All Movie Reviews: Dev D - Page 2

Indiafm Review

By Taran Adarsh, February 6, 2009 - 08:52 IST

There's a major difference between K.L. Saigal, Dilip Kumar, Shah Rukh Khan and Abhay Deol's Devdas. The first three films were faithful to Sarat Chandra's legendary novella, while Anurag Kashyap's deviant take on Devdas is contemporary and in the process, differs from the original work.

In Kashyap's DEV D, Dev is into drugs and vodka. Paro sends her nude pic to Dev via email and later, wants Dev to have sex with her in the fields. Chanda, a hooker, indulges in phone sex mainly. Clearly, Kashyap's Dev, Paro and Chanda are audacious and rebellious.

Write your own movie review of Dev D There's no harm if you pick up an enticing story and tell it your way, but Kashyap goes a bit too far, crosses all limits and tends to get abstract once again. And that's the reason for DEV D's downfall.

To Kashyap's credit, a number of individualistic scenes are interestingly handled. Unfortunately, the proceedings gyrate from absorbing to boring to yawn-inducing. The writing [screenplay: Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane] lacks consistency.

So what's the final word? Does Kashyap redeem himself after the boring and listless NO SMOKING? Unfortunately, he doesn't. Watching DEV D is akin to doing atyachaar on oneself!

Son of a rich industrialist, who is sent away to London when he was 12, Dev [Abhay Deol] returns to his hometown and to Paro [Mahi Gill], his childhood sweetheart. Inseparable as they seem, a misunderstanding puts their lives in a tizzy; Paro is married off to someone else and Dev goes into severe depression.

Not one to take on responsibilities for his acts, Dev digs deep into drugs and alcohol for salvation. He stays away from home, but his finances still come from a doting father.

Lenny [Kalki] likes to live her life on the edge -- a rich student with a penchant for adventure. After a devastating MMS scandal, she's abandoned by her family and is forced into isolation. As a runaway, she finds shelter with Chunni, a pimp. With great determination and inner strength she adopts an alter ego -- Chanda.

As Chanda, she gets to be a high profile escort by night, while Lenny remains a college student by day. At this juncture, Dev enters her life…

Despite the fact that you know the basic plotline of DEV D even before the reels begin to unfold, what you're keen to know is, how has Kashyap executed the subject? The sequences between Dev and Paro at the start are captivating and the volatile relationship they share makes you realize that Kashyap is on the right track. Note the altercation between Dev and Paro, which prompts Paro to marry Bhuvan, who's much older to her, besides being a father of two.

Post Paro's marriage, DEV D starts going downhill. Lenny/Chanda's MMS scandal is straight out of life and the reasons that make her turn into a hooker are well explained. But the sequences between Dev and Chanda lack fizz. Equally sad are the scenes between Dev and Chunni. Besides, there's not much movement in the story after a point and the goings-on get boring. The journey to the climax is prolonged and tedious.

Amit Trivedi's music sounds good to the ears. 'Emosanal Attyachaar' is already popular, besides a couple of other songs ['Nayan Tarse' and 'Pardesi']. But there're too many songs in the narrative. Rajeev Ravi's cinematography captures the rustic look of North India well.

Abhay Deol is natural. Mahi is decent, while Kalki shows sparks in a few scenes only. The balance cast, including the actor playing Chunni, are strictly okay.

On the whole, DEV D is NO SMOKING II. Does one elaborate more?

1/5

http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/movies/review/13812/index.html

Livemint Review
Dev D | Style, substance (and length)
Sanjukta Sharma, Mumbai


First, the firsts. Never on Indian screen has the hero curiously whispered to his childhood sweetheart over a long distance telephone call, "Paro, do you touch yourself?" Never has the childhood sweetheart photographed herself nude, scanned that photo in a cyber caf in her hometown Chandigarh and e-mailed it to the hero. Never has she secretly shared a joint with him, not choked on it and hoofed it out like she has suddenly contracted tuberculosis.

Awash in attitude, brimming with terrific energy and aggressively stylish in parts, Dev D is a shot-from-the-canon youth movie. No other Indian film has come close to portraying the life-consuming power of addiction in all its complexity. It's not great art, but Kashyap's work is the best of pop culture we have.

