Why Gulaal is my favorite Anurag Kashyap movie
I have not seen Paanch and neither have I seen Hanuman. But among the rest, this one easily sits right at the top. But this post is not about No Smoking, Dev D or Black Friday so I am not going to mention them again. Let’s talk about why Gulaal is just so good. (Some spoilers ahead)
It’s simply the best written. It has great dialogues, a great story very relevant in today’s time but also non-clich'©d in the way that it is told. It has the best screenplay, riveting from the first frame to the last, the tension mounting with almost every scene. I wish though it hadn’t started with Kay Kay’s speech. It could have been a mind-blowing surprise to us the audience as well, just as it was for the Dileep Singh, the character played by Raja Choudhary. But well, it’s never a bad strategy to put your best scene right up front and catch the audience by their you-know-what. It has wonderful characters and a great character arc conceived and executed in a masterly fashion for the main protagonist. Dileep Singh enters the movie as a meek 28 yr old, tugging at the coattails of his belligerent roommate, is transformed by love into a self righteous man who manages to stand up to Duki Bana, played by Kay Kay, before whom almost everybody else in the movie cowers. And then he is transformed again when he is used and betrayed, into the antithesis of the man who he was in the first frames of the movie. We are never distracted from his transformation because everybody else around him stays in consistent character and act according to their motives which are apparent to us- no mystery, no confusion, thanks.
The acting across the board is superlative. A big tip of the hat to the casting director. One comes away feeling that nobody else could have played any of the roles better. A special mention to the newer faces. Raja Chowdhary excels in his role as the malleable Dileep Kumar Singh, a mirror image of the audience watching the movie who just wants to do his own thing- ‘I just came here to study’- but doesn’t have the guts to stand his ground when events and people larger than him sweep him away from his planned existence. Ayesha Mohan, playing the bastard daughter of a royal family. What drives her to be the General Secy of the University at all costs- ‘I’ve slept with __ also’- remained a small mystery to me. She didn’t seem to share the same drive to be recognized as a true heir as was shared by her brother played by Aditya Shrivastava but her ruthlessness outshined everybody else’s quite easily in the end. She was able to achieve the same screen presence with her steady look and sharp as knives dialogue delivery that Kay Kay achieves with his larger than life physicality and booming voice. Among the rest, Abhimanyu Singh’s portrayal as the cocky, cynical, rebellious, proud, don’t-give-a-damn-about-anybody character is spot on. He is everything that all of us probably want to be but never admit to anybody, least to ourselves. A man who can laugh at his captor when threatened with dire consequences and who looks imperial even when hung by a rope in the middle of the town square. Piyush Mishra, probably the man with the second biggest contribution to the movie with his superlative music and lyrics and in the role of Prithvi Bana, the voice of sanity couched in the poetry of the madly frivolous. The purveyor and the hopeless defendant of all the injustices in the world surrounding him- ‘I want to speak to the American President’- takes the movie from being very good to one which can be truly called a work of art.
The technical finesse in the movie comes as no surprise any more, coming after what we have already seen in Anurag’s movies but to achieve the look and the detailing rivaling the best this year in what is obviously a low budget feature is highly commendable. Rajeev Ravi bathes the palette in colors of the desert and the red of blood and passion. He takes us up close to find Jesse Randhawa’s eyes flicker waveringly when she finds Dileep hitting on her. He shows us what is probably Jaisalmer or another town in Rajasthan by day and night, from high above when we see that everything only looks the same, but where people couldn’t be more different from each other. He isn’t afraid to take us through darkness and into the light as we follow Kay Kay from room to room and he is as much at home in the bare desert as he is within the cozy confines the bar cum home of the protagonist. Another big tip of the hat to he person in charge of the production design- one can never not leave a scene without noticing the paraphernalia lying around the characters. They are telling an equally important story.
Enough of the gushing, now let’s wait for Paanch.
Tags: Anurag Kashyap, Gulaal
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
great post!!!!!!!!
btw u forgot pankaj jha’s acting….he too was awesome
I haven’t seen Gulal yet. But I have a feeling Dev D would be considered Anurag’s best. A political dram alike Gulal has been done before. But the kind of take Anurag has done on a much-handled story like Devdas is mind blowing. The concept, the detailed scripting, the performances, the music ..everything is standing. That is one film Anurag will be hard put to match.
“I wish though it hadn’t started with Kay Kay’s speech. It could have been a mind-blowing surprise to us the audience as well, just as it was for the Dileep Singh, the character played by Raja Choudhary”
Sethu, in that case it would have been like any other screenplay..i liked it the way it was narrated..also remember AK has this habit of sanwiching the story somewhere half way through..Dev.D had it and Black Friday had it…now Gulaal too…
Apart from that i love how self doubting Raja’s character is..always asking..am i a coward? and ohh ahah that scene were jesse is mothering him in her lap and he starts kissing her tummy…was hillarious..I also liked how Jesse character was left ambigious..what her motivation was ..where her path lied..why didnt she go back to her town..why did not tell what she wanted, etc..SHE WAS A NORMAL WOMAN!!
