He is moody, whimsical and erratic. And yet you can never have enough of filmmaker Anurag Kashyap. His films are often marred by controversies and not always accepted by the audience at large, but they have always played an important part in bringing positive change to Hindi films.
From realistic, hard hitting narrative to technique, Kashyap brought a fresh lease of life in the 1990s with his unique style of filmmaking. Some would say his style was similar to Hollywood's Quentin Tarantino, but the director managed to infuse an Indian element into each of his films.
On his 43rd birthday, we list the four films that Anurag Kashyap was associated with and which changed Indian cinema for the better.
Satya: Ram Gopal Verma's film 'Satya' featuring lesser known actors like J. D. Chakravarthy and Manoj Bajpai took India by storm when it released in 1998. Not only was the film lauded for its performances but the makers were also appreciated to having the courage to narrate the story of the Mumbai underworld albeit through fiction. The film's story, which is considered the backbone of any film, was written by the supremely talented Anurag Kashyap and actor par excellence Saurabh Shukla. The duo were able to weave a hard hitting story of a youth who comes to Mumbai in search of a job, but instead gets embroiled in the underworld. The film paved the way for many such gangster films- some which were directed by Verma himself but none attained the cult status the way this film did.
Black Friday: It took years to get the censor nod to release this film. But we are glad that it did make it to the theater. A poignant narrative of the 93 blast that took place in Bombay, the film was very well scripted, narrating both sides of the story. Based on S. Hussain Zaidi's book 'Black Friday - The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts' the film gave an eerie yet very realistic account of what took place post the balst as well as what led to the blast that shook Bombay in the early 1990s. The film had mostly dark frames, less dialogues and many of the scenes were shot in actual locations in Bombay. The film also inspired Hollywood director Danny Boyle in making the Oscar winning film 'Slumdog Millionaire'. Boyle mentioned that the opening chase sequence in 'Slumdog..' was inspired from the "12-minute police chase through the crowded Dharavi slum" in 'Black Friday'.
Dev D: Who would have thought that the lovelorn protagonist from a Bengali novel written in the 1920s could be so cool! Kashyap changed the way we perceive Devdas, a popular character from Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's book by the same name, and gave the story a very modern twist. So Devdas became Dev, a rich brat from Punjab who nurses his heartbreak by drowning himself in alcohol and smoking up joints and Chandramukhi became Chanda, a rich girl with a scandalous MMS in her past.
Gangs Of Wasseypur: Revenge sagas have been depicted several times in Bollywood. But 'Gangs Of Wasseypur' took the story in the heartland and made it revenge saga spanning over decades and generations. With an ensemble cast comprising of mostly new faces, Kashyap made GOW in two parts- each giving a detailed account of two warring families in Wasseypur- a land of coal mafia. The film had the most revolutionary music courtesy Sneha Khanwalkar , which blended modern tunes with folk brilliantly. The film should also be credited for giving Bollywood one of the best actors of present times- Nawazuddin Siddiqui.
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