I want this film to do well.Both for Abhay(I am a fan) and Kashyap.

I am going for the film tomorrow afternoon.I know I am going to have a blast.

Taran is an Ass,I am glad to see that he didn't like the film.I am planning to like it more😆

Devdas Learns To Rock

Raja Sen | February 06, 2009 12:55 IST

I've always thought Devdas could only be told in black and white. For it is a bunch of flabbergastingly unidimensional characters -- drunkard, pining lover, courtesan -- that populate Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's essentially simplistic story, remarkable only for its wonderfully amoral, irredeemable titular protagonist.

Ushering colour into these monochromatic silhouettes has proved to be disastrous thus far, but Anurag Kashyap trailblazes in with a defiant new version that has only one aim, that to make your jaw drop.

Coolth drips from every frame, but we already knew this director as a man of extreme visual flair, and with trusted cinematographer Rajeev Ravi by his side, there was never any doubt that a film about a drugged-up Dev would look trippy beyond belief.

Kashyap's real surprise lies in the way he makes the story work, about how he avoids cinematic pitfalls and makes perhaps the most honest version of the character. In Dev D, Abhay Deol isn't charming like Dilip Kumar [Images] or melodramatically tragic like Shah Rukh Khan [Images], but he is the character as he should be: the scumbag.

Nine minutes into Dev D, you realise that the director isn't aiming at an emotional connect with the hero, but instead trying to alienate you from him entirely. Gulping down that fact (with Thums Up or Coke, as you prefer) helps you kick back and revel in this utterly unconventional, marvellously immodest film.

Look, it's not as if you don't connect with any of them -- both the women traverse extreme character graphs -- but Dev himself is a wastrel you're really just meant to feel sorry for, and kinda sidle away from if he tries to borrow fifty bucks off you.

On seeing raunchy JPEGs of Paro on his computer, Dev breaks into a grin and Anurag stealthily switches languages, having his hero say 'Paro, main aa raha hoon' instead of its English, inevitably innuendo'd counterpart. Vile and violent are both muted and amplified unpredictably in the film, and a dialogue-switch like the one above shows us a director not just confident of his script, but trusting enough that his audience get the line without actually saying it and making them wince.

Enough such behind-the-obvious cleverness abounds in the film, and while there are many that might cringe at the film's three-hour running length, the best way to consume this long tall glass of cinema is by staying chilled. Dev D's real hero is responsible for this, and despite what the posters might tell you, that isn't Abhay Deol but the film's musicman, the astonishing Amit Trivedi who constantly juggles angst and allusion, profanity and pensiveness to make an awesomely heady cocktail that elevates the film itself to another level. The film's 18-song soundtrack is the narrative, really, bestowing the film with depth and nudging us, as viewers, in the right emotive direction even when the actors and lines themselves fail to get the job done. He's a master, this Trivedi, and the way Kashyap's used his songs is wonderfully appropriate, especially the rock version of Emotional Atyachaar.

Invariably sensory as the overall experience is, the film has its share of drawbacks. Stopping well short of revealing little scenes and details the joy of which should ideally be experienced first hand, I must wholeheartedly recommend you going to see this movie before pointing out its warts. Flaws hide in occasional lines, snatches of dialogue that seem forced, especially in a film that stays so close to the ground.

It's a stylistically arched world and not the one you and I live in, granted, but this is exactly why any deviation into filminess jars so painfully on the nerves. Let us not forget the film's Chanda, Kalki Koechlin and her strained dialogue delivery, responsible for the film's weakest moments, and even though she grows on you in the second half when bouncing off Abhay, she does let the film down.

Mahie Gill, on the other hand, is absolutely super. As Paro (short for Parminder), she creates a character to connect with and admire, a ballsy free-spirit well in touch with her sexuality and delightfully unbridled of tongue. Naive at first, her Paro goes from eagerly laying mattresses in fields to giving Dev the cruellest of verbal spankings. Utterly befuddled here stands Dev, a broken man helplessly in love with a married woman, and Deol plays this reasonably well. Reasonably, we say, because the man truly does not have much to do. Abhay takes on an admittedly brave role and does it adequately, but save for a couple of scenes -- watch out for a particularly priceless moment with a bus ticket -- all he has is substance-abuse, chewing gum and, well, gham.

