Black Friday (2004)

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Writers:  Anurag Kashyap, Hussain Zaidi
Cast:       Kay Kay Menon, Pavan Malhotra, Aditya Srivastava
Language: Hindi

Black Friday is a film about the investigations following the 1993 serial bomb blasts, told through the different stories of the people involved-police, conspirators, victims, middlemen. It is based on the book, 'Black Friday- The True Story of the Bombay Blasts', written by Hussain Zaidi. Widely considered as Anurag Kashyap's masterpiece, it was not allowed to be released in India by the Censor Board for two years. 

The film begins with a quote from Gandhi: 'An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind'. It is then followed up with the actual bomb blasts on that particular day and the investigating officers gets an immediate breakthrough by getting hold of a few un-exploded vehicles. The suspects are drawn up pretty quickly and rounded up one by one. This part of the film is problematic for me because of the slow pacing coupled with the fact that I really didn't care much for the stream of names that they come up with since they are just foot soldiers involved in execution. It also involves a 12 minute foot chase to capture a suspect through the slums and this scene is said to have inspired Danny Boyle while making a similar foot chase in his Oscar winning shitfest, Slumdog Millionaire. I found Anurag's intentions on this scene just to be as a show-off since we are not at all emotionally invested with any of the characters involved, be it the Police or the suspect, to actually care about it. 

The film picks up with the introduction of the character, Badshah Khan, who is another one of those foot soldiers. He takes a north Indian tour under the orders of his boss, the chief schemer. Over the course of it he falls out with him as he gradually come to realize that his boss does not care much particularly about his fate and he finally gets caught by the Police from his village. This part takes significant screen time but it doesn't matter because we get emotionally invested with him and his frustrations give credibility to his decision to become a state witness. We get the entire planning involved in executing the blasts through him and details about the involvement of Tiger Memon. It then gets on to other characters who fills in on other details like how the RDX and firearms got into their hands and how Pakistan and ISI were involved with the same. The precursor to the blasts, the destruction of Babri Masjid and the ensuing riots in Bombay where Muslims were killed in large numbers by Hindu mobs, are shown in the final sequence. The bomb blasts were retaliation for the same and the film manages to condemn both sides in an ambivalent fashion without going overboard. The quote from Gandhi is shown again at the end and the message seems to be that there are around 600 million Hindus and 200 million Muslims in India. You don't have much of a choice but to coexist peacefully unless you want to fulfill the said quote. 

Overall it is good watch but the first hour of the film is really poor and uninteresting. He could have easily made it in about two hours and seemed to be just lazy with the editing since two and half hours is not that long by Indian film standards. I had the same problem with Gangs of Wasseypur as well. The performances are very understated, which is good, and the scenes involving Dawood Ibrahim were kick ass. The lead investigating officer is the main character in the film and his performance is particularly excellent as is the case with the guy who plays Tiger Memon. Good on Anurag Kashyap to humanize all the characters involved. The docu procedural style does not work uniformly well but the second half of the film largely salvages it by compensating for the drab first half.

Rating: 3.5/5

                                                                   

Ugly (2013)

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Writer:    Anurag Kashyap
Cast:       Rahul Bhat. Ronit Roy, Vineet Kumar Singh, Tejaswini Kolhapure, Girish Kulkarni
Language: Hindi

A terrible tale of corruption, indifference, and systemic violence starts when 10 year old daughter of an aspiring actor disappears. His ex-wife and mother of the child is married to the Police chief with whom he had rivalry over the former since college days. The police suspects him and his friend for kidnapping the girl and all of them lose sight about the fate of the missing girl as they think with their guts instead of brains.  

