Anurag Kashyap - Ahead of his times or just an over rated cinema maker?

As the most clichéd saying goes you can like him or hate him but you surely cannot ignore him. Anurag Kashyap has rattled as many as he has impressed. My opinion on him has changed from a fan to a viewer bored of his directionless storytelling at times.

There can be no doubt that after Ram Gopal Verma and much under rated Sudhir Mishra, Anurag Kashyap has given some of our best dark cinema. Whether it was the controversial Black Friday or brazen in your face trend setting DevD. Anurag Kashyap’s passion was noticeable in everything that he did.  That his cinema could not drive box office numbers was at least briefly answered with the smashing success of what remains are best gangster movie since Satya – Gangs of Wasseypur.  Anurag Kashyap swam against the tide and came up with a five and a half hour movie. To make it exhibitor friendly he decided to release it in two parts. Thank god for that.

Gangs of Wasseypur is now part of popular culture. Its dialogues and songs have become part of Bollywood history.  Characters like Sardar Khan, Faizal and Mohsina have become bigger than the movie.  Anurag Kashyap was suddenly post this movie Subhash Ghai meets Tarantino.

What made Anurag a great maker for his the then fans like myself was his story telling against the dynamics of box office and what the middle class would want. So his characters would use cuss words like Rajinikant tosses cigarettes and googles. His Devdas would choose to walk away with a Chandramukhi. Surprisingly the middle class loved him most for this depiction.

Then came what I term as his fall. Post Ugly the Anurag Kashyap that we knew as a honest in your face story teller started allowing his own political or ideological biases to mix with his story telling. The media continued to praise him because once a blue eyed boy with the media the status usually does not change.  The audiences however started growing a little bored of extra dosage of darkness with every passing movie and contrary to his earlier efforts like a GOW or a Gulaal. Slowly his movies started having dragging screenplays.

Udta Punjab was the first signal the Anurag is letting his other viewpoints on issues come in the way of what can be honest story telling. Udta Punjab still got in some audiences because of the huge controversy it brought with itself. Pahlaj Nihalani can owe his entire CBFC fiasco on this one movie.  

The real pointer that for all the media adulation Anurag was losing his audience connect came with Mukkabaaz.  This movie was and remains the biggest indicator of how Anurag’s inner confusion or stubbornness to carry political messages was hitting his story telling. Mukkabaaz was actually two stories divided by an interval. The first half was a great love story mixed with a young man’s determination to do well at all odds. Post interval it wanted to be a lot of things.  A message against cast based venom , though it almost ended up being a one caste hater movie itself.  Mukkabaaz also wanted to be lecture on sports infrastructure. The director also wanted to lecture the ruling class on state of things. However well intended everything was the movie fell on its jaw at the box office.

Though he did not direct it but his involvement as a maker was clearly reflected in Bhavesh Joshi Super Hero where the villain looked remarkably similar and repetitive of the villain we saw in Mukkabaaz in fact the most visible weakness of BJSH was in the fact that this movie too was losing its steam post interval. Let us not even discuss Bombay Velvet which came before Udta Punjab.

 

The fact that Anurag was maybe low on confidence or was brazenly trying to do something different is when he went into attempting Manmarziyaan. This was like RGV was directing a movie written by Bansali. Once again the media went bonkers on this one. Like a enthusiastic mother would insist that every visitor listens to her son’s kindergarten poem for months.  Only the audiences did not find Manmarziyaan any better or greater. The box office has spoken.

Anurag might hit back or the Anurag of Wasseypur might never return. Whether you remain his fan or term him over rated remains your call as an audience. For a brief while though there was excitement in the mundane skies of Bollywood.