Greatness in terms of character-building, however, lies in the delectably smarmy pimp, played by Dibyendu Bhattacharya, a man who hands Dev his drugs and literally carries him to the courtesan's fuchsia bed. Chunni, they call him, and the character is the coolest analogy the film draws alongside the original text.

Hubris dominates the overall proceedings -- remember, this is not a bad thing by default -- but while Kashyap excels when he's going all-out, there are sequences when he decides to slow down, to explain, to simplify. Evidently he gives the audience credit but not quite enough, and looking at his track record, it's easy to see why.

Even so, this is a rather radical project, a film that could well have done more but accomplishes far more than enough, and I think the only reason we expect even greater things is that it really, really whets our appetite.

Randomness happens often in our newly-experimental cinema, but it's always great to see a film where no detail is an accident, where the director gets to execute his vision exactly as he wants -- and this seems pretty darned close.

See Dev D once, get bombed, see it again.

Rating: ***1/2

http://www.rediff.com/movies/2009/feb/06review-dev-d.htm

Originally posted by: cinnamonrani

^RKH, me too, me too. Socha Na Tha is so underrated. I love that movie. Everything about it works with me: the story, the dialogues, the music, and of course the acting. JWM is good and all that, but I hope Imtiaz Ali's next is more like that rather than JWM. If anyone here is interested, here is a blog post by Abhay that endeared me more to him than I already was. Here is an excerpt and a link to the rest.

Can I risk saying that the part of films I hate most, is promoting it?

It's not about the ego, it's not about projecting an image, it's not about being lazy or anything else you might think. The truth is, I love making movies but I just don't have it in me to sell them. I am an actor not a salesman, but most people seem to think that the two are one and the same.

I find promoting extremely tiring. It basically means I have to answer the same questions (and there are usually three at the most) a 1000 times, in the span of 8 to 9 hours.

It usually goes like this ?

1. What is the film about?

2. How was it working with the director?

3. Are you having/had an affair with the actress?

While they have to ask the first two questions, they are most interested in the third one and the rest of the interview almost always focuses on that. With a scandalous headline to match! No wonder most people perceive actors to be sex-starved maniacs.

Do read the rest; I would reproduce it, but it is pretty long.
http://passionforcinema.com/oye-promotion-promotion-oye/#more-8671

Masand's movie review: Dev D not for fainthearted

Rajeev Masand / CNN-IBN

Cast:

Abhay Deol, Kalki Koechlin, Mahie Gill

Direction: Anurag Kashyap

Not every film is required to entertain its audience, but every film must engage its viewers.

Now that's a tall order when the film in question centers around the most boring, uni-dimensional character Indian literature could have possibly produced – the alcoholic, self-destructive romantic, Devdas. Add to that the fact that at least three Hindi films have already transported Devdas' tragic story to the screen.

Still, director Anurag Kashyap's Dev D, is a fresh, original take on the subject and the characters, but it's also a long and tiresome film that is not for the fainthearted.

Rooted in the real and the contemporary, Kashyap's film stars Abhay Deol as Dev, an aimless Benjamin Braddock-like drifter who returns home to Punjab after a graduation abroad, but has little in terms of future plans, except for getting into the sack with his childhood friend Paro, with whom he's spent many a long night talking dirty on the phone. On learning that she might have had a promiscuous past, Dev rejects Paro and her advances, driving her to marry a man she doesn't love, and landing himself in a downward spiral of booze and drugs and whores.

Kashyap takes the basic structure of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's original story, but in setting it in the now, updates much of the film's narrative, and makes the characters' actions and motivations more relatable. So you get a back-story to the Chanda character, the hooker Dev hooks up with in his desperate, despondent phase; and sex itself becomes the invisible but omnipresent motivation that drives many an important plot-point.

In its first forty odd minutes Dev D sucks you into its drama, shocking you with its brazenness, and more specifically with Kashyap's audacious re-imagination of the plot and its characters.

