Every filmmaker seems to have a Devdas in him. Emir Kusturica has made two Devdases back to back, in 1989 (Time of the Gypsies) and 1993 (Arizona Dream). While Time of the GypsiesArizona Dream is a full-blooded recasting of the Devdas affezione, where Johnny Depp is torn between his love for Faye Dunaway’s Paro and Lili Taylor’s Chanda. What’s even more interesting is that Paro and Chanda live-out their loves under the same roof, as mother & step-daughter respectively. could be described as a (sort of) Devdas sans Chanda,
Films conjure their own reviews, unbearably enslaved, by default, to the reviewer’s viewing experience. Dev.D seems to have proved the influence it’s had on its reviewers, and more importantly, on its audience. With the choice of this present film, Anurag Kashyap has liberated film reviewing from having to be about recounting what the plot of the film is, as much as he engrossed himself in higher pursuits other than mere plot. In what is an unique situation for an Indian film, Dev.D’s audience already has a fair idea of what the film is about. It’s the re-imagining of Devdas that’s being looked-forward-to, and Anurag provides a heady load of imagination.
It’s amazing how we’ve been tricked to consider monogamy only in terms of sex and marriage. What about love? Can love be monogamous?
Anurag Kashyap’s 2nd greatest triumph with his Dev.D is the successful exploration of an idea of love itself; in what’s till recently considered an oxymoron, a love that could be non-monogamous. It’s not even in the proferring of a satisfactory reply to the question that the film’s triumph lies, but in the juxtaposition of love in terms of monogamy, or otherwise. In Dev.D, the protagonists Dev, Paro, and Chanda trade accusations of being a slut. At different times in their lives the characters are sluts of the accidental and aspirational types. But mostly, an entirely new category – love sluts.
We all have a Paro in our lives. Some of us, stupidly, make the mistake of marrying her/him, thus contradicting the existence of Paro, pitting Paro vs Paro. Let her be.
Who’s interested in a Chanda that’s already a Chanda? You want her/him to become Chanda for you. Kalki makes you fall in love with her Chanda, when she looks at you with delight, having picked a name & destiny for herself.
A Dev who knows he is a Dev is as boring as paid sex, and its myriad derivatives.That’s where Abhay Deol’s graceful internalised performance towers over all the superstar Devdases and their child-actor avatars, who seem to know from the opening of the film that they are embodying an apparition called Devdas. [PC Barua’s 1935 Bengali rendition is an exception. In the paraphrased words of dear Ashis Nandy, PC Barua is a filmmaker who shot 20 tigers and about 30 films]
Kamal Swarup’s Om-Dar-B-Dar has a Devdas prototype at its centre, who hasn’t even had the benefit of a Chanda experience, when he comes back to find his Paro having moved emotionally to a very far-off place from his life. But it is at the beginning of the film, when he’s just managed to tell his Paro of his L.O.V.E for her that the original Emosional Attyachar plays, in a surreal trance-like circumstance in flourescent-lit Ajmer. And what a tribute Anurag pays to grandmaster Kamal Swarup, choosing to set the nation’s current anthem whilst Paro is duping herself into marital bliss and her Dev deluding his stimuli drowned in vodka.
Music director Amit Trivedi elevates Anurag Kashyap-Rajeev Ravi duo’s psychedelia with as much swagger as Clint Mansell, Goran Bregovic, Shigeru Umebayashi lent for the films of Aronovski, Kusturica and Kar-Wai respectively. The completely slo-mo feat Nayan Tarse is the closest Indian cinema has come to the high poetry of Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love (Tony Leung-Maggie Cheung’s melancholy swaying set to Yumeji’s theme by Shigeru Umebayashi).
The Pantheon:
A young PC Barua embarked on a journey that was to pioneer early Indian cinema. Armoured with a letter of recommendation by the Nobel winner Rabindranath Tagore, PC Barua apprenticed at the Cinecitta Studios in Italy in the 1920s. Returning to Calcutta PC Barua directed himself as Saratbabu’s Devdas in 1935, before casting KL Saigal in the film’s hindi version (where PC Barua played Paro’s stepson).
Bang in the film’s beginning, a grown-up Paro tells Devdas of his being earmarked by his father to go away for further studies. Devdas promises his Paro that he shall Not Leave. Quick wipes reveal Devdas repeating his resolve to his mother, father & brother, but every member insisting on his having to leave. Devdas promises Paro that he’s staying back, come what may, when the film’s soundtrack plays ‘Pardesi Tuje Jaana Hi Padega’ (or was it Musafir Tuje Jaana Hi Padega). Incredible that a film made in 1935 employed as much restraint and invention when the rest of the studios in India at the time were busy with their mythologicals, recreating theatre on screen, and learning the musical ropes.
Subsequent versions of Devdases seem to emanate directly from the present version, maintaining an unbroken chain for decades. Bimal Roy who was the cinematographer of PC Barua’s Devdases went on to make his own version 20 years later. Similarly, Dev.D’s screenwriter Vikramaditya Motwane served as the award winning sound recordist of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas. Between PC Barua’s Pardesi Tuje Jaana Hi Padega to Anurag Kashyap’s Mahi Mennu Nahin Karna Pyar & Chanda’s prophetic choosing of her own kismat, Devdas has come a long meaningful way.
It takes supreme confidence in the screenplay’s writing for a director to even dream a structure such as the one used in Dev.D. Anurag Kashyap’s greatest triumph with Dev.D is his smuggling a world cinema vibe and sensibility into a mainstream Hindi film, and delivering Indian cinema to where it was originally intended by the early pioneers, before a small detour (of several decades) derailed the process.
P.S. #1
Every film mentioned here are my absolute all-time favorites. Of course, Bhansali’s Devdas, and to a lesser degree Bimal Roy’s, disqualify themselves.
P.S. #2
As luscious filmmaking as Dev.D could’ve easily turned into yet another opportunity lost to oblivion, but for the efforts of the film’s producers UTV SpotBoy (Vikas Behl, Rucha Pathak, Manish Hariprasad), who’re fast turning to be the place to go to with scripts that might not want its vision diluted.
P.S. #3
Watch Dev.D however you want, much like the service Chanda offers her customers, and makes them pay accordingly. You watch the film sober, you want to get smashed in exhilaration after the film. You watch the film with a buzz, you experience a film that was made for you in any case. Either ways you’re fucked, nicely. A loveless, a sexless, intoxication-less life is a cursed one, really, very violent. Suit your own fix, be it smoke or booze or spliff or snow, or all of the above alongwith dollops of love & sex.
As far as our audience goes, I can’t be sure of adulthood, but India definitely achieves its puberty with Dev.D. Thank you Mr. K, i always knew you to be a pusher. You seem to carry too many envelopes around, what do you have for breakfast?
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