CV has gone and come so many times that the statement 'CV is back' has become something of a cliche. After a lull which went past which exceeded a year, CV has been stirred to write about a slew of movies that are threatening to make the typical lazy, plagiarist movie makers to stop and rethink, or at least CV hopes that will happen. After catching the much hyped shabby rip-off of Mememto inexplicably titled 'Ghajini' (the name of the villain who hardly justifies with his acting skills the logic of naming the movie after his on-screen persona), CV was not exactly feeling like writing about his sorry experience. Even his vitriol was too good to be wasted on the crap effort, CV thought.
Just when he was about to resign into thinking that expecting good movies from Bollywood was an exercise in masochism, CV caught a slew of movies, three of Bollywood descent and one with an Indian connection which gave rise to new hope. The movies were Das Vidaniya, Slumdog Millionaire and Dev D. The first few are mentioned here.
Dev D is a totally modern take on the novel called Devdas authored by Sarath Chandra Chattopadhyay. While the original novel and the spate of movies it inspired over the years all showed the protagonist wasting himself to his eventual death from alcohol abuse after being unable to come to terms with his unrequited love for his childhood friend Paro, Dev D in a refreshing change. The novel has been given a complete overhaul which it needed to stay relevant with respect to the ultramodern and cosmopolitan lives that it's intended audience lives in a modern India.
The dramatis personae:-
Dev: The spoiled brat son of a wealthy Punjabi businessman. Headstrong, egoistic and possessed of a perverse sense of humor, he is all show and pizazz before life puts him through some stern tests.
Paro: Dev's childhood friend and sweetheart. A freethinking and outspoken girl who is anything but a prude.
Rasika: An acquaintance of Paro who tries her best to seduce Dev.
Sunil: A worker in Dev's factory. He has a crush on Paro, a crush that proves costly for him.
Leni/Chanda: A mixed race girl child with her own share of insecurities possibly arising from her confused idea of culture. The infamous star of an explicit video clip who realizes that pain is mandatory but suffering is optional.
Chunni: A pimp who introduces Dev to Chanda.
Unlike the original, Dev loses the love of his life not due to compulsion from his parents but due to his own arrogance and egotism. Having lost Paro, Dev settles into a drug and alcohol aided haze of self-pity and during one of his sojourns into the darkness of the night, he comes across Chanda, a student by day and high-profile prostitute by night. The viewers, and then Dev discover that Chanda was a girl who had her own share of demons to fight after a video clip of her sexual romp with a casual friend gets spread all over the country, turning her from a school student into a 'disrespectable slut' overnight.
Over time, Dev finds himself drawn towards Chanda but is shattered when he is forced to face the reality of her identity when a prospective client of hers drops in to her room. What follows is more of self-pity, drugs, alcohol and a road accident in which he ends up killing a bunch of homeless men who were sleeping on the pavement. Further misadventures see him transform into a penniless hobo, wanted by the police.
On the verge of slipping into a blackhole of vice and addiction, Dev in a sudden epiphanious moment realizes the folly of his ways and decides to turn over a new leaf and profess his love to Chanda. After some searching, he finds her and finds out that she too is in love with him and has been waiting for him ever-since. The movie ends with a smiling and happy Dev and Chanda riding on a bike enroute to the police station where he is supposed to surrender.
The movie has extremely slick camerawork and a series of extremely peppy tunes/songs which gel with the story of the movie instead of acting as a speed-breaker, as in the case of most Bollywood offerings. One realizes that Bollywood is finally showing signs of coming of age as Dev D consigns to the rubbish heap the prudishness that has for long been the hallmark of Bollywood movies. There have been Bollywood movies in the past containing strong sexual content but they have all used the act of sex to symbolize depravity, addiction and vice, but not Dev D. In this movie, there is a liberal serving of sex by Bollywood standards, but without an iota of guilt which the other movies supply by the truckloads. Here, the sex is for gratification and pleasure. It stops at the pleasure level without feeding the audience with a morality lesson they did not ask for. A very slick and enjoyable movie.
