Movie Review: Dev D

I don’t get what everyone’s raving about, I really don’t. Ok the heroines are independent and strong willed and ok all the characters are shades of grey, but really!

I haven’t seen the previous Devdases so I can’t really compare them, although now having seen this, I’m intrigued to see how good they were, I think I’ll start with the Shahrukh Khan one. I love the songs in that and strangely enough I love the songs here too. After I’ve watched it, if I remember to, I’ll do a comparison post between the two.

I like this ending better than the original ending because I definitely prefer Chandramukhi over Paro who seems independent and assertive in some things but still agrees to Dev’s every whim. Chandra’s different and they share a mutual respect which should be there in relationships. Chanda’s been through a lot and I agree she shouldn’t have done what she did but I think she repented fully and my best guess would be that they put it in to show the hypocrisy within society. However, one thought I had while watching Dev and Paro in the sugarcane field was ‘Don’t they have any depth to their love? Why is it only showing them wanting sex? Where are the feelings, the emotions?’ I agree its’s meant to be a ‘modern’ that ‘pushes the boundaries’ but why do it in a way that takes have the appeal of Bollywood with it?

There’s a strong urban feel to it all which is interesting at times but also tedious at times because who wants to pay to watch onscreen what they can see in real life anyway? The cinematography is slick and different, hats off to Rajeev Ravi for that. The editing is great too, none of the scenes seemed unnecessary.

The acting was great in all fronts and I’m not really in a position to say this, but it does seem like Abhay Deol only plays characters who are full of angst, want to go against their parents and just can’t fit into the world, I’ve heard he plays a very similar role in Road, Movie; I wish he’d take on a variety of projects so we could see all of his potential in different ways, I don’t deny he’s good, he has to be to play such roles all the time. Kalki Koechlin really stood out to me even if her Hindi was shaky, her acting was so good! The best bit being she actually looked 18! Yesterday I was watching Milli (Jaya Badhuri and Amitabh Bachchan) and a 30 year old actress claimed that her 16th birthday was last week! It just all sounded so stupid!

The music was great as I’ve mentioned. Amit Trivedi has gotten a range of feelings into his songs and the ones, apart from the leitmotifs of all the characters which worked well, that stood out to me were ‘Emosanal Attyachar’ and ‘Duniya’

Most of the things I’ve mentioned here are pretty good, so why didn’t it impress me? Its a good question I’m posing to myself, one I don’t have an answer for. I had some expectations, after hearing such praise for this movie, but not much. Then again I preferred the second half to the first half which is because of either or both of these things:

-The little I was expecting was still too much so I was disappointed at the beginning but slowly my expectations wore off and I just began to enjoy the film more for what it was rather than what I expected it to be.

-I prefer Chanda over Paro, I’m pretty sure this one is definitely true

Overall a hatke watch but some of the characters just don’t work. I need to watch some more of Anurag Kashyap's work.

Rating: 3/5

PS. Please could someone explain to me what is supposed to be so funny about Monty Python’s Life of Brian? I was watching it, having heard a lot about it and I just got bored and couldn’t be bothered to finish it.

I think I’ll be reviewing Paathshaala next… hopefully!