Dirtscapes

A morbid, searing epic poem called Gunda. (Why poem? For starters, every couple of lines of dialogue rhyme with each other. Every couple.)

This movie is like having a ‘hard’ drink neat for the first time. You know…you tend to rush in, eager to gulp it down, only to find that it chars your senses mercilessly. Everything swims before your dilated eyes, and you find yourself adrift, time and space blurring, till you are one with a universal rhyming continuum. It’s best to watch it 15 minutes at a time, with sufficient time in between to allow your neurons and auditory nerves to recover.

The movie opens with a slew of baddies who introduce themselves one by one, with a lot of ominous panache, so that you know who is who (strong characterization – that integral aspect of story telling).

The villains in this movie (definitely will) make you flinch on more than one occasion, least of all when they introduce themselves thus…

Lambu Atta – “Deta hoon maut ka chaanta”
Bulla – “Sab karta hoon khullam khulla”
Chutiya – (just so that you know… chutiya as in tuft of hair; also, this character is probably the most evil hermaphrodite portrayed in Bollywood. Ever.) – “Acche acchon ki khadi karta hoon khatiya”
Pote – “Jo apne baap ke bhi nahi hote”
Ibu Hatela – “Maa meri chudail ki beti, Baap shaitan ka chela, Kyon? Khaayega Kela?”

The story line revolves around how one man fights against the system where “gundagiri and netagiri ek hi baap ke do haraami aulaad hai”, and emerges triumphant in the end. But first up, you are shown that there are no limits to what depths evil can sink (that goes for the celluloid portrayal too).

Lambu Atta starts a bloody gang war by murdering one of Bulla’s henchmen. This triggers a wave of fraternal and sisterly retaliation by either party, which culminates in Lambu’s tragic demise. In his final moment, Lambu pleads for his life, offering to take care of Bulla’s carnal pleasures for life by supplying him whatever he wants, to the extent of promising to act like a prophylactic to save him from AIDS. When death is starkly imminent, he boldly declares that he would rather be castrated than dead. Bulla immediately kills him, shocked at his perversity. I was too.

Next, Bulla’s Brother, Kala Shetty kills a minister, and it’s time for God to make his entry. Prabhuji plays a coolie, and is seen in an airport in the movie, which is a revelation in itself. Weird as this may seem, this scene makes a very powerful case for class empowerment, and is a prophetic indication of how cheap airfares would be in 21^st century India. It takes amazing vision, and a deep understanding of aviation economics to be able to portray something that would have been totally ridiculous back then (really… what’s a coolie doing at an airport? This movie came out in the late 90s.) and makes perfect sense now.

Anyways, Prabhuji bitchslaps your senses with
“Main hoon jurm se nafrat karne waala, gareebon ke liye chiraag, goondon ke liye jwaala” and helps the cops make
their arrest.

Bulla then sets about making Prabhuji’s life hell. He has his father(a constable) beaten up, his sister entrapped by deceitfully getting her married off to a provider of carnal services and then getting her advantage taken by Chutiya in his quest to become a red blooded male, and ultimately gets them both killed.

Prabhuji snaps and declares that he will kill them all in 10 days
“Ek, do, chaar, chhe, dus. Bus.”

On his way back, he finds Bulla’s bastard kid in a dustbin which had been discarded as “Haseena ka paseena” a couple of frames earlier, when Haseena, his love, had told Bulla some ‘good news’. True to form, Bulla kills her, and jettisons the kid. (He probably didn’t want an impressionable young mind to be party to all his evil.)

Prabhuji heart-rendingly laments
“Har kadam par khoon hai, har kadam par paap, paap karne mein yeh insaan, shaitaan ke bhi baap”, and adopts the kid.

Then Prabhuji goes about killing all of Bulla’s men in places as diverse as a graveyard, a surreal brothel with cots hanging from the ceiling, a public urinal, a ministerial cavalcade, to a bedroom.

The final showdown is strongly reminiscent of the big battle scenes in the the Lord Of the Rings epics, with Bulla looking really malevolent as he gets his army to the arena in auto rickshaws. It reminded me of the charge of the dark forces of Sauron, it is every bit as chilling.

Prabhuji restores some semblance of sanity to this world (and thereby to you), by killing Bulla. His parting shot?

“Tera naam hai Bulla. Maut ke baad bhi reh jaayega tera mooh khulla. Yaaeeeessh.”

True. True.

This movie is definitely not for you if all you like are strait laced, gory, bloody action movies and revenge dramas. It really, really pushes the envelope and like I said before, the baser aspects of the human psyche are not easy to capture without being mercilessly brutal. And this movie shines when it does that. It would be a very safe statement to say that you can watch Loha with your mother, when contrasted with this. And that people, is REALLY an understatement.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 17, 2006 at 8:30 PM.