Revenge. Payback. Retribution. Retaliation. Vengeance. This deep entrenched, evolutionary instinct – not just confined to the Homo sapiens – has had its strands examined to the nth degree over the times. More in practice than in literature, actually. It can be of various kinds: Handed out for sustenance of acquired power by one group to another, a want to make one right off two wrongs, an ‘eye-for-eye’ idea served cold, or, as in this case, plainly passed on down hereditarily. Because as one of the taglines of this magnanimous, brave, attention-grabbing outing by Anurag Kashyap – Which has a overall (both parts combined) running time of 5 Hours 20 mins, which sports a cast of around 20, which crones out 14 songs – goes: “In Wasseypur, vengeance is inherited.”
And, oh boy, inherited it sure is.
Based on a true story by Zeishan Quadri (the script’s co-written with Akhilesh, Sachin Ladia and Anurag Kashyap), the film is set in Wasseypur, Jharkhand, known for gang war between gangster Faheem Khan and businessman Sabir Alam over Scrap business. Of the two, the newsfeeds mention that, Faheem Khan, despite serving life imprisonment at Hazaribagh jail, still runs his gang, mostly comprising family members, from the jail. And Sabir Alam, though out on bail after spending eight years in jail, rarely stays at home due to the threat to his life. The film, which has fictionalized the characterization and the setup using measured creative license, opens with showcasing the town set in 1941 divided among the powerful Qureshis – butchers by profession - and the others. A certain Qureshi by the fearful name of ‘Sultana Daku’ is the quintessential, ‘unseen’, and feared dacoit who runs his livelihood by staking claim on all and any British freight trains which pass through his ‘area’. Shahid Khan (aptly portrayed by Jaideep Ahlawat) taking the advantage of this situations, milks out his share of freight-train pie by posing as Sultana dacoit and looting the grain stuffed wagons – after a playful banter with the train driver, mind you – before the actual Sultana gets to the scene. After Sultana finds this out, Shahid along with his pregnant wife and friend Farhan (Piyush Mishra, too good) are banished from the town and are caused to settle near Dhanbad where Shahid starts working in the coalmine. The sprawling coalmine saga unfolds here on as one thing leads to another and Shahid Khan enters a three generation long feud with the post-independence coalmine overlord -Ramadheer Singh (Tigmanshu Dhulia in his acting debut. ‘Scoop’ praised him earlier as the director of ‘Paan Singh Tomar’). This feud eventually sees Shahid Khan getting sent to the astral plain. Thereupon, ushers in the second generation. Which sees – wait for it – Manoj Bajpai (portraying Sadar Khan) as the core of the chronicle. The ‘wait for it’ part was a lame attempt at creating the required build-up to introduce this magnificent actor because of what he has done in this film. Sardar Khan is this hyper horny mammal with an insatiable appetite for power. He is a brutal murderer who will kill the other with marked detached indifference all along being sort of an innocent charmer to the ladies. This role tops his ‘Shool’ performance. It tops his ‘Kaun’ performance. Hell, it tops his ‘Satya’ performance.
It is well established from the very start that this movie contains within a high-on-testosterone, patriarchal-y angled, male dominated narrative. But, that doesn’t take away anything at all from the emboldened female characters played by Richa Chadda (as Nagma Khan) and Reema Sen (as Durga). The former’s a motor-mouthed firebrands who won’t shy away from craziest street slang and latter’s a coy, feminine lady who will show her true colors shall the need be. These two characters re-enforce the convention of an Anurag Khashyap movie: Females are strong in their own ways and that they won’t simply take it lying down. Suffice it to say that William Congreve got it right when he wrote “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
Noted performances by Pankaj Tripathi as (Sultan Qureshi), Huma Qureshi (as the riveting Mohsina), Nawazuddin Siddiqui (as Faizal Khan) have enlivened up an already gripping story. These being the ones who will charter into the Part-2 (out on Aug 8, 2012) so more about them, then.
The film, captured realistically by Rajeev Ravi’s lens, moves through so many important junctures and curves along its way that it takes an average joe like me some time to get used to the style of the narrative. Tons of characters, impersonating the uber-branched family-tree on both sides of the feud border, keeping popping up in quick successions along the timescale of 60 years. The way all these are dealt with, though, deserves to be complimented. The characters are developed with all the time in the world. Their motives, their background, their inspirations, their aspirations, one is treated to all of these personal facets in minutest of the details. Bit by bit and slowly against the milieu of high-on-action plot. ‘Revenge’ might be a case of logical fallacy for some – those like us, who are cocooned safely since birth in an upper-middle class, urbane bubble – But for the ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’, it is something for which they will wait indefinitely for. Wait, to let the situations fruition to required parameters on their own accord so that one will be able to change into action their most cherished phrase, incorrectly transliterated as – “Now I’ll Tell and Take.’’
Action Direction by Shyam Kaushal has brought to the fore an all new way of capturing a fight sequence. The scenes are predominantly long, single shots, with vicious albeit elbow-y encounters between the two warring sides. The violence of such kind is not glamorous as it is usually presented on celluloid, but it’s repelling. Repelling maybe to such an extent that it may act as an influence on the general society and get the ‘violence graphs’ treading south. The film’s most visceral, violent scenes are unusually punctuated with transfixing sound tracks. Whether it be G. V. Prakash Kumar’s background score or Sneha Khanwalkar’s landmark Original Sound Track. Both of them seduce you deeper into the storyline.
Because of the unique way in which she creates tunes, Sneha Khanwalkar’s OST warrants an extra paragraph. Marked by lyrical gems like ‘O Womaniya’, ‘I am a Hunter she Wants to see my Gaun’, ‘Bihar ke La La’ and ‘Keh Ke Loonga’ among the others by various artists, the accompanying music is high-inducing to say the least. I insist you to direct your browsers to the Youtube videos of the making of the songs (‘O Womaniya’ and ‘Bihar Ke Lala’ specifically) and learn for yourself what was so different about the way they were created. And if, say, the songs aren’t already on repeat modes on your players, be guaranteed they soon will be. And while you are at it, listen to other content created by Khanwalkar for MTV’s ‘Sound Trippin’. This Music Director, mark these words, is the next big thing. If she already isn’t one, that is.
Anurag Kashyap's mode of storytelling, and the way his characters loom over the proceedings without becoming caricatural, is frighteningly original. The blood and gore account has bursts of light moments too – The scene where Sardar courts Durga as she gets some laundry done, or the scene where Nagma asks her husband to eat and bathe well before heading outside to satisfy his carnal needs or the scene towards the end, when Faizal takes Mohsina out on a date are deliciously funny and will bring the house down. That said, please be warned that there’s a devilish sense of dispassion in the way the subject has been dealt with. This one’s not for the lily-livered or the weak-hearted. But if you are up for experimenting with a new kind of cinema with a pinch of viewer’s discretion, this one’s for you. This film is path-breaking in a way that it has blurred the line between alternative and mainstream cinema. It is yet another surprise of the year 2012, where audiences have come of age. 2012 - Where a ‘Kahani’ can co-exist with an ‘Agneepath’, where a ‘Paan Singh Tomar’ can co-exist with a ‘Housefull 2’, where a ‘Shanghai’ can co-exist with a ‘Rowdy Rathore’. And, more importantly, where a ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ can exist at all.
Watch it for the ‘real’, for the ‘rustic’, for the ‘raunchy’. Watch it, above all, for the ‘raw’.
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