Take that scene in which Paro (played by newcomer Mahie Gill) sends for Dev to join her in a dense field so they can get down to doing what they've been unsuccessfully trying to do for some days. Watch the manner in which she virtually attacks a reluctant Dev into submission; and then the following scene in which she heads back home, mattress folded and tied on her cycle, after Dev spurns her overtures.

Watch also the fantastic song Yeh meri zindagi hai and the inventive manner in which Kashyap uses it to introduce Lenny (played by newcomer Kalki Koechlin), the character who goes on to become Chanda.

But from the moment Dev's descent into despair begins, the audience too plunges into what seems like a never-ending roller-coaster ride of loud clanging music, neon lights and head-spinning camera moves. Using music instead of dialogue is a unique and interesting narrative tool, but song-after-song-after-song-after-song your patience wears thin.

The film's second half is indulgent and repetitive to the point of being excessive, as it focuses much of its attention on Chanda; and let down by a disappointing performance and stilted dialogue delivery by Koechlin, it never really regains the momentum or the sheer bravura of its early parts.

In comparison to Koechlin, Mahie Gill makes a more assured debut as Paro, investing both vulnerability and a cocksure attitude into her character. But it's Abhay Deol who's the real scene-stealer, holding together the film with a fearless performance that is so rare to find.

Despite the clever new approach and its stylish telling, the flaw that hurts the film ultimately, is the fact that Devdas is never an engaging enough character and his story lacks soul. Speaking purely for myself, I was bored watching him repeatedly drown himself in drink and drugs. Self destruction is never an attractive quality.

I'm going with two out of five and an average rating for director Anurag Kashyap's Dev D. It's one of those films that's likely to either dazzle you or drain you. There is no middle option. Watch it, and decide for yourself.

Rating: 2 / 5 (Average)

Dev D Movie Review

February 6, 2009 5:56:58 PM IST
By Martin D'Souza, Bollywood Trade News Network Send to Friend

The severe spanking Anurag Kashyap received from critics and audience alike for NO SMOKING, propelled the director to delve deep into his creative reserves to come up with a rabbit out of his hat. He gives us Dev D, a movie, whose main protagonist, is loosely inspired by the novel Devdas written by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay. Herein ends the 'inspiration'. This DEVDAS hits the bottle, snorts coke, visits brothels and then finds the rainbow. In short, he is virtually the prodigal son, who returns to find his bearings.

Take a bow, Kashyap, for this wonderfully directed movie scripted with finesse. Every character stands out; every scene is a dream. Kashyap takes ordinary moments and peppers it with rappers to skillfully drive home the point with lyrics to match the mood. You know this movie is a winner when the scene opens to a young Dev and Paro and his parents. You see the immediate bonding between Dev and Paro, and between Dev his dad. On the surface, his dad appears to be his greatest enemy. But scratch it, and you see a wonderful bonding between the two, especially in the latter half when he indulges his son with whatever he asks for.


Dev (Abhay Deol) is packed off to UK for studies and he never loses touch with his Paro (Mahi Gill). On chat, they do what normal teenagers do. Once he asks her to email him her photographs. She replies that she already has. ''Not those,'' Dev types on his keyboard. ''One without clothes.'' Paro obliges. Back from the UK after years, Paro, who is now even more in love with Dev than she ever was, cannot take her eyes off him. They try to meet in odd places with her Dad always showing up at the wrong time. Being a good looker, and always chirpy, there's loose talk about Paro; of her being the conquest of someone else. Dev believes what he hears and snubs her. In fact, he insults her telling her she can't even dream of coming into his family.

Paro moves on and marries. Dev is shattered. He does not know what has hit him. He hits the bottle. However much he may try, Paro is always on his mind. Here, Kashyap makes a smart detour in introducing the other character that will take the film to another level. Chanda (Kalki Koechlin) is introduced with a back-story about how she lands in a brothel where Dev is a frequent visitor. There is a poignant moment, which Kashyap catches to show the bonding between Leni (who later becomes Chanda) and her father. She is woken up from bed by her mother and she goes to her father in his room where he is still asleep to snuggle up to him. Cut to the scene when she calls him a 'Sicko' because of her MMS scandal. He cannot take it. He shoots himself.



