Anurag Kashyap’s Gulaal is an intricate and multi-dimensional political drama woven between the dark layers of emotions of characters who are driven by the hunger for love and power, so much that they are willing to do anything to have it their way. The film addresses many issues concerning contemporary Indians in India. RATING 4/5
Synopsis
Dilip Singh (Raj Singh Chaudhary) is a nerdy yet nice student of law at Rajpur. He gets unwillingly involved into campus politics and college elections when his roommate Rananjay Singh (Abhimanyu Singh) gets murdered. The local kingpin Dukey Bana (Kay Kay Menon) is a political leader who wishes to get Rajputana back from the control of the government of Democratic government of India and restore aristocracy and kingship back. He backs Rananjay and then Dilip to contest elections so that he can mobilize the youth towards the cause of Rajputana.
Dilip competes with Kiran for the elections but Kiran loses to Dilip. She then tries to charm and lure him with her sexual charms. She pretends to be in love with him and provokes him towards Dukey and when he resigns she takes over as the General Secretary of the youth party. Once she takes charge of the party, she shuns Dilip and starts luring Dukey Bana. Feeling cheated and betrayed Dilip turns hostile.
The multi-dimensional story of Gulaal is the story of power struggle and motives of Dilip, Kiran, and Dukey Banaa
**
Review
**
First lets start with the negative points of the film -
- The length of the film bothers a lot especially when things start getting a little to intense and heavy on your head.
- Kashyap ends up juggling with too many characters and too many issues at the same time and thus towards the end he ends up losing grip. He could not connect his dots well.
- The relationship between Kiran and Dilip should have been more detailed to justify Dilip’s hostility in the end.
Now coming to the positive points -
The number of positive points outnumber the negative ones and the best things about this film was - - Very good cinematography by Rajeev Ravi.
- Excellent lyrics and music that becomes an effective narrative technique (as also seen in Dev D).
- Brilliant and crisp dialogues, the best we have seen in a long time. There is humor, sarcasm, philosophy, history, irony, and poetry accessorizing the dialogues of this film - lovely!.
- Amazing performances - Raj Singh who is also one of the writers of the film is very convincing as a debutante and Ayesha Mohan is a really good actress for a first timer. My vote for the best performances goes to -
i) Deepak Dobriyal as Bhatti (Dukey’s sidekick) - he conveyed a lot with his simple expressions.
ii)Piyush Mehra as Prithvi Banaa for superb dialogue delivery (he has the best dialogues in the film).
Kay Kay Menon as usual is superb with his towering screen presence and performance. Very good film in terms of performances.
**
Verdict:
**
Its a good film for those who love to watch intense dramas with complicated plots.
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