LSD: Love, Sex aur Dhokha

It actually makes sense. It really does. Less than two hours of video footage that could have been shot by you or me, with a digital camera, a bunch of unknown, but terrific acting talent, and a plausible plotline could've cumulatively turned out into L, S aur D, but for one small glitch. Neither of us is Dibakar Bannerjee.
I don't get cozy with Indian directors too well. In fact, I think they're overrated. Except for ppl like Anurag Kashyap, and maybe even Vishal Bhadardwaj, they all fall into a category where there isn't more than one to call them categories. This is different. This ain't blockbuster material. This ain't business. This is definitely not Filmfare. It's Rahul's film and the camera's started rolling long back, yaar. Cut!
That's the way the first of three inter-connected films in LSD begins: with a loverboy Rahul, a film-school student in his final year trying to piece together his diploma-film. His training has evidently made another über-stereotype director out of him, making him envision scenes of heroic splendour, song-action sequences, and what not. And then he enrols "simran", his heroine and the girl of his dreams. They both fall madly in filmy-love. And take things into their hands, the filmy way, and drive their filmy bandwagon straight into the bloody reality.
The second film switches on when a CCTV camera is installed by Adarsh, a jobless know-all who turns his expertise into his own voyeuristic tool. Four security cameras in a convenience store might not look too intimidating, even harmless. But throw in a pretty, sensible and wary girl and our debt-ridden Adarsh into a night-shift, and things ought to get passionate and tangly. This was the premise of the controversial sex-scene which was promptly blurred by big-daddy CBFC. But it isn't the nudity that shocks us, it's actually the reality of it which knocks us flat. I mean come on, how many times have we seen two actors simulating lovemaking? And I'm talkng of hindi films alone here. Everytime it's made to look like a glamourous cocktail onscreen. But this is where parents should be yelled at for bringing their kids to watch this film. It's the proper deal, if not the real deal. With all the humping the way it's meant to be, Dibakar makes it very clear that his camera attains a personality of its own.
Story three. You (yes, you) literally get beaten by a broomstick wielding lady as you run away from a failed sting operation. You're the sting. Rakesh is your reporter. And he's desperate. Enter Naina in a very hilarious suicide attempt. She's on a do-or-die vendetta against Loki Local, a popular bhangra popstar. A new sting is born.
All through these three films, characters are linked with one another, the third film being the weakest in connection with the other two. But that's not what sets apart LSD. It's the reason for the presence of a camera on the scene. In the first film, both the protagonists are film-school students, so a camera finds a natural presence. Second and third film, we don't see the story throug anything other than cctv or spycam footage. The director has effectively made a behind-the-scenes video on the same film which we see, thereby making the rest of the crew seem non-existent. The camera crew is actually the actors themselves. They set the cameras and carry the cameras with them. Now, how many films have attempted that?
Dibakar Bannerjee will certainly go places with this innovative experiment of the medium, and boy what a ride it's turned out!

By Fazil

Black Friday

Calling Black Friday a bollywood film is possibly the worst possible remark you could make on a film that kicks open so many manholes on the tarmac of this dirt-road that's become of the Indian judicial system. Black Friday never made it to many theaters in India. But thanks to a bunch of movie critics, people like Anurag Kashyap who are passionate about film making, people who elevate it's status beyond that of plain simple entertaiment slash art included 'power' in its definition, and the Locarno International Film Festival, Black Friday reaches out to people like me three years after it was 'released', touches my heart, caresses it, toys it with some pitch black humour, then ceaslessly sticks needles in it and makes it bleed in agony.

I'm not a mumbaiite, haven't even visited the city. But there's so much I hear everyday about 'the city that never sleeps' of this part of the world, in every form of human communiqe possible. Media used in a loosely generalized term could be just one of them. When people refer to it as the cultural heart of india, I sometimes begin to think of it in literal terms. So literally in fact that a pinch of that heart might spew something so basic and human on your face. That definetly is not human blood. And I'm talking about enough whatever it is that floods the entire nation's capitals, inundate it's roads, turn corporate offices and government buildings, legislative assemblies and courts of justice, slums and prisons into swamps of humanity. Messed up, fucked up and jinxed, but amoebiac, and rolling along like a huge, crazy, magnetic juggernaut that draws everyone and everything in it's path towards that heart. Everyone is affected by something in it, rather than something in it affecting everyone. And that's exactly what turns it into that juggernaut fuelled by crazy cosmos. And those who we see in this film are definitely not a part of that. Or atleast, I pray they shouldn't be.

