Dev-eD

IT HAS TO BE SINGULARLY THE MOST AWESOME MOVIE MADE THIS DECADE!!

Dev D is freakin' awesome!

(bows down to Anurag Kashyap and Abhay Deol)

A lot of movies claim to be different, avant garde and what not but this is one movie which does absolute justice to all these terms. In all facets of the movie the team did something or the other which was never attempted before.

Take the music for instance. I bought the album a day after I watched the movie and was fascinated to realise that there were 18 songs in the movie. But the songs were so brilliantly integrated with the movie that they did not feel like an encumberance. They seemed to blend beautifully with the scene and without ostensibly being present they set the mood for the scene. Infact as I listen to the songs (as I write now, all the time when I'm driving :) ) I see myself recollecting what was happening when the song was playing in a movie. This is just phenomenal for any album and shows the success of the music for the movie.

The songs themselves are extremely psychedelic. Yes, and you never thought that 'psychedelic' could ever be used to describe music?

Just sit in a dark room and listen to the songs full blast with your eyes closed. You'll understand what I'm saying. The music transforms the space around into a particularly degenerate club with an awesome DJ mixing weird elements into basically simple songs, neon lights from the cluster and a lot of smoke- and not your basic tobacco smoke at that!

The sounds are amazing. One song starts with a sitar ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitar ) and then mixes electronica beautifully with it.

Ok, moving on from the music (Also because the first part of this post I wrote alomst 5 days back - since then work's been killing me)

What I also loved was the unapologetic way in which they show Dev's various addictions. There's no justification given about his drug abuse, or alcoholism or no emotion involved sex. This is what he is. He gives no explanations and doesn't give a rat's ass if society wants it. Like the bus-ticket scene with the old aunty. That was simple and silent but showed the contempt he felt for societal norms amazingly. Like the way he stalks and fools around with his former paramour's sister-in-law just to get back at her and to stalk her and see her suffer. But at the same time he also suffers agony whenever he sees her happy.

The movie is peppered with moments that have layered meanings when you go back and think about them but the funny thing is that when I came out of the hall I couldn't recall any particular scene but was absolutely in love with the movie.

And what do I say about Chanda, played by Kalki Koechlin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalki_Koechlin ). I've become a fan. In fact while Abhay Deol reinforced his position on my i'm-a-fan list, Kalki made a great debut at number 1 on it. Playing the innocent school girl embroiled in a life altering event (by the way the show down scene between her parents and her - simply amazing. Especially the anger and frustration of a child suddenly realising her pillar of strength was not actually on her side) to the hardened adult who hides her sadness to the innocent girl re-discovering her hope for love - she played it all with elan.

All in all this is one movie you cannot afford to miss - and that too in a theatre.

Small warning though - you'll have to be careful about company as you need open minded people who don't get perturbed by some explicit dialogues and thoughts in the movie.