Dev D. Emotional Athyachaar: A Review

Film: Dev D
Cast: Abhay Deol, Mahie Gill, Kalki Koechelin, Dibyendu Bhattacharya
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Writer: Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag Kashyap
Rating: ***

I was at a party the other night at a friend's place when the DJ played the song, 'Emosanal Athyachaar'. I was high on booze and I danced to that song. It's a fantastic song when you are high. I decided then that I will watch this film if not then only for this song. So, I saw the film, Dev D, which was touted as Anurag Kashyap's version of the infamous Devdas written a long time ago by

Sarathchandra Chattopadhyay

. I just wished I was high while watching the film too. Maybe then I would have appreciated the film much more. Alas! It was not to be.
I respect Anurag Kashyap a lot, you know. I like the rebel in him but sometimes I wonder whether it is all a pretense, all a facade, a marketing gimmick. Dev D brings about all these emotions in a person, at least it did in me. There were moments in the film which I thought were brilliant, but then again there were moments which I felt were a little too 'in your face' where the director wanted to shout- 'look what I can do'. Reminds me of the childhood times when one used to ride a bicycle and one used to leave the hands from the handle and shout, 'look ma, no hands' or the time when one sulked for no reason just so that mumma could come and shower her attention on you. It always worked then. Dev D has got many such moments and it worked here too.

In trying to shock the audience, sometimes Dev D ventures into fantasy territory. Anyone who has seen the 'real' life in Delhi will know what 'real' is. Of course when you look at it on a macro level, the film is a spoof on the earlier Devdas made before this. Anurag shows visuals of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Devdas on TV at more than 2 occasions. I think that was a very mediocre idea. (Definitely didn't expect this of Anurag)
Then there are many such incidents in the film which even a layman would notice because the director wants him to notice it like the scene where Vodka is poured from a bottle into a glass and Dev drinks it neat. (why?)
'Arre, real mein daaru peeya hai re' was a common comment by at least two people in the audience who obviously knew a thing or two about alcohol. Then the name of the pimp-Chunni. Well, again, spoofish.

The laughter came wherever there was a tongue in cheek reference to the earlier films on Devdas, which was again a little bit of a disappointment.

In trying to retell the story by setting it in modern times, Anurag has definitely managed to create a buzz around the film and probably managed to create something better than Sanjay Leela's Devdas but in the bargain, maybe he has gone a little over board with the sensationalizing of incidents happening in Dev's life. For example, Chanda's MMS scandal and the eventual massacre of footpath dwellers run over by Dev's BMW. Both these incidents are so mainstream commercial that one wonders whether it is a part of this neo-realistic noir film or is it some kind of an after thought.

I want to like this film and probably I did too, but I won't rule out the confusion alltogether too.
The main reason for this is I couldn't categorize the film- Was it a spoof? Or was it parallel cinema? Was it neo realism, or Noir? Or was it a plain mainstream commercial film?
Maybe this confusion was supposed to be part of this film too.

Well, it doesn't really matter what I think because a film of this nature will always have diverse reactions from the audience. Some have loved it and some have hated it. Yet some others have been non judgemental. Maybe this is success for the film.

'Last mein marra bhi nahin, saala' commented a member of an audience out of 15 in a far suburban multiplex of Mumbai, while leaving the cinema hall. Yet another said, 'Koi Anurag Kashyap ko roko bhai'

Everyone had a good laugh but of course I don't agree with him.
I think we need an Anurag Kashyap as much as we need a Karan Johar or a Aditya Chopra in this 'Dev D' kind of world of Hindi Movies called Bollywood.

All I can say is that I had gone prepared for an emosanal athyachaar on my mental faculties but I guess, I got lucky and came out intact unlike the earlier 'No Smoking' by the same director where one lost all sense of reality and sensibility. Well, that for another day maybe.

Ciao!

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