Black Friday's prologue is an interrogation sequence that's subtly hilarious at first. As the detainee begins to blabber something in disjointed sentences, you find yourself horrified at the fact that you know what he's blabbering about. You suddenly begin to understand very clearly what the policeman is seemingly incapable of understanding. Naturally he considers all this nonsense and continues beating him, while we whisper to ourselves 'holy shit, why doesn't the motherfucker listen?'. The following scene is the scene of the blasts moments before the blood pours. Things seems so normal like as if you're watching 1993 Bombay through a CCTV camera panning these important places. The stuff that you see is every day's happenstance. The more you feel the normalcy, the more you get nervous. You know whats going to happen, because youre safe and comfortable in the future tense of this moment. You wait for it to happen, not wanting to be surprised but it succeeds in catching you unawares. A truly frightening moment in Indian cinema. And when it happens, a small part of you feels a sense of relief, while the bigger you cringes and sighs. Black Friday has descended upon Bombay. It's one-thirty in the afternoon, on the 12th of March, 1993. Curtains raise. Fire-extinguisher ready at hand, caution please.

Anurag has cleverly divided his film into chapters, as done in the book (by Husseini Zaidi) on which the movie is based. The labyrinthine police investigation, if treated in any other way could have otherwise started to feel dull, drab and dis-interesting to a movie audience more attuned to heroes, heroines, villians, fights and songs. Kashyap has just made it easier for you to digest the foaming truth. Clues, apprehensions, interrogations and confessions.. it's a huge bloody dossier by the time you re-witness the blasts towards the end of the film in a haunting epilogue. And to lovingly strip that dossier off any bureaucratic wrapper, there are the character portrayals that can challenge even the best performances of our very own, ridiculous, boringly annual film-fare awardees.

First there is Kay Kay as Inspector Rakesh Maria. He ain't your typical goody-goody-policewallah. Yet, he achieves what his role was intended for. Pressure. He makes the audience reel under the burden placed on his shoulders. So much that you feel like slapping that female journalist who glibly challenges him with human rights violation against the detainees in an interview.

Then there are Aditya Srivastava and Pawan Malhotra who portray Badshah Khan and the underworld don Tiger Memon (Spelled as Tiger Menon in the DVD for 'legal' purposes). At the beginning both these men infuse so much wrath into their characters, you begin to question after a while, the very essence of their humanity. You feel repulsed at the very notion of coming within proximity of these people. They then open their hearts out to you. You now touch your forehead and feel stupid for judging people with your conceptions. That's the purpose of these characters. Make the audience see what exactly is that which makes these people take that eye for an eye.

And finally, there is Vijay Maurya. Ah, if only there could be another film about the blasts, with a more surreal, hypothetical ending, I'd cast him as the feared Dawood Ibrahim once again and have him caned on-screen for every life the real don has cost us. Atleast that could be an empty, but visual treat for everybody. That is, in case the man himself dies a peaceful death without any remorse, far away from the eyes of the Indian judicial system. That's the effect Mr. Vijay has on you. He has a screen-time of less than five minutes. And in those minutes, you feel scared of him. You feel angry at him. You are horrifyingly awed by his power of prescence. And your body freezes as you realize the terror he so coolly, and precisely orchestrates over innocent human lives, all this a meagre by-product of the deadly commerce he indulges in. Snap. Just like that.

The camerawork is grainy, and efforts have been made to give the '90s Bombay' look to today's Mumbai. The interrogation scenes in fluorescent red gives an eerie, uneasy feel. The chase sequences are downright brilliant. If you've marveled at Danny Boyle's opening slum-roller-roaster ride at the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire, know now that those scenes were bases upon the 12-minute police chase through the crowded Dharavi slum that gets both hilarious and exhausting. That's because you're meant to feel exhausted. The film has no songs but is still as long as your everyday Hindi film. The pacing is fantastic though. Kashyap's direction, his witty lines, puns and his basic, obvious intention spews honesty for his work. He's proud of what he does, and why not?

The indian cinema industry holds an annual farce fete called the Indian Filmfare awards. They have curious categories of awards like Best Action, Best Dialogue, Best Scene of the Year, Best Story and of course, alongside all this, an entirely unique category: Best Screenplay. Beats me, who the fuck started this all shit. Not that I really care for these awards, but the amount of recognition and money it garners for movies that could be churned out of a rickety roadside potter's wheel of clay. All that is denied for movies like Black Friday. I mean, for example if Aditya Srivastava was ever nominated for his performance, god bless him, he probably wouldn't have won even if he wore a tux sewn out of currency notes. It's because of the fact that the very people who we witness in this movie, still rule is land, or rather whats underneath that.. with fists of iron.

Thankfully, less polluted lands like Cannes and Venice choose to honour people like Mr. Kashyap in their recognition of quality film making. Kashyap was a member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 2004 and once again this year.

