Kashyap’s pointless saga

[1]

There are all sorts of films. Some films make us think, bother us, while others scare, annoy or thrill us. Some films make us want to dance, while others make us howl. And then there are films, like those dreary art house creations, that suck your soul and leave you in a funk that even certain Polish directors would find difficult to endure. Gangs of Wasseypur 2 induces a sort of angst that only art films have managed so far.
GoW2 is so listless and pointless that it drained me of all energy and left me feeling not just cross but bereft, in mourning for the longest 160-odd minutes it had claimed from my life. But, to be fair, though GoW2 is as pretentious as those art house atrocities, it does have some delightful moments. Small mercies!

Seven-and-a-half weeks after Gangs of Wasseypur 1, we are back in Wasseypur, for part two of director-producer-writer Anurag Kashyap’s uniquely indulgent khandani revenge saga. In Wasseypur, which remains a sort of depoliticised Hindu-Muslim utopia where Nehru’s secularism thrives, there’s Ramadhir Singh (Tigmanshu Dhulia), who is still in power, while Sardar Khan (played by Manoj Bajpayee) is dead. But Sardar has left enough sons from his two wives to carry on his unfinished job — to avenge his father’s, and now his own murder. So it begins again, the circle of thain-thain-dead, first with his eldest son, Danish (Vineet Singh), and then Faizal Khan (Nawazuddin Siddiqui).
But Faizal is married and in love with Mohsina (Huma Qureshi), so he is wary of pressure from his mother Nagma (Richa Chaddha) to draw blood. Think Al Pacino, but only for a bit. GoW2’s writers (Zeishan Quadri, Anurag Kashyap) give Faizal interesting edges and one or two nice lines, but he remains a single-note character — a diminutive, ganja-smoking, quiet fellow who is smart, adorable and that’s about it.

GoW2 doesn’t have a story, but it does have interesting characters, and most are inhabited by formidable actors. But it doesn’t use them. The film gets all excited when it introduces its eccentric characters to us, many with quirky habits and names, only to bump them off in the next scene without them leaving any impact on the hero or the story.
A big deal, for example, is made of Perpendicular, Faizal’s younger brother, who plays with a blade in his mouth and is adept at killing with a perpendicular slit. He has a lisp and a friend called Tangent who can’t cut straight. But all Perpendicular and Tangent do is some boring chori-chakari before Perpendicular is killed.
Tangent and Perpendicular are insignificant diversions, contributing nothing to the story in life or death except that we must register how cool their names are.
But, perhaps, Perpendicular and Tangent do offer an insight, an indication of the sort of narrative Anurag Kashyap should have followed — perpendicular — but is unable to and continues to slice his story the wrong way and going on a tangent.
The other problem with GoW2 is that we are not allowed to form a bond with anyone, and that's mainly because for most part of the film we remain in the Men’s Only compartment, though the film’s real emotional anchors are its women. The strangest is the dramatic killing of Nagma, Faizal’s mother. We don’t see Faizal after his mother’s killing, don’t know what he feels. In fact, we remain in the dark about who is feeling what after a dear one's slicing and must move ahead by groping, on conjecture.
The film, in fact, doesn't allow us any quality time with its men, women, or even the last-man-standing, Definite (Zeishan Quadri), son of Sardar from Bengali wife. Definite seems like a really interesting guy, but we hardly get to know him. It seems, our allegience, if any, must be with the director and his genius.

Kashyap is a master filmmaker and that is often apparent in almost casual strokes of brilliance, like the long chase sequence, reminiscent of Black Friday. Faizal and Mohsina’s romance is raunchy and fun, and the songs, both lyrics and music, are superb. But they become annoying because there are too many songs and they make the film drag.
There are other delightful scenes, but most are just bunged in, as if the director decided, on a whim, that they must be in: like the head dangling on a doorstep (horse head from The Godfather), the hospital massacre (again, a Godfather venue), the cheating brother (Fredo). Given how long the film is, we are never allowed to hang around to see the impact of these incidents, on the hero, the villains, or the story. Instead, we are hustled and made to follow each and every two-bit gang and gangster. It's almost as if Kashyap took the film’s title too literally.
Given the way GoW2 drags, it doesn't seem to be inspired by Godfather 1 & 2, but by the bits in the rough-cut that were left out. If a comparison must be drawn, then Gangs of Wasseypur 1 & 2 is The Godfather 1 & 2 stretched beyond comprehension, to a point where it loses all tension and meaning. Often, while watching GoW, I was tempted to scream out, as Kishore Kumar’s character Vidyapati does to Sunil Dutt’s Bhola in Padosan, “Bole, sur ko pakad.”

Anurag Kashyap’s ambition and intention in Gangs of Wasseypur 1&2, are first-rate. But the outcome is not. It’s anti-climatic.
It takes a special kind of fuzzy love for oneself to make a film that serves no purpose except to delight and entertain the director and the Gangs of Anurag Kashyap. That's why I still can’t figure what the point of GoW 1& 2 is. Is it to be able to use Hindi cuss-words the way they are used in real life? Is it about what Mr Kashyap can get away with? If that’s the case, then the answer is, a lot!
Or it is simply to create mood, offer a slice of life and gang wars in small towns? Well, if you and I placed a camera at one corner of a gali in our home towns for five hours, I’m certain we’ll all catch pretty exciting stuff.
Gangs of Wasseypur 1 & 2 could have been one movie, even three-hour long. But it’s not. It is a very long film with some exceptionally brilliant scenes, like attractive, colourful clothes hung randomly on a very long and limp clothesline.