A Restless Mind

Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Raj Singh Chaudhary, Ayesha Mohan, Aditya Shrivastava, Piyush Mishra

Music: Piyush Mishra

Writers: Anurag Kashyap, Raj Singh Chaudhary

Director: Anurag Kashyap

After Dev D, Anurag Kashyap comes back with a powerful political movie, Gulaal, which means red. As
usual, there are no Khans nor any Kapoors involved. The cast is lead by the fabulously talented Kay Kay Menon.

Synopsis: Dileep Singh (Raj Singh Chaudhary), a simple law student moves to Rajpur in Rajasthan. He gets introduced to Rajput politics via his housemate who gets killed while he is running for a college post. Dileep is then chosen by the Rajputana separatist movement, whose influential leader Dukey Bana (Kay Kay Menon) will use all means available to get the Rajputana region recognised as a state, to run for the election. Dukey Bana's rival, Karan (Aditya Shrivastava) will do his utmost to foil Dukey's plans. What follows is a series of political ploys and manipulations as the rivals wrestle for power.


Remarks:

• What a powerful story! Gripping throughout, with multiple subplots and with all characters playing important roles. There are no secondary roles.

• Kashyap's direction is brilliant as usual. There are subtle details on the screen, here and there, which catch your attention as well as capture the essence of certain scenes. Like when Dileep Singh is going through tough times and the neon lighting which normally reads 'Hello There' now has the 'o' or 't' signs not working and reads 'Hell_ _here'. There are loads of these kind of touches to scenes which is the mark of a meticulous director. The lighting is awesome too, with a red glow as the perfect background to some intense scenes.
  

• Next is the cast. Kay Kay Menon continues to delight with his undeniable talent. The quivering moustache complements the fiery calmness of his character of Dukey Bana. But the one who steals the show is Raj Singh Chaudhary who also wrote the movie and plays Dileep the innocent bespectacled youth who is transformed during the movie. He is not a newcomer but this is his first movie as leading man and he is magnificent. Another promising talent to look out for. I could go on and on about the cast, so high was the level of performance by each and every one of the actors. A special mention for Ayesha Mohan who plays the femme fatale, and a rare female political character in a normally male-oriented genre.

• Least but not last, the music and lyrics of Piyush Mishra! Already a talented dialogue writer, Mishra's music is at times soulful and at times intense with strong lyrics which do justice to the political feel of the movie. I will definitely be looking out for his music in the future!!

All in all, Gulaal is probably the best political movie I have ever seen. I cannot even think of one drawback of the film. There are bucket loads of swearing, as is customary for a Kashyap offering, but you look past this because the movie itself is too overpowering for you to resist its brilliance. Anurag Kashyap reminds me of a young Ram Gopal Varma, I sincerely hope he doesn't end up like RGV though, because at the moment, Anurag Kashyap could go on to become a legend of Bollywood. Personally, it makes me an even bigger fan when he is described as the anti Yash Chopra by the Indian press... Let the revolution continue...


Movie Rating: 4 out of 5