Gulaal by Nikhil

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Verdict: Brilliant.. Exceptional.

Cool!: From DevD, Anurag kashyap moves on to Gulaal, and I’m impressed, even more. For an industry stuck with conventions like happy endings, big stars, plots that ‘makes sense’ (stories that move from a ‘start’ to an ‘end’, the biggest convention of all, everywhere), characters that ‘make sense’ (delineated, justified); to music that needs to be ‘universally pleasant’; it takes guts to make a movie like this. Anurag plunges into the Rajputana world of politics, pride, manipulations, bloodshed and evil, and takes us with him; creating a world that probably many of us cannot associate to, but the depiction in itself is so authentic, that you cannot but start feeling for the characters. The story in a way gives away no clear message, just seems like nothing more than a sequence of events; but again, a number of messages do appear, but only if you try to think in those directions. It is left up to the audience to interpret it, and that’s the beauty of this film as per me. It gets your brain to work, to take sides, to judge, to decide… there is no help from the director in this regard. A lot of afterthought.
The performances are genuine and fairly neutral, not allowing you to judge them instantly. Using newcomers for most of the roles adds to the same dimension as well. I especially liked the character of Rananjay, the rebellious and brave rajput. As always, Kay Kay is again brilliant. Mahi Gill as the eccentric mistress plays a nice little cameo, so does Piyush Pandey as the crazy brother of Kay Kay. They add the necessary element of humour to the serious plot. The music (and the lyrics), not the regular fare, adds to the authenticity of the plot; it’s amongst the most creative attempts that I can ever remember. Kudos to Piyush Pandey for it.

Anurag Kashyap is changing the way stories are told on the screen, and I’m extremely proud of the way he is doing so. Movies like Gulaal might not becomes blockbusters, but just to see such a cinema, that boldly dares to be so non-formulaic and non-explanatory, is very refreshing and intellectually stimulating. I hope it makes enough money for him to carry on with such efforts.

Yawn!: Somewhere so many stories are overlapped in this complicated plot that it feels as if few of them have not been amply justified. The ones of Jesse Randhawa and Piyush Pandey are such examples. But again, its not mandatory to explain everything, the audience could use some imagination as well. I like that :) .