on film. I wish I could say the acting was flawless. I wish all the actors were pushing the story in the same direction. I wish the small bloopers didn’t exist. And maybe I should have been proud that K is an arrogant smoker, and sided with him from beginning to end. Perhaps I couldn’t do a better job (I know you are thinking this if you’re reading this, Anurag) but I wish Anurag did. All of us can’t fight the war but when somebody does fight it, and stumbles (just a bit), we can only feel… this sad longing of wanting to help.
We get Kafka because the language is so simple (I don’t really know about the original, I just read the various translations). Ayn Rand goes further to incorporate a fully logical story so that everyone gets some level of the story, at least. It is not unexpected that there are, right now, few people who liked the film. I loved it. Surely, if Anurag Kashyap honestly didn’t expect that the audiences would be low and most reviews would be harsh, he has many more fingers to lose before he conforms. How long will you last before they kill you, Anurag?
I hope my theories are different from what Anurag Kashyap envisioned. If we have very different views, then this movie is greater than the sum of all the work put into it. Only then we will know if it can show people what they want to see in it. See through the looking glass, if you will.
Also hoping more people write about their own interpretations of No Smoking. The more we differ, the more beautiful the movie proves itself to be.
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Posting a comment at PFC after a long time, liked the way you analyzed the movie,haven’t got the chance to watch the movie so far…………..
I don’t know but some of the reviewers wrote that Ayesha Takia being the wife as well as the secretary is confusing,though I haven’t watched the movie I feel that it is shown that way because Ayesha in real life is his wife who wants to tell him that you should quit smoking(again an order) and so to counter that in his surreal world K thinks of her as her secretary whom he could ignore and in his surreal world that helps him or atleast helps his ego in some way.
Since you have watched the movie could you throw some light on this part…………
As for the reviews of the movie I don’t think it really matters because the movie will find it’s audience anyways………….
I suppose only members of the crew can give us the full answers. The thing to keep in mind is Annie seems very overtly trying to throw herself at K, while Anjali seems pretty grossed out when K tries to make love to her.
I jus can’t wait to wake out of my weekend parties and watch this movie to put in my interpretations..but out of mu aberrated clear mind all i can say is that indian cinema will will will will will (thats an intended retype), survive with and without Anurag Kashyaps. So This too will pass for everyone , for better mostly and otherwise if inevitable. I see no difference between you and tarn adarsh , as to kinds who stick to their etremes and fail to even acknowledge the existence of the other kinds. This is democracy after all. As much you enjoy it, so will everyone. Will soon come with my interpretations of No Smoking. PS: i am one who quit smoking fr almost more than a year now and shud help more in interpreting the movie.
The only few movies that comes to mind where the audience tried their own interpretations were yesteryears’ classics like Seventh Seal , Roshomon and in recent times Memento. As usual fucking producers/distributors decided to skip S’pore for the movie release. So have to wait for the DVD release to see if Anurag got a winner. However there’s no doubt he got the whinners to shout “Yeh kya ho raha hain !!”…and that’s a tell-tale sign that he has created something path-breaking. And the fact that it got even 1% of the viewers to put on their thinking caps is a great achievement in an industry where investment in creativity is usually touted as aa BAD investment.
Laage raho Anuraag bhai…
it was a mind-fucking movie.. the only person in the world who can give an accurate explanation of this movie is the man himself AK or after watching this movie i should call him KK… there were moments of genius in this movie.. but thing remains that after 2hrs and 200 bugs i still remain confused about the storyline…maybe i was too immature to understand it or maybe AK isnt that good director at all… in the end i would like to say KK(AK) it was very disappointin…i had expected so much.. maybe i was wrong in expecting.. good luck 4 the next movie bro… i kno u can do it better…
As Jean Paul Sartre said of Josef K., and by extension of all conforming humanity-
Theory no.3 rocks!!! Wonderful reading in to the movie:-)!
theory 3 cant be right cos at the end of the movie when the crrdits role K is shown convincing someone else to join the pogram. Which dispels the theory that he is fictitious since by your own theory K vaporizes when the “nerd”’s dream is up.
Theory 1 = no theory
Theory 2 = It explains the use of K, that is K as in Kafka’s trial (man’s abusrd exisistence in society). But the higher power is darker than you give it credit for. There is a deliberate scene where K is shown descending lower and lower into the slum, which can be interpreted as a descent into the nether world. This explains the baba’s powers if he is the devil indeed. But then this goes against the simplistic man versus society theory and this alone cant support many of the scenes. In fact some of the dialogue directly indicates that the pact is more faustian in nature than just a social contract.
For my life I cant place the movie. There are far too many points i cannot connect: the bath tub, siberia, the new year rally, the nerd scene. Some of the questions can be swept away under “dream sequence”: the lascivious secretary, the beating of the baba, the murder of the wife. But I am not convinced that is right.
I only hope that the movies does have more depth.
Devayon, this is probably the best reading I ve read on the film. You nailed it. And I am just talking from my understanding/interpretation of the film. The films that make me mull for 3 days and still talk about them afresh are the ones that stay with me for long. That’s the wonderful thing about the craft. I remember I was under influence yesterday and how many tangled threads of the film came opening up like a rewind/replay.
