Gulaal

Gulaal is about a simple man’s anger and outburst against the corrupt, rusted system have been seen and forgotten by the dozen, and Anurag Kashyap’s Gulaal turns out to be just a statistical addition to the list.

The movie is a telling statement on the degeneration in the political structure both at the micro level of student politics and the macro level of power-hungry, who stop at nothing to realize their political ambitions. The movie casts Kay Kay Menon, Raj Singh Chaudhary, Mahi Gill, Jesse Randhawa, Aditya Shrivastava, Piyush Mishra, Mukesh Bhatt, Abhimanyu Shekhar Singh, Pankaj Jha, Deepak Dobriyal and Ayesha Mohan.

The film 'Gulaal' is all about love, rage, power and politics. It unfolds the story of an innocent college student Dilip (Raj Singh Chaudhary), who is pushed into politics.

‘Gulaal’ is essentially a character driven story that seems to get too verbose at places. The dialogues are expectedly sprinkled with expletives because the director wanted them to sound ‘real’. The cinematography by Rajeev Ravi is superb. Music and lyrics by Piyush Mishra are fascinating.

If there’s anything truly worth watching in ‘Gulaal’ it’s the performances by the ensemble of talented actors from Kay Kay Menon as the devious Dukey Bana to Deepak Dobriyal as his assistant or Mahi Gill as his mistress.

Newcomer Raj Singh Chaudhary has an unassuming persona and very well portrays the inner transformation of his character. Ayesha Mohan and Aditya Shrivastava as the brother sister duo are terrific in their individual performances.

All said, ‘Gulaal’ is a seething, simmering, but tortuously predictable tale of all that’s rotten in the system. The director has pooled all his anger and cynicism against the system and revealed it on the screen to be smacked at the faces of hapless viewers in the form of ‘Gulaal’.

Frankly, with Gulaal, Anurag Kashyap has once again proved himself; his versatile, prolific and ardent direction is utterly commendable.