Gulaal

Intense and violent, Gulaal is a peek into the dusty Rajasthan heartland, where the bleakness of the surroundings complements its macho (and sometimes violent) men folk – the Rajputs. A dark and brooding tale about politics, lust and love - and how sometimes mixing these can go horribly wrong. The movie opens with a shot of the Thar Desert and the protagonist Raja Chaudhary walking towards a bar with neon signs in the middle of nowhere! He plays Dileep Singh, a law student new to the fictional town of Rajpur. (He is also the co-writer of the movie, not to confused with the loser from Big Boss 2)

When the mild natured Dileep comes into Rajpur, he couldn’t have in his dreams imagined what he would face – his unabashedly hedonist roommate Ransa or Rannvijay Singh, local autocratic Rajput leader Dukki Bana with grandiose dreams, scheming brother-sister duo of Karan & Kiran who are seething at their illegitimacy and Anuja, his unlikely confidante who he can never understand. In no time Dileep in caught up in events that are out of his comprehension and he just gets sucked into the whirlpool of politics, love and insanity.

The attraction of Gulaal is the way the director peels off the story layer by layer and things go progressively rotten. What starts off as a innocent student’s ragging becomes more and more putrid as you are surprised by how little value life sometimes has – and how ruthless people can become to reach their long cherished goals. Anurag Kashyap never lets down on the intensity as we follow Dileep and the others down to moral hell. The only relief from the narration comes from the madcap yet satirical poetry from Prithvi Bana, Dukki Bana’s delusional elder brother.

Casting has been perfect and its difficult to think of a better person to play Dukki Bana than Kay Kay Menon. The slightly tinted lenses add a touch of menace to the sharp face – and when he exhorts to rise and fight, you cant help but admire the powerful oratory. An equally admirable performace is from Aditya Srivastava as Karan. He seems to gel really well with Anurag Kashyap – his performace as Badshah Khan in Black Friday also attracted rave reviews. His character is understated, not given to histrionics – but immensely complex. Piyush Mishra does a great job as Prithvi Bana, but even better as the music director – do listen to Yaara Maula separately and you will be blown away !

Deepak Dobriyal does good as usual, and newcomer Ayesha Mohan is even more impressive. But the standout character by far is Abhimanyu Singh as Ransa – he has a powerful screen presence – arrogant and in-your-face. The lasting image of him is wearing a soldiers helmet and riding a Bullet around town.

After Black Friday (and Return of Hanuman), this is the first movie where Anurag Kashyap has somewhat controlled his weird trippy ideas that alienate most of the audiences (No Smoking, Dev.D). I say somewhat – because you can still see some of the weird ideas running around in the form of the Ardha-Nareeshwar. I still cant, for the life of me, comprehend what he/she is supposed to signify. But these aberrations thankfully do not distract from the main drama.

Gulaal is a hard hitting story about human frailties & greed, set in politics of Rajasthan. It is not a movie to make you feel good – but something on the lines of Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Shool, Omkara etc. If you appreciate good cinema, definitely do not miss it.