Release date:
|
June 22, 2012
|
Director:
|
Anurag Kashyap
|
Cast:
|
Manoj
Bajpayee, Richa Chadda, Reemma Sen, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Jaideep Ahlawat,
Tigmanshu Dhulia, Piyush Mishra, Huma Qureshi
|
Where
Gangs of Wasseypur 1 is good, it is outstanding. Where it is
not, it’s a tad tedious, over-crowded and confusing. It’s the film’s good
fortune that the tedium comes in the first half whereas the potential for
genius shows through in the second, leaving us with a promise of even better
things to come.
Director
Anurag Kashyap’s film is set in the midst of gang wars in Dhanbad (now in Jharkand).
It takes us from pre-Independence India, past the Emergency and onward towards
liberalisation, each era duly cinematically referenced, with history unfolding
parallel to so many unchanging realities – like the horny hooligans of
small-town Wasseypur who do not think twice before blowing up dozens of human
beings in bomb blasts yet turn into simpering idiots in the presence of their
wives and lovers; like the men who sometimes kill for revenge, money and
politics, but sometimes simply because the beast within them seems to bay for
blood.
Gangs of Wasseypur (GoW)
comes in two parts, with Part 1 in
theatres this week and the next round coming up later in the year. GoW 1 takes us to the disturbingly dark
innards of northern India where a man’s wife wrests a promise from him – that
he will give up crime – in the name of their unborn child. Having given her his
word, Shahid Khan toils in a coal mine to earn an honest living, but turns his back
on that new leaf when a supervisor’s heartlessness leads to tragic consequences.
He then goes to work as a pehelwan for
local mafioso Ramadhir Singh while eyeing Ramadhir’s position, leading to a
seemingly unending spiral of vengeance that is handed down through generations.
A large part of this film is devoted to Shahid’s son Sardar Khan’s vow that he
will make life a living hell for Ramadhir.
If
there’s one word to describe GoW,
it’s “unrelenting”. Whether in showing us the sexual rabidity of Sardar or the
gruesome bloodletting and gang wars, there is no let-up, there are no apologies.
Scenes of sex do not go all the way in Hindi films even of the GoW variety, but a wife who had once
barged into a brothel to ferret out her wayward husband later casually advises
him to find release wherever he wills since she will not have sex with him
while she is pregnant. It’s a sad moment, and one that is steeped in the
reality of so many women in a country where we refuse to even acknowledge the
issue of marital rape.
As
for gore … in Gangs of Wasseypur 1 we
not only see men being killed, we get glimpses of them being butchered at
slaughter houses, and a policeman picks up a stray human finger from a ground
soaked in blood. For the most part, the brutality seems neither sensationalist
nor designed to scandalise. Instead it is a telling comment on both the numbing
of the human mind exposed to excessive violence and the pointlessness of that
violence … a recurring theme through so much of Anurag Kashyap’s work, right
from the writing of director Ramgopal Varma’s Satya. There are just a few moments of self-indulgence, such as when
the camera dwells too long on a man dying in slow motion or when Muslim devotees
are shown in ritual self-flagellation inter-cut with an episode in the lives of
the main players – we first get one long shot of those believers, then another,
then another, and then, just in case we are not fully satiated, the camera cuts
to a closer view of their bleeding backs. Why?
By
this point, however, I was sufficiently lost in GoW to be in a forgiving mood. It’s a good thing that these superfluous
spots of melodrama did not come in the early part of the film though – because that’s
the part that demands patience, when we are being introduced to too many characters
while also dealing with the fact that Kashyap has cast two actors each to play
certain parts to deal with the passage of time. If a film requires undivided
attention, that’s okay; if it makes you feel you need a book to note down names
and connections, there’s a problem. With too much going on in the first half,
it’s hard to completely relate to any of the characters. Post-interval though, GoW
settles into a surprisingly comfortable rhythm of humour blended with chilling,
ferocious carnage, aided by Sneha Khanwalkar’s catchy songs and their
delightfully cheeky lyrics – Kehke loonga,
one song goes, most reassuringly.
The
casting is excellent. Manoj Bajpayee is a
perfect choice as the vicious-at-work,
sleazy-yet-servile-at-home, sexually predatory Sardar Khan. My personal pick of
the cast though are Richa Chadda as Sardar’s aggressive yet doting wife,
Reemma Sen as the seemingly
coy yet sexually assertive other woman, the
amazingly versatile Nawazuddin Siddiqui as his druggie son Faisal Khan and director-turned-actor Tigmanshu Dhulia as Ramadhir Singh. In
fact, there are so many lovely actors in this film that it’s a pity space does
not permit me to name them all.
For
me, Paanch remains Anurag Kashyap’s
best work in a mostly remarkable filmography. In GoW 1, almost everything I’d want snipped off came in the first
half of the film, so what has remained with me is the crackling second half
followed by a Nawazuddin-filled trailer for GoW
2. It is not in the league of Paanch,
but GoW 1 is still bloody good.
Rating (out of five): ***1/4
CBFC Rating: A
Language: Hindi
I didn't realize that Ramadhir is actually the director Tigmanshu Dhulia! Well, he did a pretty fine job. I'd give the movie 4 stars. Loved it!
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