Dev.D: Romance/Love/Passion

And then I watched DevD.

This is a post-modern version of the Sarat Chandra classic which Shah Rukh Khan had portrayed most recently. But this is altogether a different canvas. