DEV D.

Anurag Kashyap’s new film is a mixed package for me. I had thoroughly enjoyed the sub-text in Kashyap’s ‘No Smoking’ (see review), and, I admit my preoccupation while watching Dev D. was again how Kashyap and Abhay Deol (who ideated the adaptation) have interpreted Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s classic novella Devdas.
The setting in modern day India is spot on. It is Punjab, so Dev’s bourgeois family derives its moolah from sugarcane business, he himself goes to England for studies, and Paro on marriage moves to Delhi and Dev ‘follows’ her there and ‘sluts around’ in brothel and hangs out at a smoke & drug-filled underground pub that recalls No Smoking. Also Punjab’s mustard field and marriages recalls Yashraj’s home territory, only the romance here is somewhat corrupt and laden with sexual undertones. There is also a brilliant touch of transforming Devdas’s friend, Chunni in the novel to a pimp here who supplies Devdas with whores, drugs and occasionally acerbic truths about life in the city and who’ll desert Dev when he is in trouble with police.
Thematically, Anurag Kashyap takes the brave ‘liberty’ in brushing aside parental and societal pressures that had given Sarat Chandra’s Devdas a reason to not marry Paro (in the film, his father actually advises Dev to marry Paro and is disgusted by his apparent preference for skinny, ‘un punjabi’ babes). Instead, Dev latches on to a rumour that is floating around about Paro, betrays her with another girl, does not marry Paro and thus precipitates a tragedy to which he is both the conspirator and victim of. The film has the clear most focus when Dev plays the righteous and the injured party, punishes himself, and wallops in self-pity and destruction. This clarity would have been the biggest achievement of the film had it not been for the end where a down and out Dev suddenly goes for a U-turn. This change in character – where a traffic accident makes him end his ambivalence on love (a high point of the novella) and he decides to return to Chanda – is unexplained and unwarranted. After setting the sights high – a candid and modern interpretation of the book – Kashyap seems to have heeded to some popular call seeking power of romantic love and an urgent need for the hero to be imparted with redemption.
‘Reality must be torn apart’, said Picasso, and Devdas provides an excellent format to delve within, so it is tad disappointing to find that midway Dev D. starts to crawl back towards the mundane reality gasping for breath. (I am all for the modern Devdases not dying at Paro’s doorsteps and moving on with life. After all, every generation of Indians have had their share of Devdases, and surely most survive their self-destructive phase, but in doing so they first come out of Devdas’ world, of Paros, Chandramukis and Chunnilals and then do the ordinary things. In choosing Chanda, Dev is killing his own cruel joke he was writing, and where, unseen to others, he was smiling from the depths of his despair).
Kashyap’s treatment of Paro is full of sympathy and not unlike the novel’s author, Sarat Chandra who too had championed women rights and condition. In modern India, Paro won’t take shit from anyone (parents or lover), will be open about her sexuality and on rejection take the next best option, make best use of it and given a chance will even show an ex-lover who rejected her his place in the larger scheme of things. Indeed re-reading Paro’s character is an original attempt and, thematically, the second most important thing that the film attempts to do. However, this aspect is undermined in Paro’s last meeting with Dev at his unkempt lodge. Here, she rightly puts Dev in his place but it is baffling that she goes around his room doing his bed, washing his clothes and then leaving in remorse, all tear-eyed.
The film starts on a steamy note and you remain on a breathtaking ride up until Dev wrests himself out of Paro’s life and locks himself in this masochistic situation, described splendidly by ‘Patna Presleys’, the lead singers of the brass band at Paro’s marriage, who belt out ‘emosional attyachar’ [emotional blackmail] (Kamal Swarup’s underground movie, Om Dar Badar is acknowledged for this song’s inspiration). However, now, in the time that Dev could’ve been seen ‘realizing’ his mistake we instead cut away to a long back story of Chanda, the child-prostitute who would enter Dev life next. From a highpoint that the film was at, Chanda’s story meanders to areas not essential to Dev’s story and worryingly provides a cliché background for a prostitute (exploitation, desertion, penury). The story again gets somewhat kicking when Dev is at the whorehouse in his most decadent and indulgent avataar. The pimp, Chunni and the binges at the pub are the highlights, while his relationship with the college going prostitute, Chanda has an improvised feel and never quite generates the on-screen chemistry that Paro and he had. The final lap of the film is another appendage to the original story and is a take off from a real event (so was Chanda’s back story). Here, Dev accidentally drives over and kills several men sleeping on a roadside pavement. This incident spurs Dev’s final decline and reversal, which, as noted earlier, are unsatisfying.
With Anurag Kahsyap in the director’s chair, Dev D. always seems to be in sure hands. Abhaya Deol as Dev D. superbly plays the ‘weakness as strength’ factor (the only match I can think of is Dilip Kumar who had brought more shades to his Devdas, e.g. his uptightness, and, the rage & veiled embarrassment over the mistake he had made in losing Paro). To me the highpoint of the film, however, is Mahie Gill as Paro (again, the great Suchitra Sen comes to mind, but, right now, I will give Gill the first here). Both Chunni (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) and Chanda (Kalki Koechlin) are inspired casting choices. The film is beautifully shot by Rajiv Ravi. The drug and booze filled world of Dev looks strikingly kitsch and psychedelic. The music director, Amit Trivedi has provided a background score that runs parallel to the film’s narrative and competes equally for your attention. His original score is real first-rate albeit one that is often overbearing and makes it difficult to think above the din.
There are now more than half-a-dozen film adaptations of Devdas. One thing one can be sure of is that Dev D. won’t be the last one. Sarat C. is smiling.