The frame opens with a few
historical facts and anecdotes in post independent India and Bombay in
particular. You see a kid (Johnny Balraj) and his mom just landed in the port
of Bombay and struggling to m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶start a living and ready to take any odd jobs.
Johnny scales his way up by committing crimes, loves a girl, fights the city,
makes loads of enemies, loses everything and breaks totally bad in the end. For
cinephiles this wouldn’t be something new but a dejavu of Sergio Leone’s 4.5
hour epic ‘Once upon a time in America’ or AL Pacino’s Scarface or Brando’s The
Godfather or Scorsese’s Casino or Goodfellas or Gangs of New York or EVERY
FUCKIN GANGSTER MOVIE PLOT.
With so many plot elements taken
up, awaiting in the movie table for a well-balanced, perfect alchemy, they all
ended up getting aimlessly sprinkled in a broken furnace boiling at a lukewarm
temperature. There’s nothing more special, twisted, non-linear or highly
cerebral in Bombay Velvet. Everything in the plot is set plain, laid out straight
and happens so smooth and linear.
As a Kashyap’s fan, I would love
to see the madness in the characters, their untouched and unexplored villainous
gray matter, their hilarious black matter, the translucence in their shyness, steamy awkwardness in their sexual arousal, not punch dialogues, but day-to-day use powerful lines of the
characters that you can quote and remember on top of your head. Do you remember
the countless, memorable scenes from Gangs of Wasseypur with Sardar Khan and
Faizal or the pain, remorse and redemption seeking part of Dev D or every
single character in Ugly or the investigation room sequences from Black Friday…. Even
now, the stabs in the Pehalwan killing scene, and the Dubstep to which the
characters in UGLY move and groove, gives me a shiver. That Kashyap’s magic touch is totally missing
in this movie just like a totally lost, non-cohesive, non-impactful plot in the
film. Largely, it seemed like a wannabe film made by an amateur who was so obsessed
with making a period, rise and fall gangster film and brand/ affix his version
of ‘Bombay’ in it.
I feel that Kashyap was too passionate
and obsessed with this film project that seeing its final outcome itself was
way too overwhelming for him and that had engrossed and overshadowed in
witnessing all the pits and shortcomings in the project. Like, how I got so
absorbed with the disappointment of this movie experience that I keep on
writing its flaws here rather a wee bit mention of the best performances and
the movie’s brilliance in its making process.
As I write this, I try to
remember how drenched my ears were to the sweetness of Hindi Jazz and the
glitz, glamour and glory of Noir-esque, 60s Newyork-esque Bombay, which has
been spectacularly recreated and captured in the frames that audaciously
trumpeted Kashyap’s passion and creativity in the making of Bombay Velvet, but
I standup lost at some point. The experience that I wanted to take away from Kashyap’s
film has been totally robbed, I feel, in spite of all this grandeur in the
film. Emotional chord hasn’t been stricken,
to say the least.
Most of us largely loved
Kashyap’s earlier works, as a whole, and appreciated them by observing the
small nuances and moments that stole our hearts. In case of Bombay Velvet, one
should try to forget the pitfalls and shortcomings, which is way too hard, and somehow
cope up with it. Hey, after all, this young lad, Anurag Kashyap, had reached
Bombay years back, struggled to make a living, stood up against the traditional
movie business, broke or at least shook and questioned the monopoly and quality
of Bollywood films and blazed us all with so many brilliant movies like a powerhouse Tommy gun
on a leash. This boy had stridden against high tides so many times and this one
time he deeply bruised an ice rock but didn’t hit a rock bottom. Let’s give him
a hand, put this behind us and wait to see what else he has in store for us. I’m
sure he will be back with a bang, once again. After all, he is our Johnny who
loves to take a beating, every now and then, but doesn’t wait long to give back
one.
P.S. As a hardcore Pudupettai fan, most of the time, I couldn’t stop myself thinking and comparing few scenes and dialogues of Bombay Velvet with Pudupettai. Kokki Kumaru character and
Pudupettai will never fail to amaze and amuse me.