So many things fell in place. And you pretty much summed it up so beautifully(I am reminded of ‘Do you concur’ sequence from Catch me if you can).
The whole bit about someone to save the world for us, and we want him to be perfect, but can’t help feeling for him when he stumbles…is what many of my favorite films have been based on. and it’s different from the underdog phenomenon. it’s like V for Vendetta, an arrogant haughty protagonist still works. It’s like Guru. He stays with you no matter what happens to the moral structure. It’s like American Psycho.
You refreshed and bettered my impressions of the film. Ranveer character analysis, vis-a-vis conformism, the magic finger device, the system debate, all makes it so pleasantly Orwellian. Though I have never read Kafka, I don’t regret it much now.
some bits that occured to me now, about the film, might write about it some day later:
The recurring security guard character, the hallucinations.
The girl at the traffic signal.
The whole pushing the Abbas character to smoke.
The reading the ‘Prayogshala’ Manual flash forward.
The eclectic placing of songs in the narrative.
The comic contrast to the Anjali character.
Kash Laga, and its absolute ‘misdirection’(As Sid, the first reviewer of the film on PFC) calls it.
Baba’s interaction with his staff. “arey maariye na” its political in a twisted sense.
Hitler being illustrated by a ‘Charlie ka Chaplin’ example. It couldn’t any more tasteful than this. If you appreciate the ‘Last Dictator’ analogy.
The painfully comic car blast sequence.
Infidel castrated…the flashback bits of Alex, the press conference….all these things are so well ‘misdirected’, they do not stay with you in the first viewing.
The Anjali character watching sad sequences on TV and crying, while ironically, her own life is at crossroads.
The doctor character in the hospital, and the slow pan to the sign that says”founded by Sri Sri…”
The lift sequence, “take the stairs”..”Idiot”.
When K asks the security guard who is he, it becomes almost an existential trip of the small town guy.
The deeply philosophical ‘one rupee’ concept, the price of losing your conscience, of losing your faith in morality, from being a K to a pawn in the bigger plot.
The NG shot of K recommending Baba to someone.
The whole lyrical beauty of Ashtray, there hasn’t been a better justified song lately in a film(except the separation and reunion sequence in Guru).
K’s practice of alternate authority on his employees.
I don’t remember where the word ‘Anarchy’ was used, but it was bloody effective.
The cop character suddenly becoming casual in his interrogation scenes with K. “ye Baba kaun hai?” it is so stark and ironic you don’t notice it at first. Because that’s the intention, the ‘real’ is so well enveloped in the omnipresent fake game you don’t spot it.
Thanks for this.
i have thought of some plausible explanations for the depiction of some of the scenes in the movie ….
1) tht car blast thing and its significance in the movie and its placement at the interval…..
i think it is a metaphor for the realisation of K’s character when his dream comes crashing down
of being able to anything he pleases
as his dialogue in the movie suggests
It signifies the breaking of the myth that one is independent in this world and his losing his hearing and the blast after the first time he smokes signifies that shattering of the glass
where it starts dawning on him that his beliefs dont hold water anymore
Its placement in the movie at the interval is also significant in the sense that it signifies the change that his soul or K’s character starts undergoing wherein his body n soul start going their seperate paths.
2) infidel castrated i think signifies the the actual castration of Fidel Castro(by which I mean in the political context the snatching away of the power of doing what he wants to fit into the larger picture directed by the omnipotent i.e USA).. Come to think of it really parallels both the castro part and K’s character where they have started to give in to the demands of the all powerful running this world.
3) As for the ayesha takia theory of being both the wife n the secretary I think that is shown to depict the inner urge within all of us to live out our fantasies of being able to have two women at the same time, one at home as the pious n all giving wife and the other being a lascivious buxom beauty that you could have an affair with.. And K being the independent, fuck the world kinda person that he is, he chooses to live out his fantasies in the real world by having ayesha takia playing out both roles without cheating on her… cause remember in the end ayesha tells him that you had told me not tell anyone in the office that I am your wife… So in a sense he is playing out his fantasies and at the same time showing the finger to the society that see I will do whateva I want even if it means not conforming to the norms of society….
Hope these explanations are pertinent to the movie and provide some insight into their significance in the movie … Hope to come with explanations for the other scenes in due time… Until then celebrate cinema and filmmakers like
Anurag Kashyap who dare to make brilliant cinema for an audience which is ungrateful ….
Please Anurag if u read this dont stop making films like these.. I know u r disappointed with the reactions but let me tell you there are a lot of people who have been dying to see such movies being made here in India and kudos to you for trying to get such kind of cinema to us … Thanks once again
My own ramblings on the great but nevertheless flawed film
Say “YES” to “No Smoking”
AK has taken Indian cinema several notches above…, kudos to anyone and everyone associated with this project. All i can say is our beloved critics (really box office pundits nothing more) have no idea what is going on (and to an extent the audience too) - by claiming “boredom” on seeing this film we are merely acknowledging our “intellectual fatigue” and our inability to comprehend
@ PK…..Brilliant write up( gotta call it a write up…was too big for a reply):d