We have no reason to believe the naiveté of small town or rural India with filmmakers intent on exposing their darker side. Soham Shah’s Babar a while ago did it for Uttar Pradesh and Ram Gopal Varma’ Rakta Charitra based on true events (another film in two parts coincidentally) takes place in Anantapur (Anand Pur in film) of Andhra Pradesh. Oh it’s not all peace and harmony in the hinterlands anymore. Kashyap goes a step ahead and does away with the legal aspects as there was really no Police in his Wassepur which was no land for the law and order, no place for the weak or uninhibited and no abode for the moral and upright so much so that the conspicuous absence of the common man is thoroughly justified for you may dread his fate. With gory being the way of everyday life; bigotry equated to manhood and altruistic motives, lust driven relationships of mere convenience, Wasseypur is the face of small town India’s Mafia. With the breakneck speed the auteur unfolds a saga of violence and vengeance, paying rich homages along the way to the masters of cinema and demands your attention.
It is most likely that you would miss a lot of information even after Piyush Mishra’s voice-over as there is more and more to consume with the characters coming into the film without any precedent. A total of 370 characters were written for the film as claimed by the makers and if you take a wild guess at the number of them alive at the end, you would be wrong. The narrative pits the bad guys against each other leaving the audiences wonder whom to root for in this ensemble of repulsive characters with only a quirky sense of humor for their aid. In fact they are downright black and their occasional indulgence is what makes them look greyish.
The fight in the disguise of vengeance was more for gratification of the violent instinct and one-upmanship than for a real cause. The gore continues endless for the entire runtime of the film but it works on a whole banking on its perfect screenplay by Zeishan Quadri (co-written by Anurag, Sachin K Ladia and Akhilesh Jaiswal), Rajeev Ravi’s impassive camera which shows the things as they are without resorting to madcap grotesque angles, Sneha Khanwalkar’s impeccable soundtrack and Anurag Kashyap’s eye for detail and direction.
Each and every played their author-backed roles like their life depended on it and it is difficult to pick the best one of the lot. It is amazing to see them enact the roles without being consumed by the enthusiasm of being a part of an ambitious epic. The acerbic and brash dialogue soaked in liberal use of expletives and chaste local slang is again an endless source of delight, which shows the amount of work that has gone into writing this film. The production design however is inconsistent appearing at times to be just an afterthought with all the changes in time and the men and women don’t age too well.
It is really difficult to pick the best part in the movie as there are a whole bunch of brilliant parts but when you look at the whole, their collective effect is a bit subdued with the narrative repeating itself occasionally. This is a film that warrants repeat viewing for devouring those little nuances and allusions if not for anything else. The grand finale only sets up for an intriguing second part and going by the brilliant trailer shown towards the end of the film, one can only wait in anticipation of a quick release.
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