Film: Daas Dev
Cast: Rahul Bhat, Richa Chadha, Aditi Rao Hydari, Saurabh Shukla, Vipin Sharma, Vineet Kumar Singh, Dalip Thahil, Deepraj Rana, Sohaila Kapoor, Anurag Kashyap, Anil George, Jay Shaker Pandey, Shruti Sharma, Yogesh Mishra, Saurabh Tyagi
Director: Sudhir Mishra
Rating: * * ½
Sudhir Mishra’s convoluted attempt to serve up Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s much revered and idolised, classic novel about a man’s descent into the hell of his own making, is a dark tale of internecine political one-upmanship in a nihilistic showcase of vicious dirt-laden rural politics. And the doomed love story is literally lost in the melee of dastardliness unleashed here.
Playing out in Jehaana, UP, this deliberate mash-up of Hamlet and Devdas, dedicated to freedom fighter-politician Dwarka Prasad Mishra (the director’s own grandfather), makes Merry-weather of a dynasty of politicians trying to hold strongly onto their self-serving pecuniary heritage. Sudhir Mishra along with Co-scriptwriter Jaydeep Sarkar, fashion a screenplay that annihilates through its entire cast of characters to get to its denouement. It’s a fight to the finish – one that can be won by the person/or persons with the strongest desire to survive.
The fevered contemporary spin employed to push through a fervid drama that has revenge and survival as it’s calling card has nothing much to do with either Devdas or Hamlet for that matter. It’s much more of an of the political household, an abode of Paro (Richa Chadha) and Dev (Rahul Bhat) isn’t quite the haven of love and affection that we were given to believe. Right from the opening sequence itself, it’s clear that Paro and Dev, though attracted to each other, are not really on the same page.
Dev’s first love is drugs while Paro’s is a seething ambition to get down and dirty in the political whirl in order to earn her father (Anil George) some much-needed respect. Anyone with brains would have discounted Dev’s ability (or lack of it), to rise to the occasion and ensure his family the political standing it guards so zealously. But not Paro. She hopes to ride shotgun on Dev’s fanciful horse and achieve her secret goals. So there’s talk of a wedding between them but political concubine Chandni’s (Aditi Rao Hydari) efforts to reform the recalcitrant addict triggers an unravelling that tumbles out into the open, old close-guarded and devastating secrets, which ignite a war within the family and leaves no winners.
Wily and diabolical in intent Mishra’s take is largely lame and impracticable. Intrigue and conspiracy may have been written in, but they don’t quite register. The women may be shown to be assertive but their actions don’t come across as grounded in reality. None of the characters here is memorable even though the actors do their best to stand-out in the hurly-burly of an inconsistent, rough-hewn narrative entreaty. Chandni is a shadow figure, Paro lacks definition, Dev is a little too wishy-washy, and the rest are just playing adult games – yet the performers never slacken.
They are indeed the saving grace of this film – from the much underrated Rahul Bhat, Richa Chadha, Aditi Rao Hydari to the seasoned players like Saurabh Shukla, Vipin Sharma, Sohaila Kapoor and the rest, they make gritty their mainstay. There’s neither polish nor depth nor sharpness in this engagement. The songs composed around the poetry of Bulle Shah, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Munir Niazi and Swanand Kirkire, further the thematic engagement but none have the power to be rousing or unforgettable. This is not a high-stakes production. Even the costumes and make-up comes across as decidedly shabby. This unsteady dismemberment of a long-standing political culture is at best a feeble attempt to portray a reality that is difficult to reason with and even harder to represent.