By Fazil [http://kmfazil.tk]

Dev-D

I am not very familiar with Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's 'Devdas'. I know that it was about a rich bugger from Bengal who drank himself to death over a girl he loved. I also know that there have been several filmed versions of the novella though I'd failed to catch any of them, save a couple of scenes from Sanjay Leela Bhansali's version starring SRK. Anurag Kashyap's reputation for art-house genius aside, it was the standout publicity hoardings, wreaking of seduction and psychedelia that pulled me in -- first day, first show. Picture's up and I am greeted with the playful camaraderie between two kids, with the little boy Dev biting little Paro's hand, followed by a scene in which the same brat argues with his father as to why he cannot address him by his pet name -- Sattu. One resounding slap later and Dev is packed off to London, where he magically evolves into a horny, pot-smoking, i-pod-toting cad (Abhay Deol). The little girl whose arm he had nibbled on earlier has now grown into a gorgeous young Paro (or Parminder, played by Mahi Gill). The childhood fondness has evolved with puberty into a teasing romance bathed in sexual innuendo. And when Paro consents to sending Dev a snapshot of herself naked, he promptly decides to head homeward (Kashyap's naughty lines are priceless in this scene). However, destiny intervenes by way of a gross misunderstanding, shattering the 'happily-ever-after' and giving us a story. In the ensuing misunderstanding, Dev shuns Paro, leading to her taking the rather severe step of getting married to a rich widower. Fraught with guilt, Dev begins to sink to the depths of alcoholic depression, as the frustrated loser begins to take shape. After one particularly violent bout with the bottle, Dev passes out and wakes up to find himself in the squalid interiors of a hotel in Delhi's neon-lit Pahar Ganj area. The third vital character in the plot, Chanda / Chandramukhi (played by Indo- French actress Kalki Koelchin) is introduced here. A former victim of a horrible MMS scandal, she now wears the persona of an in-demand, college-going prostitute who, when she is not bringing men to orgasms over the phone in Tamil, dresses up in a variety of imaginative outfits (ironically, one of them happens to be that of an 'all-American school girl') and engages in kinky role play with mama's boys. Through a delightfully slimy pimp Chunni (a fine performance by Dibyendu Bhattacharya), Dev is introduced to Chanda. In Chanda, Dev finds an outlet for his love for Paro, a comforting listener. Just as things begin to warm, Kashyap's tale veers off in a different direction from the original and... I shan't tell you more. Technically, Kashyap's 'Dev D.' is a visually delectable film against the psychedelic backdrop of sex, drugs and some Desi wedding band fare. Cinematographer Rajeev Ravi does a fine job of capturing the grittiness of Pahargunj – whether it be the grimy squalor of Dev's hotel or Chanda's lair drenched in shocking pink. The play with film speeds works particularly well in the heady drinking scenes as do the 'Requiem for a Dream'-like floating shots of a well-hammered Dev wandering back to his room in a chemical daze. Amit Trivedi's music (a bulky, multi-genre score that moves from folk to jazz to hard rock) is a solid character in itself, as it meanders through scenes, hitting the spot every time.The screaming reception his 'Emosanal Atyachar' got in the cinema hall,is testament that brassy wedding band fare can indeed be made to sound hip. The acting department is damn tight. Mahi Gill's Paro is a thrill to watch – a character perfectly aware of her sexuality and surprisingly expressive for her small-town background. Although Kalki Koelchin may run into rough patches with the accent and diction, her emotional scenes make up for it, especially in the film's second-half, as the relationship between her and Dev begins to evolve. Dibyendu Bhattacharya almost steals the show as Chunni (Kashyap's re-incarnation of the original Chunnilal) but in the end, it is Abhay Deol who takes the cake, champagne and the butter chicken home, playing the coke-snorting loser lover, with measured confidence and understated cool. The gentleman's acting chops are firmly in place and I am not surprised as to why everyone is raving about him. It would be good to see more of Mahi Gill, Kalki Koelchin and Dibyendu in the future.

So where lie the pitfalls then? For one, the film's length (a heady three hours) is overwhelming and Kashyap might have just managed to overcome this, had it not been for its extended trajectory that runs into an abrupt wall. Some might even argue that Trivedi's score drenches almost all the scenes in the film. But the pros far outweigh the cons here. For the most past, the film's characters are unabashedly honest and real. Kashyap's script-writing chops give us gems like the 'haldi' scene, the 'ticket' scene where Dev gets reprimanded by an old female co-passenger on the bus, after a particularly nasty alcoholic binge as well as Paro's delightfully ingenious solution to finding a venue for her and Dev to consummate their relationship (and the aftermath). Those of you familiar with the medical sitcom 'Scrubs', will take great pleasure in Kashyap's use of the aforementioned dancing boy trio for moments of random delight. ' Dev D.' is an important film to consume as we sit on the cusp of a more progressive Indian cinema – a sign of good things to come. You may not exactly fall in lust, as the film urges one to, but you will certainly want to discuss it, perhaps even fight over it.