There haven’t been many movies when you came out of the cinema hall smiling and with that insatiable feeling of pure cinematic satisfaction. True Cinema Lovers thrive solely on this moment of unparalleled joy - when you witnessed the gift of some amazing frame by frame brilliance. It gives me immense pleasure to say that debutant director Bejoy Nambiar’s “Shaitan” is one such movie – a rare experience!
As with every Anurag Kashyap project, this movie is a very thoughtfully churned out offering. And technically one of the most brilliant films you will ever get to see. His name has now certainly become a benchmark for quality “unorthodox” or “rebellious” cinema, a genre not much explored by previous filmmakers. Again alike so many of his previous films, this one too will not go down as a public favourite or a mass popular film. Not everyone will like it. But this film in particular, cannot just be ignored. You can love it or hate, but you cannot remain indifferent from it. “Shaitan” is yet another rebellious and thought provoking cinema, and probably the best one he has offered till date. Nambiar makes you confront with the fact that we all have a “Shaitan” within us, as we see that unfold on the screen, and we get comfortable with this fact quite easily.
The film is a not-so-subtle portrait of the crazy world of five carefree friends in modern urban India who seriously, have no rules of living and thrive on the thrills of insanity. The characters are very well written and it takes absolutely no time to get in tune with each one of them. But where this movie stands out is its amazing screenplay and extremely edge of the seat direction by Bejoy Nambiar. You just can’t wallop the fact that this is his debut venture. He and his co-writer Megha Ramaswamy deserve special credit for their work.
The movie starts with Amy (Kalki Koechlin), a girl in her late teens who still hasn’t recovered from the trauma of her mother’s tragedy. She’s visibly on the brink of insanity, and her father (Rajit Kapoor) and step-mom aren’t impressed with her antics either. She then meets a gang of fun loving friends who live with a constant “Who gives a ****?” attitude. KC (Gulshan Devaiah) sets the rules here, but Dash (Shiv Pandit) is the brains behind every move. Tanya (Kirti Kulhari) and Zubin (Neil Bhoopalam) are the also-rans who somewhere down the line, seem to know the difference between the good & the bad, but do not want to accept it. The film chronicles the events in their lives after they kill two men on a scooter in a hit-and-run case in a moment of adrenaline rush. An Inspector (Raj Kumar Yadav) tracks them down and offers to let them go in return of money, so they hatch a plan to fake the kidnapping of Amy, who volunteers. The kidnapping then turns into a media circus, everybody panics and the monsters within emerge. The parallel story involves Inspector Arvind Mathur (Rajiv Khandelwal), obliged to tracking down this group, who is an uptight cop with high morals and also, some issues of his own.
It’s a story that can be easily told within half an hour, and hence is a challenge in itself to be presented in a two hour runtime. But not only that, Nambiar manages to actually make you hold onto your seats and get you thinking what’s coming next. You don’t even think of looking at your watch. The scenes that particularly stand out are the ones with Rajat Bharmecha’s cameo who churns out a surprisingly hilarious flashback sequence and then that cleverly crafted, brilliant gunfight sequence involving Rajeev Khandelwal which uses the beautiful track to its background – Khoya Khoya Chand, that has some of the best cinematographic work ever seen or known. So scene after scene, Nambiar amazes you with a brilliant use of racy screenplay; accompanied by two things without which this film would lack half of its life – the amazing cinematography and an outstanding soundtrack. R. Madhie does an absolutely fantastic work with the camera and he deserves a lot of plaudits for his work here. Very rarely do you get to see such vibrant use of colours with such an audacity and effectiveness. The shots are youthful and reflect the thought process of every on-screen character to perfection, which is the basis of good cinematography. And now the music! Wow! Not only are the songs brilliant as individual entities, but they have been used very effectively within the screenplay. I haven’t seen a better use of songs that enhances the visual effectiveness of frames rolling before you.
Now considering it’s a film catered mostly to the young audience, the actors have done a brilliant job. Rajeev Khandelwal does a near perfect job as the cop with a his estranged personal life, but who impress particularly are Gulshan Devaiah, Shiv Pandit & Kalki Koechlin. They play their characters with an intensity we all get accustomed with very easily, and kudos to them for a job well done with no inhibitions. The only wish you have at the end of the film is may be the climactic sequence was a bit more elaborate or slightly etched out with more thrill and suspense. But by no means does this lessen the impact the whole movie has had on you, I am sure you will come out of the cinema hall wanting more. So go watch this treat of a movie and then thank Kashyap & Nambiar and co. for it.
4/5
Omkar Divekar
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