Dev D
Kashyap's story is Indian but his cinematic influences come from the West. A largely intoxicating film that turns exhausting towards the end...
The tenderness comes out in the protective friendship Dev strikes with Chanda (Kalki as the vulnerable Lolita) whose life has been wrecked by the MMS scandal. She says all she needed from her father was a hug and Dev cuddles her in return. These little touches catch your eye. Like the phallic reference when Paro pounds away at the handpump on being spurned by Dev, or that delightfully flummoxed look on her husband’s face as he watches his brand-new wife dance maniacally.
While Kashyap’s story is Indian, his cinematic influences come from the West—Danny Boyle of Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. The neon Paharganj, the carnivalesque, hallucinatory feel, characters living on the fringes—Kashyap’s nonconformist young cinema is not the brand-peddling Karan Johar sort, nor is it the sanitised Rock On variety. It’s about the ugly sub-culture—the hedonism and debauchery, rootlessness and irresponsibility, vodka and coke, cyber sex and MMS porn—a world we know of but squirm at.
But Kashyap does lose his grip towards the end—Dev D’s voyage of self-discovery stretches on. The three men with hats, the clown face of Dev, Moravia’s Contempt—the references get esoteric and obtuse. That’s where the largely intoxicating film turns exhausting.
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