Gulaal: A Flawed Masterpiece! review

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Dileep Singh (Raja Chaudhary) the protagonist of Gulaal and the film have much in common. While Raja plays to the tunes of his manipulators, in the film the director is the manipulator who always has his way that can also be looked at as Anurag Kashyap's directorial signature.

Gulaal unlike “No Smoking” has a fairly earthly plot- a naïve man caught in the politics of ambitious, powerful and shrewd people. Dileep joins a law college in a fictitious Rajsthan city Rajpur, where he falls into the hands of a series of manipulators leading to his emotional devastation.

But will Anurag Kashyap let something remain as simple as it sounds? He elevates the narrative to mythical plains and inhabits the plot with characters and eccentricities that we’ve come to associate with the signature style of the director.

While this eccentric style of the cinematically extravagant director has the capacity to enthrall the aficionados but at the same time it can also baffle those who’re looking for a “simple story well told”.

Look at the parlor where the protagonist comes to live. This is a world onto itself, dazzled with colors and neon lights. It is a classy bar with a huge portrait of master guitarist Jimmy Hendrix, a neon bicycle and the number “69”, a weight scale with colorful lights usually found on railway platforms. The bar is called “Hello There”!. Something that stands out from the rest of Rajpur. The justification behind the bar is that it was set up by Britishers and now belongs to the local royals.

Dileep is a feeble, ill-witted protagonist, who accepts suffering as his destiny in order to stay out of trouble. After a humiliating ragging session at the college, he tries to forget it but his roommate (rather bar mate!) Ransa (Abhimanyu Singh) drags him into college politics. While Ransa drags Dileep into power play, he himself is dragged into it by ambitious Rajput separatist Dukey Bana (Kay Kay Menon). As an omen of the fate awaiting Dileep, Ransa gets killed at the hands of his rivals. But this doesn’t end the trouble for Dileep but begins a new series of problems, he is forced to contest union election at the behest of Dukey and play puppet in his hands.

It’s a twisted story, where everyone plays a puppet in someone else’s hands. Protagonist Dileep is first manipulated by his roommate Ransa. Ransa plays a puppet in the hands of Dukey Bana, who is manipulated by Kiran (Ayesha Mohan) and she’s a puppet in the hands of Karan her brother.

Two characters who catch one’s attention (and they’re meant to do that..) are Prithvi Bana (Piyush Mishra) and his body painted accompaniment who is meant to be Ardha Narishwara. While Anurag gives us little insight into Piyush’s character- a foreign returned and a literally enlightened man, who sees through the mess of affairs- but he lets the Ardha Narishwar (who is often dressed up as Hanuman) remain a mystery. Prithvi is also the classic idiot who delivers a number of insightful punch lines.

On IMDb, the film is classified as a thriller! Well, it had every potential to be made into a thriller. It also had the possibility to be made into a love story of the driest kind or a story about corruptible powers of “power”. But ironically it’s none ‘¦and all!

After a power packed opening, an enraged speech by Kay Kay, the story proceeds in a meandering, brooding pace. Anurag doesn’t waste time in establishing the characters, he leaves us mostly on our own. It’s an unfamiliar world, we know little about every single character including the protagonist. Questions such as where they come from, why they’re behaving in a certain manner are left better unanswered.

You will see Anurag’s narrative strategy to alienate us from the story and characters at work here (after alienating viewers successfully in DevD). You won’t identify with any character, neither will you feel anything for anybody. It’s a distant view of the lives of strangers for whom we feel nothing. That makes it rather a detached, clinical study of their behavior under certain circumstances.

A film that doesn’t follow the established traditions of good storytelling, a protagonist who is as weak and helpless as a matchstick, where every character is overtaken by some internal conflict and where everybody is just a puppet to somebody else. And that’s why it’s the director who rules. More than anything it’s a signature work of a director. A flawed one, maybe, but nevertheless a master’s work.

It’s heartwarming to hear the songs of the film, which are evidently inspired by some of the great poets of Hindi. Influences of Jayashankar Prasad and Ramdhari Singh “Dinkar” are clearly seen in the style of rendition. One can also draw parallels between Rashmirathi, the epic poetry of Dinakar and the film. Dinakar’s masterpiece tells the tale of Karna, the mythological character, the illegitimate son of Kunti, the mother of Pandavas and Gulaal is also the story of Karan, the illegitimate son of a Maharaja. Interestingly Karan emerges victorious in the film and unlike Mahabharata, he’s is the real manipulator, who makes a puppet out of everybody in the film.

Rajeev Ravi’s cinematography is impressive. Interestingly, Gulaal, is perhaps the most colorfully shot dark film.

Dialogues and their rendition remind me of the brooding, non reflexive style of acting that was favored by some new wave directors, especially the ones who followed Robert Bresson.

Well, the film might not have the universal appeal that Dev. D had but it isn’t as perplexing as “No Smoking”. It’s neither a conventional good film, nor a conventional path breaking narrative. Anurag Kashyap isn’t inclined to tell just a simple story but he is also perennially obsessed with cinema itself. You will find intertexual references, tributes and influences a galore. His brilliance lies in the fact that he makes such a brooding, meandering, unconventional piece of cinema engaging as well.

Watch it with an open mind, it’s a flawed work of a genius but every flaw bears the stamp of the director.

A flawed masterpiece!

[rating:3.5]