Piyush Mishra’s dialog..”I want to speak to the American President..how can you take all the oil..we dont have oil to put in her diya’s for holi”…priceless!!!
Just came after watching gulaal ,the first half was very interesting but it went downhill ever since Ranasa was dumped off ,by the end of second half it had become unbearable.
The metaphors and poetry became a bit too loud at points and the story went haywire.
Disappointed with this movie after the phenomenal DEV D.
What a movie!!! Anurag take a bow,Indian cinema takes a leap with Gulaal…
@OM – I guess, when Jesse wipes Nihilism on board that’s the scene which captures the character’s shade.
No Smoking was brilliant in terms of surrealism and experimentation, Dev D in terms of style and music and Gulaal in terms of performances and content. But overall, although very difficult to rank because of the different genre’s – I still think Black Friday was AK’s best.
Did anyone notice AK’s 5 second cameo in Gulaal?
I just had a special screening of Gulaal(WTF! there were only 20 & odd people in the whole theatre apart from we 4)!
OTOH(I mean in the neighbouring movie-hall), Slumdog KaroDpati was houseful! :|
My bro and me had dragged two friends, their comments:
1. It is a bakwaas movie.
2. It is different, music is awesome!
There are hell lot of subtle things in the movie.
For example, see how Dukey Bana is so composed even after he is pumped with bullets same with Dilip, how he is able to move towards the door, it doesn’t seem artificial.
It actually reminded me of Karna’s story when Parashurama’s sleeping on Karna’s lap, Karna is bit by an insect though he is bleeding and the sting is painful he does not flinch a bit, Parashurama wakes up after feeling the blood-soaken cloth, it strikes him that very moment that Karna is a Kshatriya and here too both Dukey Bana and Dilip are Kshatriyas. :-)
An awesome commentry on the eternal human emotions camouflaged with realities of modern times. Kudos to Anurag and Piyush for the unadulterated creativity..
Deepak Dobriayal man!!! What a man!!.. The scene in the panwala shop where he justs blows the screen with his subtle acting!! too much!
And yeah.. I guess seldom a director gets a super hoot when he comes on screen for a cameo.. Anurag u rock man…
Gulaal so thick so layered felt like smelling Jack Daniels… Kheer ke jaise.
Subhash K Jha singing praises of Anurag Kashyap!!Has he always been like that ???
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Entertainment/Gulaal-movie-about-politics-and-the-youth/articleshow/4263678.cms
@Atheist- Thanks. Yes, Pankaj Jha was missed, my bad.
Yes, Jesse Randhawa’s character was the mystery. Didn’t you end up wanting to watch a movie about her life…?
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Utkal- Dev D will be what Anurag will probably be known for simply because more people will end up seeing it. But for me, Gulaal was a superior narrative.
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OM- Oye! First of all, my name ain’t Sethu!
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Bharat Bhushan- Thanks for the link.
The movie had a great opening and a decent first half.But it completely lost the plot in the second half.The songs,lyrically good,musically resembled a cacophony and were downright irritating towards the end.
The degeneration of dileep is neither understandable nor logical.Personally thought ransa and piyush’ acting made the movie watchable.
I would agree with you about Gulaal being my favourite AK movie.
My 2 cents here :
http://iyerdeepak.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/gulaal-movie-review/
Superlative write-up.
“….Abhimanyu Singh’s portrayal as the cocky, cynical, rebellious, proud, don’t-give-a-damn-about-anybody character is spot on. He is everything that all of us probably want to be but never admit to anybody, least to ourselves. A man who can laugh at his captor when threatened with dire consequences….”
Extremely well said man.
I will put Abhimanyu on top, even over Kay Kay. Were’nt you sad when ransa was no more? It was like ‘hope…gone’.
Great to see that Dobriyal’s Paan shop scene is noticed by others too, I thought only I loved it !
Looks like I missed the cameo of AK in Gulaal, where was he? :-s
Cheers!
~uh~
“Raja Chowdhary excels in his role as the malleable Dileep Kumar Singh, a mirror image of the audience watching the movie who just wants to do his own thing”
I don’t agree with u there..He was just about convincing as a simpleton..Unconvincing as a dejected lover..A poor actor in 2nd half..A case of bad casting..
@uh
That Paan shop scene I also noticed and Deepak is brilliant there..
It seems it favorite of Mr. Shekhar kapoor too
http://www.shekharkapur.com/blog/archives/2009/03/gulal_by_anurag.htm