Then begins Dev and Chanda's romance. Both are hurting, both need healing. Both turn out to be the other's emotional anchor. And after constantly telling Chanda he loves only Paro, he finally falls in loves with Chanda. ''I never looked at Paro in the right way,'' he tells Chanda. A bitter truth if you put all the earlier scenes between Paro and Dev into perspective.

The films constantly connects you with Dev's hopelessness, Paro's perplexity and Chanda's circumstances.

Abhay Deol is turning out to be a class act. One can sense him submitting himself completely to the director. Not one wrong step. Deol is completely in sync with the character and his surroundings. Not once does he try and go over the top. He downplays some moments with subtle body language and pain in his eyes.

Mahi Gill is a revelation. As the bubbly Paro who will do anything for her Dev, she is simply irresistible. Smart, sexy and wanting to make the first move on Dev, she is first rate. Kalki, as the young schoolgirl who wants to have her share of fun fits the bill. As someone who is shunned by her family and friends, she finds her feet back in a brothel, where love finally comes knocking on her door in the form of a stoned Dev.

The music and background score are just perfect. DEV D is awesome. It's big bang for your bucks.

Rating - 4/5

http://glamsham.com/movies/reviews/06-dev-d-movie-review-020910.asp

Dev D

Cast: Abhay Deol, Mahi Gill, Kalki Koechlin
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Rating: * * * 1/2

To reprise one of Hindi cinema's most-remade storylines would require both courage and an audacious new vision. Director Anurag Kashyap is equipped with both. And he gives as much as he takes from this classic tale of a love lost and pined for.

Dev D is a stylish, adventurous interpretation that gives an old story a contemporary edge and pushes the boundaries of Hindi cinema. You expect that, of course, given a title like Dev D and characters transposed from genteel Bengal to earthy Punjab, from one century to another. But you could still be taken aback by the unfettered play that Kashyap allows his imagination as the film ricochets between gritty and bizarre, mustard fields and dreamscapes. Amazingly, it all holds — for the most part. There is just one problem: in standing this tale on its head, in the stylistic flourishes and inventiveness that he brings to it, Kashyap has lost some of its emotional underpinning. You watch fascinated but your heart rarely aches for Dev. Abhay Deol puts in a taut and remarkably controlled performance, but the vulnerability is missing.

Under Kashyap's baton, Dev aka Devendra Sigh Dhillon (Abhay Deol) and Paro aka Parminder (Mahi Gill) are sexually adventurous lovers who break up because of a lie and an emotional atyachar. The eponymous hit song, performed at Paro's wedding, has to be one of the highlights of the film with its picturisation as quirky as its music and lyrics.

With Paro gone, Dev begins his slow descent into hell. Enter Chanda, the multilingual call girl who can seduce in Hindi, Tamil, English and French. With her bee-stung lips, unusual face and refreshing lack of acting guile, Kalki Koechlin imbues the part with a touching fragility.

Unlike earlier directors, Kashyap fleshes out this character: Chanda's slide begins with a lurid MMS clip in school. She was then Lenny; she renames herself as she watches Chandramukhi's Maar Dala in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Devdas.

But Paro returns to Dev's life. Kashyap plays down the long-awaited reunion with unexpected domesticity in some beautifully executed scenes and then intertwines Dev's two love stories in a tale of redemption.

If there is pain, there is humour too, of various hues, but mostly dark. The dialogue is pitched right, the cinematography can be both rich and edgy, the art direction terrific. Amit Trivedi's music and background score are dazzlingly inventive. Mahi Gill is earthy and engaging and there are some absolute gems in the supporting cast, particularly Chunni the pimp (Dibyendu Bhattacharya).

There is just one problem: in standing this tale on its head, in the stylistic flourishes and inventiveness that he brings to it, Kashyap has lost some of its emotional underpinning. You watch fascinated but your heart rarely aches for Dev. Abhay Deol puts in a taut and remarkably controlled performance, but the vulnerability is missing.

