Review : Gulaal

Rating : Above average (3.7/5)
Genre : Drama
Year : 2009
Running time : 2 hours 50 minutes
Director : Anurag Kashyap
Cast : Kaykay Menon, Abhimanyu Singh, Aditya Shrivastava, Deepak Dobriyal, Jesse Randhawa, Piyush Mishra, Mahi Gill, Ayesha Mohan, Raj Singh Chaudhary
Kid rating : PG-13

GULAAL : WEAK ENDING RUINS STRONG BUILD-UP !

Technorati tag : Review Gulaal

Kashyap’s latest is a dark film, not just in it’s content, but also visually. Dark or poorly-lit rooms, house dark, vengeful characters. The main story focuses on student politics in Rajasthan, where law student Dilip Kumar Singh (Chaudhary) has newly arrived. Naïve Dilip finds rooms let by Rananjay Singh, known as Ransa (Abhimanyu Singh), the son of the erstwhile Raja. Dilip, cowardly and weak, is soon embroiled in student politics, courtesy Ransa and other rival gangs.

Gulaal introduces us to politics via Dilip, but this is really the story of people hungry for power and the affluence that it brings. Duki Bana (Menon), a zamindar, who finds himself bereft of any real power in the face of Governmental rulers, wants money to build the state of Rajputana. Kiran (Mohan) and her brother (Aditya Srivastav), as children of a kept mistress, want their father’s name. There is a third faction of louts also contesting the student General Secretary post, however they do not become prominent to the story. Other characters, all interesting, are those who sway one way or another.

The first half of the film is strong and well-controlled, and Kashyap uses the time to give us a tight, political drama. You have a weak common-man, Dilip, friends with Ransa, who’s kind of wild and reckless. Dukki Bana, who’s married, has a mistress on the side, and is open to other amorous advances, is using Ransa to win over student politics in Rajpur, and thus supporting him over rival factions. Deepak Dobriyal stunningly plays Dukki’s right-hand man. Then there is Kiran, who will go to any lengths to win the elections and become the student General Secretary. And there is her brother, cold, calculating, trigger-happy Karan who master-minds Kiran’s every political move.

There are also minor characters like Dukki’s wife (Jyoti dogra), a dutiful woman, who gets a little feisty when she hears of Madhuri (Mahie Gill) Duki’s mujra-performing mistress. Model Jesse Randhawa plays Anuja, a teacher who is stripped of her clothes and her dignity, but must continue to puff-up impotent clouds of cigarette smoke, in the absence of any hope of action against the perpetrators. I found her role inconsequential to the story – it didn’t do anything and didn’t exert any influence on any character. The female characters in the film are all of them powerless, and truly depicted given the context. Even Kiran’s character, while conniving and determined, is only so at another’s bidding.

Then there is also Dukey Bana’s mentally retarded brother Prithvi Bana (Piyush Mishra), who is given to singing and composing couplets. Kashyap uses him to narrate the story in balladic form, and reflect on the corruption of it all.

This film doesn’t have any one protagonist. The main characters are all negative, except maybe Dilip, who’s weak, and doesn’t have the strength to overcome the odds. So it’s kind of hard to actually root for any one. Still, the film with it’s interesting characters, and brilliant acting, is trundling along nicely, until it hits intermission. Then, it’s downhill, because Kashyap fails to keep up his promise. The story flags and I found the end really disappointing. Where he should have upped the ante, and provided a sizeable twist to the story, he goes along with a jaded, and un-interesting premise.

Kashyap tries hard to give us a gritty, ethnically-flavored drama, and comes close to carrying it off, but ouch! – that ending. I cannot see this film succeeding commercially at all, for who really has the time to read between the lines, these days ? Still, this film is highly recommended; just don’t go in there expecting too much.

If you liked this film, you might also like :

– Haasil
– Hazaron khwaishen aisi
– Omkara