GANDU (Bengali) (2010)

In one of the interview I watched on you tube few months back, India’s budding new wave filmmaker Anurag Kashyap told the interviewer that the whole world has already explored the cinema and scaled new heights that our cinema has never dreamt of and we have yet not even started exploring it! The serious question is whether conventional entertainment loving cinema going people of India is mature enough to see and accept this! Even if answer is yes and no in uneven votes, the next question is does the men presiding the chairs of Indian censor board let pass this experimental phase of Indian cinemas to the audience in this so called freedom of expression nation without their preconceived notions of being moral Gestapo of  Indian art!

Here comes a striking and ground breaking Bengali film which pushes the boundaries of typical conventional Indian cinema. It scales new heights with its exploding sensory experience for any typical Indian cinemagoers. It’s cinema of extremes with transgressive and subversive stuff where ‘the form’ not the content has higher hand.  Director Qaushik Mukherjee a.k.a. Q almost made a film with his auteur stamp where from direction to camera work, editing to music he maintained his artistic control of the whole film. Though one may find the few sparks of Aronofsky’s ‘Requiem for a Dream’ or socially shocking cinema of Gasper Noe in his cinematic style,  undoubtedly he’s the new Indian filmmaker to watch in coming time in terms of creative, technical and stylistic innovations for Indian cinema, I hope that it will be same for the content too! 

Gandu is good for nothing directionless frustrated young loser who’s wannabe rapper. He hates his mother, hates living in home and steals money from the man whom he hates the most. He’s an outcast who’s passing his days in streets, trying drugs, watching porn and masturbates in his room, dwell into voyeuristic pleasure in cyber cafe and above all roaming with his Bruce Lee obsessed street buddy named Rickshaw. As for the first film, Q has not let a stone unturned throwing the audience in the what is called ‘taboo’ for Indian film. The profanity of language, explicit sexual scenes are in abundance. Kudos to all cast who dared to do something like this for Indian screen! Much appreciated ‘Delhi Belly’ seems kid and more commercial one compared to this one. Oh and though I don’t know Bengali, I just loved its awesome and unique soundtrack, surely a bomb for your ears in terms of lyrics!

Few days ago I’ve seen another striking film made with shoe string budget but full of  brilliant creative ideas named ‘Ink Lab’ and though there’s more anti-national and objectionable material in uncut versions of Indian commercial cinema, censor board found the film too anti-national and unsocial.  Thanks to the age of internet and torrents that makes cinema free from the clutches of so called moral police of Indian censor board in the nation of freedom of speech and expressions. The film was extremely opposed by Mumbai Police and denied to show in Naya Cinema Festival leaving the audience frustrated.Here’s what Q retorted with anger, “I don’t think Indians even deserve to watch ‘Gandu’. If we don’t have a channel of distribution, why would ‘Gandu’ need a Censor certificate in any case? If we get a film with cuts, it’s not the version that people want to watch either way. That apart, even with cuts, we will not get theaters to screen the movie. So, what’s the point?”

Ratings-7/10