Dev.D - Movie Review
Published: April 11, 2011
Starring Abhay Deol, Kalki Koechlin, Mahi Gill
Director Anurag Kashyap, one of India's most exciting experimental filmmakers, flips a classic on its head with his modern adaptation of the 1917 novella Devdas. Over the last century, the novella has been made into a film 12 times, in various Indian languages, including three Hindi versions. Kashyap's is the latest and perhaps the last. He scrubs the story of melodrama so that Dev's dissipation is not romantic, as in past film versions, but strictly pathological. Dev is a self-destructive narcissist, an emotional sadomasochist, a chauvinist with a madonna/whore complex. He can't comprehend the totality of women, and therefore, he's miserable. The novella is a simple story, sparsely written, and Kashyap's narrative style is likewise economical, even as his trippy visuals capture the simultaneously seductive and repellent mash-up of intoxication.
There's no trace of affection between Dev (Abhay Deol) and his childhood sweetheart Paro (Mahi Gill); they don't even seem that attracted to each other, and their failed attempts at sex couldn't be less sexy. No pillow talk here—the insults fly: he calls her ugly more than once and she mocks his manhood (rightly so—he's an ineffectual wimp). Even though he's fooling around behind her back, he dumps her when he hears she's doing the same. He later learns the rumor is false, but does nothing to stop her wedding to a man of her parents' choosing. Once Paro's marriage takes her off the market and restores her to honorability, Dev punishes himself with alcohol for letting her go. (Kashyap also adds drug use to Dev's debauchery.)
When Dev ends up in a romantic relationship with a prostitute, Chanda (Kalki Koechlin), he doesn't have sex with her either. Like Paro, Chanda is a complete person, sexuality and all, which confounds Dev and which Chanda comes to understand about herself over the course of the film. In this version, Chanda is reinterpreted—she's still the cliché hooker with a heart of gold, but here she's unapologetic about her profession. She isn't resigned to her lot; she willingly revels in it. Kashyap invents a backstory for Chanda—why she became a prostitute—a tale of sexual exploration and parental rejection. In this version, Dev offers Chanda something in exchange for the care she gives him—resolution.
In film after film, doomed love drove the forever-flawed Dev to drink himself to death over and over again. He never learned, he never changed. He was a broken record that never stopped resonating with audiences. But for Kashyap, enough was enough. After this definitive version, how could there be another?
Dev.D is rated Must See.
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