Bowled over by Dev D * * * * *

I could never agree on a youth icon, when the seasonal polls for the 'Youth icon of the year' flashed on TV channels. I've always had doubts and no answers. But I just got my answer for this year, even before the polls - Anurag Kashyap, maker of Dev D, and no doubts.

What would a film-maker who has had three bordering-on-the-art films, all of which did miserably on the box-office, do on his next film? If he has been lucky enough to have got the finances for the next film, I am sure that the last thing he would do is make a remake of a classic that has been already remade more than five (or more?) times and by some of the best considered directors, the last one having been made as less as six years back. But Mr. Kashyap does everything that has never been done, and more. In spite of the Box-Office collections of Black Friday, Paanch and No smoking, Kashyap goes on to make an even more unconventional and outrageously bold movie.

An adaptation is one’s take on someone else’s work and not a similar work. Dev D is the first true adaptation of Sarat Chandra’s Devdas. All the others have just been minor tweaks in the original story and setting. For instance Banshali’s Devdas has the same Bengali Zamindari setting as the book and similar delineations of characters, except may be Sarat Chandra didn’t conceive of a Devdas who is obnoxiously loud and speaks in poetry, and who spills more than he drinks.

Anurag’s Devdas is set in a modern setting, replete with emotions that every youth can identify with. His version has Paro obliging Dev by sending him nude photographs. It has Paro cycling through a field with a rolled-up mattress so that she can make out in broad daylight. It has no emotional drama, only Emosional Atyyachar. The music is so outrageously original that it’s probably created a new genre for itself. Coming to the cinematography, especially in the scenes where Dev is soaked with alcohol, the hazy-camera-effect is psychedelic. Playing Chandramukhi is a school going teenage girl, who embroiled in an mms scandal, turns to prostitution. How orginal is that! The story is the same and yet everything is so different about this movie.

Anurag didn’t indulge in any of the publicity stunts that have become a ritual with Indian directors. No glossy previews, no actor interviews and no fancy haircut for the ticket sellers. So sure was he about his masterpiece. Kashyap has got balls of gold and I pray that for once the Indian audience doesn't do what it did to Swades, for it may force Kashyap to leave direction just like Swades made Shahrukh leave acting forever.

This is probably one film that really deserves to go to the Oscars. Though set in a cosmopolitan setting, the movie narrates one of the greatest Indian classics in real style.It depicts today’s India and is probably a better window to our country than Slumdog Millionaire which does nothing but reinforces the Gora’s image of a poverty ridden country. If this movie doesn’t do well commercially, there is no hope for Indian cinema. It will be the end of the beginning that has come with directors like Anurag Kashyap.