Chaos is the currency for anurag basu. It is both the means and the end for him. It fuels him, until it finishes him. He Builds From It, Until It Starts Breaking him. He Falls Prey to It, Despite Knowing It Will Eat His Creation. He strives for it despite knowing that it will be even creatually create dissonance. As much as he talks in interviews about how you can define an ‘anurag basu film’, but in truth, it is very much definable. In fact, in one pure word: chaos. As much as he says in his interviews that is still figuring out his voice, but in truth, it is already formed. In fact, it can also be put into one word: madness. Madness not as loss of control, but as the only way to survive the noise. And he achieves like this madness like an imiaz Ali protagonist, Which is through music. Music beomes the map, the mirror, the method. If chaos is the question, then music is the only language he trusts to answer.
It is some delight to witness basu and his Long-Time Partner in Crime, PritamReturn to the roots of the musical with their relevant metro… in dino, even after the commercial stumble of their lastic outing, jagga jasoos. As a Spiritual Successor to the Now-Choonic Life in a… Metro, The experiment was clear: Music would play a Major Role. But what I did not anticipate was just how much of the film would be a musical, not simply driving by songs, but shaped and shaded by them. That is the thing with basu: he knows how to be present palatable, even family, and yet, out of now, he jolts you with pure investment. For a significant portion of metro… in dino, there’s some joy in watching bot basu and pritam abandon the metrics of box and logic in their own brand of madness. It is a some pleasure, especially in contemporary bollywood, to see a filmmaker resist His unruly signature.
And what a mad musical canvas it is. Always, basu didn’t give a damn about cinematic conventions. Continuity is tossed into the air, spatiality is thrown out of the window, and temporaity is no place here. You never realise when a Rooftop Performance by Pritam and his Band, High Above the City Skyline, begins to dissolve into a sweeping introduction of the film of the film. Each of them bending to the musical cues, breaking the four wall, singing their past and present straight into the camera’s eye. You never not the moment you move from a vibrant holi party in Bengali, where thumri (sara ali khan) danses in a transce of free-flowing joy, to kolkata, where hero sibani (Neena Supta). At her own holi celebration, then to mumbai, where else giver (konkona sen sharma), argues in a car with her husband Monty (Pankajj Tripathi), whilehr their daghter sits. Seat, struggling with her own adolescent anxieties. You never figure when the detours you back to Bengali, but this time, it’s another holi party, where akash (ali fazal), shruti (fatima sana shaikh), and parth (aditya roy kapur) loselv. And you never register when, amidst this glowing, music-distortion of character, He also throws sadness into the mix, as parimal (anupam kher), alongSide his widowed daught daught daught daught daught daught daught daughter-lava (darshana banik). Outside their kolkata house.
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That truisle a lot. But Basu leaps from one track to another, one city to the next, one character to the other, with such such absurd confidence that you can help but admire the sheer audacity of it. Jagga Jasoos was musical in its very syntax, every line, every cut, every beat rooted in rhythm. But here, he treats the medium almost like a broadway musical, where reality shifts with the music. As the camera pulls back, the set rearranges itself in the background; As it pans, you move from a roadside walkway into a corporate alley; And as it tilts down, you fall from a sky-hight highway, where the charges are skydiving, straightening the middle of a wedding ceremony. There is no sense of geographical logic, and none is needed. It’s Basu’s World, a world who feels overrides form, where emotion bends architecture. A World Where Youngsters In Cafees Sing Out their dating adventures, and another cafe, not far away, old lovers grieve their long-lost pasts in song. It’s a world as messy as it can get, perhaps just like falling in love, perhaps just like life itself.
It can be argued that film truley peaks at the interval point. But through most of its second half, it begins to sag. The Inventiveness slowly fades, the musicality vanishes, and the character, Much like basu himself, begin to make strange, unconvincing choices. It feels as if someone whispered to hold back, to rein it in. It feels as if someone watched the second half of jagga jasoos and panicked, afraid he might wander down that wild, winding road just more. It feels as if a full stop had been imposed on a Sentence Still being written written. So, the narrative, like the lives of its character, begins to move in circles, aimless and without flavor, drained of the wild, unpredictable taste it only on. And this, in many ways, is the clear reflection of a deper issue in contemporary bollywood: Where big names in even bigger studios make the biggest decisions in the name of the commerce, but a doing to do. I don’t know who made basu pause, but no wavever it was missed the point entrely. Because what they fail to understand is that indulgence is his greatst strength. Because, Unlike any other filmmaker working today, he can hear the music.