Film starts with the claim that it is based on true events but I really doubt whether it was this convoluted in reality. When it finished, I was wondering whether all of it make any sense and on reflection, to be fair, almost all of it can be explained away in some way or the other. But it still leaves you with the feeling that something is amiss. It might have been better if Anurag hadn't gone for the slight twist at the end wherein the father gets away with the ransom money thinking that girl is anyway with the Police and they are trying to trap him all along. We are shown early on that his friend was calling him demanding ransom money and the whole thing about the father trying to rob the Jewelry store suggests that he was not in the know about the friend's plans till late. The friend must have convinced him later on that the kidnap is a fake one and he should take the money and run. I can't understand why he would believe that since the Police Chief is cooperating with him to find the girl and that wouldn't have been the case if  he was trying to frame him. It would have made more sense if he thought the mother might have kidnapped the girl instead for money reasons. That would be keeping with the overall theme of the film having all the three characters trying to benefit in some way from the disappearance. The three broken characters- mother with drinking problem who doesn't particularly care for her child, father with failed acting career and the Police Chief with false sense of righteousness who snoops on his wife's phone calls; are a reflection of the corrupt and systemic clusterfuck that Indian society is. Film would've worked better if it strictly stuck to those aspects rather than trying to be commercial by having a very mysterious and convoluted plot. One film that manages to do very well with great balance having such a theme is the Chinese film from last year, 'Black Coal, Thin Ice'.

Film was supposed to be released in 2013 but ran into problems with the CBFC (Censor Board) as they insisted on putting 'smoking is dangerous' warning in all the scenes depicting smoking. Anurag Kashyap finally relented late last year, with the promise that he will continue his battle regarding the same in future. Good luck with that then! The best scene from the film is when the father and his friend go to the station to report the kidnapping. It is a fair reflection of how people are treated by Indian bureaucracy, with the Police Inspector asking inane questions about his acting career, technicalities involved with casting and finally about how a picture of the caller appears in a phone. That scene is hilarious and another one like that is there later on with the father demanding alcohol to be served in a fast food joint. When the restaurant owner starts dialing the phone, he confronts him for calling the Police when in reality he was only trying to arrange the alcohol for him. That sums up the 'anything goes' culture that we are following and it has even been given some sort of recognition with that utterly cringe-worthy term -Jugaad, which the management consultant dickwads like to use. The former scene at the Police station is very Tarantinosque and has a set-piece sort of quality to it.

Overall the film is a very good watch with some excellent performances from almost all of the actors involved and a very gritty depiction of the modern Indian urban hell. It would have been great had he gone less commercial with it. His next film, Bombay Velvet, is slated for release in May this year and it looks a very commercial one by his standards if you go by the cast list. Sad to see Anurag Kashyap changing from being a hipster to mainstream.

Rating: 3.5/5

                                                                           

Gangs of Wasseypur: Part 2 (2012)

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Writers:  Zeishan Quadri, Akhilesh, Sachin Ladia, Anurag Kashyap
Cast:      Nawazuddin Ziddiqui, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Huma Qureshi, Zeishan Quadri
Language:Hindi

The saga of clashes between Qureishis and Khans abetted by the Singhs continue stretching over the 90s and noughties. Faisal Khan (Nawazuddin Ziddiqui) takes center stage following the death of his father and brother and plenty of new characters are introduced deftly.

The second part is more of a dark comedy with the introduction of new characters like Perpendicular, Tangent and Definite. If people were concerned  that with Manoj Bajpayee's Sardar Khan dead, the film will lack charisma, Nawazuddin Ziddiqui's Faisal Khan is as good if not better. Compared to first film less narration is used in the first half of this film and it is better because of it. The second half is a bit tiresome with unfunny chase sequences and it became more of a farce. 

Overall Gangs of Wasseypur is a great watch and it would have been interesting to watch it in its entirety in one go.

Rating: 3.5/5

Gangs of Wasseypur (2012)

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Writers:  Anurag Kashyap, Zeishan Quadri, Akhilesh, Sachin Ladia, Rutvik Oza
Cast:      Manoj Bajpai, Richa Chadda, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Reema Sen
Language: Hindi

A clash between Sultan (a Qureishi dacoit chief) and Shahid Khan (a Pathan who impersonates him) leads to the expulsion of Khan from Wasseypur, and ignites a deadly blood feud spanning three generations.

The film was shown first at Canne's Directors' Fortnight in a 319 minutes version. For the theatrical release it was screened as two parts. The first part runs for around two and half hours. 

The first half of the film looked really clunky with lots of narration used to get the facts in but the second half makes up for it. Performances are excellent but I found the use of music poor in comparison to Dev D. Felt there was too much of it just for the sake of it. The film is rated A and has plenty of violence and language by Indian film standards. So it is a small step in the right direction in terms of progress.

Rating: 4/5