Still, if you like your cinema far removed from the mainstream, don't miss this one.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=CinemaSectionPage&id=6e08f7d4-7695-4ff5-b600-606c563eb936&MatchID1=4922&TeamID1=4&TeamID2=2&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1244&PrimaryID=4922&Headline=Review%3a+EMDev+D%2fEM

Film: Dev D

Director: Anurag Kashyap

Cast: Abhay Deol, Mahi Gill, Kalki Koechlin

Rating: 3.5/5

After hearing the story of Devdas and the two women in his life, one wondered how different can different really be. Kashyap as usual surprises as he brings to life the character of Devdas, Chandramukhi and Paro to life only this time with a twist.

Dev D is what you would simply call a stylish and scholarly film. It begins with a bang, it's as urban as can be and then somewhere down the line begins losing it but luckily before all is lost the film ends.

Like in all the versions in this one too Dev (Abhay Deol) and Paro (Mahi Gill) are madly in love with each other, only this time love with a whole lot of lust. The spin begins when a little slime ball ruins things between them and off Paro goes to get married with another man.

Lost in love, Dev turns to alcohol and drugs. After a lot many pills and alcohol, achieving a high, he lands up at young Lenny's aka Chanda's (Kalki Koechlin) quarters, a @#$%& by profession and a student by will. What ensues is the exploration of three sinuous lives and the rediscovery of love.

What's great about Dev D is the fact that it isn't pretentious; it weaves reality, acknowledges the fact constantly that the plot is in fact motivated from Devdas and showcases an alternate youth culture.

Dev D is extremely well written and what it's evident that Kashyap knows film. In a sense Dev D is India's first recent film that can be showcased, understood and appreciated internationally. It is as stylistic just as it is well scripted.

What you see is an experimentation of different styles from various other films, which amalgamates to make one strong film. For example you see the style that Trainspotting had, you see the exploration of sexuality that Lolita or Le Mepris had, and you see the art of using song that perhaps Om Dar Ba Dar highlighted. Dev D not only celebrates various...

http://www.businessofcinema.com/news.php?newsid=11919

By Indo-Asian News Service | February 06, 2009

Whatever you do, do not fall in love.

Love will consume you, embitter you, devastate you. Love will lead you to destruction.

The past three generations have seen Devdas, adapted from Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel, in some form or the other, the most recent being Sanjay Leela Bhansali's successful attempt in 2002. We already know the story inside out - or do we?

Meet Anurag Kashyap's Dev (Abhay Doel)- he's brash, arrogant, ill-mannnered, demanding, lusty, impulsive and yes, self destructive.

Meet Dev's Paro (Mahi Gill) - she's beautiful, doesn't mind sending snaps in the buff to her lover and breaks into a jig at her own wedding.

Meet fate's abandoned Chanda (Kalki Koechlin) or Lenny as we are intially introduced to her as. She loves her parents, goes to school, and well...on the way meets her boyfriend who ends up doing a lewd MMS on her. Life is cruel and Lenny becomes Chanda or Chandramukhi as we know her. Please note - the girl still continues her education.

It's not only that Kashyap has successfully stirred clear of drawing caricatures of the characters we already know, he's reinvented the wheel in other ways too. Sample this - it's not caste or class differences that separates the two young lovers, it's libido and a momentary lapse of reason.

Dev never was in control and Paro's marriage gives him the trigger to go full throttle towards destruction. He comes to Delhi and walks into Paharganj.

With the name of Paro on his lips, Dev crashes to sleep on Chanda's bed as she smokes a cigarette and watches him curiously. Love or 'emosanal atyachar'?

While Punjab was the setting for the first half of the film, it's the bylanes and the bars of Paharganj where the action takes place in the second half. The editing is dizzy and effective, the music good in parts, the performances by all three lead actors are spot on - extra marks to Kalki.

As you watch the film and see Dev steadily guzzle vodka and obsess about his lost love you wonder when he will hit rock bottom.

But love is also known to set you free, uplift you, rescue you.

So, go fall in love.

Final Rating: * * *

http://www.allbollywood.com/movies/bd/2009/848/dev_d/review_231.shtml