A STEP DEEP INTO KASHYAP AND WASSEYPUR

Anurag Kashyap - The man behind the indie filmmaking in India. The only man who made movies with people, not stars. In India, new wave cinema has made its way through Anurag. The fact that his films like Dev.D, Black Friday, Gulaal and Gangs of Wasseypur are highly successful alongside the commercial industry. Filmmaking is his life, his way to live life in the happiest possible way. His commandments gives us a total different perspective on films and their making. The fact that his films have been critically acclaimed in international film festivals is what makes Anurag the pioneer of indie cinema in India.

 The entire 5 hour 20minutes movie is broken into two parts as Gangs of Wasseypur I and II where this film is a perfect example for ‘movies will turn out to be great’ only because of the content and not because of the art work present on the screen or the visual effects that makes people go ‘aww!’

Who would want to believe when I say that the entire two part film is made in a mere budget of 20 crores?  The first part of the film was released on 22^nd june with a tagline ‘teri kehke loonga’- who else would dare to screw you from the front by telling you except for Anurag Kashyap and the hardcore ‘Sardar Khan’. I would like to discuss my experience of watching Gangs of Wasseypur on the very first day of its release. I was alone in the screen which is hardly filled with normal audiences and a few film buffs. The movie started and then a famous television soap opera song started playing before the guns started doing their job – you’ll be excited then because that’s where an Anurag Kashyap film starts while describing the deep history and the present status of Wasseypur and its people. Goosebumps ran all over me when I saw the text ‘20 years later’ on screen where a bomb explodes giving a clue how violent and raw the movie is going to be.

Who can forget the violent climax scene where (Sardar Khan) even after taking a round of bullets, gets up and remembers his oath-

‘hamare zindagi ka ekhi maksad hai – badlaa!
Ramadhir singh ko badappan ka seedi chadthe hue roz dekha nahi jaata.

Us harami ko hame mitaana hai. 

Goli nahi maarenge saale ko - kehke lenge uski!’ 

– and here starts the journey of Faizal Khan, the son of Sardar Khan, into the politics and life of wasseypur and his plot to avenge the deaths of his family.

The audiences found the first part of the movie a bit complex and critics compared the film to be inspired from ‘the Godfather’- where Anurag responds to it saying ‘I’m kind of happy about it’. When a hollywood movie buff watches this film, he/she’ll observe few references from movies of Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese of whom Anurag is a huge fan – for example, the lengthy dramatic yet violent scene where Definite Khan kills Sultan can be compared to have been inspired from the famous ‘briefcase retrieval’ scene in ‘Pulp Fiction’.

The second part of Gangs of Wasseypur has been commercially and critically successful than the first part where colourful characters like Definite, Perpendicular, Tangent occupy the screen to present their story in their own style. 

The exciting elements Kashyap presented in the film like building up of character of perpendicular – A violent 14 year old with a blade in his mouth who robs Wasseypur in broad daylight using a gun and escaping every single chase from the police will just blow you away by knowing what Anurag Kashyap is capable of as a director. Faizal Khan’s expression of satisfaction when he’s done with his job of killing Ramadhir Singh is what makes the movie what it is – the perfect cast in hindi cinema after a very long time. 

Since Mumbai noir/gangster genre has become a part of Indian cinema, we've been watching films only of that sort. Satya – A masterpiece in the Indian cinema is written by Anurag Kashyap along with Saurabh Shukla. But, today, when we watch Gangs of Wasseypur, it completely comes to us at a very different angle to the world of mafia. Though the core theme is revenge, it is portrayed with disturbing and violent images, the rise of political power, the power of guns, the dark and hardcore humour and especially the way Anurag directed it.

‘Dark’ has always been the subject of Kashyap in his movies. For instance, the dark life of a girl in ‘That girl in yellow boots’ shows us the other face of people in a normal society and her perspective on people and their perspective on her who can be anything – a neighbor, a prostitute, a criminal – anything for that matter. The accuracy in ‘Black Friday’ in showcasing the shocking truths behind the 1993 Bombay bomb blasts would just make him the best documaker. His brilliance in showing Dawood Ibrahim in the movie is considered one of the best techniques in building art and drama to the character in the film.

Romance has become a very small part of Anurag’s movies. ‘why don’t you make romantic movies?’– A question was asked. Kashyap replies,‘If I make movies on romance, it completely changes the meaning of romance’. Though Kashyap made Dev.D, it’s more of showing the inner lives of the characters and their desperation for basic instincts.

Anurag Kashyap always stayed neutral in the rivalry between film and digital technology in filmmaking. He says, ‘It’s the budget that matters to me which makes me choose one of them’. He has worked on both film and digital according to the requirement and availability.

And finally, ‘what fascinated you the most to make gangs of wasseypur?’ – ‘the most fascinating thing for me to make this film is the possibility to tell the whole story and create a whole new world in north India’. Seriously, don’t you think Kashyap built a whole new world in making this film? I do.