Devender, Parminder and Chanda

After watching Dev D. my blood-movie level is going to be high for a long time. It had been a long time since I saw a movie which does not take the viewer's intelligence for granted. I loved this one. I was a little apprehensive before watching it since the media was calling it "a sexed-up version of the original Devdas". But I sat through it without flinching even once.





Replace 'love' with 'lust'/'sex' and rest of the story is same (almost). And this new version is more easy to understand. This time the reason for the separation of Dev and Paro is not family or the rich-and-poor-divide but the ego clash between the male and the female sexuality. If the male does it, it bears no significance but if the female loses it, she is a 'slut'. When Dev realises that there was more to his relation with Paro, she is married and happy. The late realization drives him to self-destruction. He meets Chanda/Lenny, a russian hooker. He hates her and she falls in love with him. And then a small deviation from the original, which I loved.





The overall look of the movie is so impressive that it is apparent that a lot of thought has been put into each and every nuance. There were a few things which I did not understand completely, but in order to move with the movie i overlooked those. The cinematography and the background art and decor was appropriate without being loud. And the music was great. I love Emotional atyachaar (the crowd went mad when the brass band version began), Pardesi, Duniya and Paayalia. The last one is my favourite and it is picturised on my favourite character in the movie.


The scene I liked most in the movie was when Dev hugs Chanda and says "Koi baat nahi beta. Jo ho gaya use bhool jaao." There was a lot of warmth in the way he says this. Another scene which I liked was when Paro visits Dev when she learns that he is in town. And the first thing she does is asking him to take bath and change clothes. Then she cleans up the mess (pig-pen) he had been living in. In this one incident the director tries to show that the 'lust' was accompanied by 'love' in Dev-Paro relation. How this scene ends is a different story though...

While watching the credits of the movie I noticed that the concept of Dev D. was Abhay Deol's. Kudos to both the 'best' Deol around and Anurag Kashyap. I would like to see a joint venture between them and Aamir Khan.