Anurag Kashyap deserves a pat on his back for daring to retell this story in today's context adding a lot of abusive language, alcohol, drugs and sex that the present generation can relate to.
Dev (Abhay Deol) returns to his hometown Punjab after completing his graduation abroad. He is aimless and all he does is romance his childhood love Paro. Dev comes across as a selfish and arrogant person who does not evoke any admiration from the viewer. In fact one wonders why a sane girl like Paro is in love with him. (All this as in the original).
Coming to Paro, she shocks you (especially if you draw a comparison to Bansali's portrayal of Paro.) She is not docile and virtuous like the Paros that preceded her. For instance, take the scene when she invites a reluctant Dev to the dense fields to 'make out'. And when Dev rejects her advances she ties the mattress back to her cycle and heads back home.
Dev is in love with Paro but dumps her doubting her of a promiscuous past. She marries an older man with children and he drowns into what seems to be hell-like roller-coaster ride of "loud clanging music, neon lights
and head-spinning camera moves". The emotional atyachar takes on you completely.
The second half of the film concentrates more on Chanda. Chanda is not the 'good' prostitute that Chandramukhi was. She is a student at the day time and a high-profile escort during night. She has absolutely no regrets about the kind of life she is leading and the choices she has made. She does not want you to sympathize with her.
Anurag Kashyap has also experimented with his narrative style by using songs to run the story instead of dialogues, which was interesting but putting in 18 songs (some long some short)in a film that runs for more than three hours becomes torturous.
Abhay Deol is one actor to watch out for in future. Absolutely loved him in Oye Lucky and even for this film he gets into the skin of the character and turns out to be irritating as Devdas has always been. Mahi Gill is an impressive debut and Kalki needs to work on her dialogue delivery… her character was strong, perhaps a better actress would've added depths to this character.
Devdas (as a character) is a loser and no matter how stylishly retold over and over again, his story lacks soul and instead of moving you - it literally does an Emotional Atyachar!
If you are game for it – go try it out.
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
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