Gangs of Wasseypur, Anurag Kashyap's epic crime saga sprawling over 6 decades, is the portrayal of the rural, trigger-happy India we've been waiting for. Characters don't belt out profanities in the range of kutte and kaminey, but speak their mind without worrying about the censor-board. Forget about thinking twice before pulling the trigger, people die here by the dozens for very petty reasons. Without going into the story, I'll just say the film has, at its center, Sardar Khan and his rivalry with Ramadhir Singh.
Sardar is like a mad dog and saying that he has a penchant for ultra-violence and lawlessness would be putting it slightly. He’s also like that monkey which pulls the tiger’s tail. Killing is easier, but defeating a person in every imaginable way is, we are told, more fun. Sardar has one mission in life since he was a boy, and it is to destroy Ramadhir. Like The Joker who had not the slightest intention of killing the Batman, Sardar's life is incomplete without Ramadhir Singh. This all-consuming rivalry unravels leisurely over many fascinating set-pieces.
Revenge has been the subject of many Hindi films from the notorious 70s and 80s. Kashyap’s admiration for the Amitabh Bachchan films belonging to that period shows as he pays homage to Trishul, Kalnayak, etc. Wasseypur too, I’d argue, has the template of a 80s revenge drama, but it is the treatment which sets them miles apart.
This is the most important Indian movie since the previous most important Indian movie. It takes the story back to rural India which remains unaffected from the westernisation. Many movies have had rural India as its subject but they were social movies passing judgments about everything that is wrong about the place. Wasseypur never judges its characters and their actions. It never says there’s anything wrong with them. Infidelity, rape, murder, dacoity defines them, and they are not ashamed of it. Like one character says, “Iddhar kabootar bhi ekh pankh se udta hai, aur dusra pankh se apni ijjat bachata hai.” They are who they are and it simply documents a saga which could have taken place in any of the thousands towns in India.
As time passes, characters find different ways to harms each other as they mature from desi bombs and pistols to automatics. There’s karma if you look for it and dollops of poetic justice. But in spite of the little tussles, the movie continually gave this impression that Ramadhir was always on the receiving end. One of my problems with the movie is that the narrative is linear as fuck. Imagine starting with Vito Andolini's birth in Corleone and then going all the way to killing of the heads of the five families. I don't even understand why we even need to know about Sardar Khan's father. I agree it gives another generation's foundation to the rivalry, apart from also giving it a history, but it simply comes across as a deliberate attempt to make it seem grander than it actually is.
I really wish I had seen the 5-hour version which has been playing at film-festivals. There are so many sub-plots which are hanging in the balance and it feels odd when the closure you get is not the kind you expect. Most of the developments which will go on to shape a character in the sequel look very incomplete. For example, the love-track between Sardar’s younger son Faizal and Sultan’s sister, though entertaining, goes nowhere at the end of part 1. I understand there is little the maker could do to rectify this but it felt odd.
The dialogues are just the right amount of crackling without making the characters look like a bunch of smart-asses. Sardar's wife Nagma, played wonderfully by Richa Chadda, is the second most memorable character in the film. The single most gratifying part of watching Wasseypur is that its characters had the liberty of using profanity in whichever way and magnitude they wished to. And it feels so right.
Sardar is so fascinating you sort of root for him in spite of knowing what he's made up of. But the movie is so expansive and meandering that I sort of lost interest in his pursuit and simply sat there taking in whatever it threw at me. I couldn’t write anything about the movie last night and I was disappointed in it. But now I can say Wasseyur is, without a doubt, a fine piece of work and everyone must watch it. It is simply too entertaining to miss.