Happy birthday Anurag Kashyap : Be it social media or in person, Anurag Kashyap’s candour is refreshing.
Anurag Kashyap is something of an odd one out in Bollywood. His films have not broken any box office records but when he retires (hopefully not for a long time) he can look back at his past with a good deal of satisfaction. The thing is, unlike most of the Bollywood fraternity, Kashyap is not a sheep. I am not talking about just his films. He comes off as extraordinarily plucky in real life too. He also has the courage to unabashedly voice his opinion.
Be it social media or in person, Kashyap’s candour is refreshing. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, check out his Reddit AMA) And naturally that gets reflected in his filmmaking too. Probably the most experimental of Indian filmmakers, Anurag is always looking to push the boundaries and unlike the soppy romantic fares, family dramas, comedies, song and dance routines and potboilers we are bombarded with every month, his films dare to look beneath the veneer and confront the human condition. Granted, his films will not please those wanting to escape the harsh realities of life. Instead, they are often dark, harrowing and not easy to watch. But that is life too.
Here, I am trying to list a few characteristics of Anurag Kashyap’s films that I think make him the least Bollywood-esque of all Bollywood filmmakers – and why it is a good thing.
Realism: Anurag Kashyap loves authenticity in his films. That’s why he likes shooting on real locations. Probably the most representative of his films, Gangs of Wasseypur was rooted in rural and semi-urban locals of north India because it was shot that way. The grime, the filth, the gutka stains – it was all very unpleasant to look at and that’s what made that crime saga so immersive.
Grittiness: His films have characters that actually do feel like real people – complex, conflicted, imperfect. They behave like how a real person would behave and not as characters concocted by a writer’s imagination.
Influences: Anurag Kashyap is influenced by some great Hollywood directors. Foremost of them is perhaps Quentin Tarantino. The assassination of Sultan in the second part of Gangs of Wasseypur is according to me ranks as one of the finest sequences in Hindi cinema. Change the setting and it would not have looked out of place in Pulp Fiction or Inglourious Basterds.
Gallows humour: Anurag Kashyap’s films have dollops of humour and comes in the darkest shade. Since most of his films are dark-toned, that is only natural and clearly, he takes great care not to make it appear forced. It flows well with the narrative as opposed to allegedly funny movies like, say, Housefull.
Tendency to experiment: Again, that is what distinguishes Anurag Kashyap from most Bollywood filmmakers. Sometimes it is heady tunes of Dev D, sometimes jump-cuts, he’s tries everything, and not just for the heck of it. These experiments are meant to serve a purpose. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. But they never stop.
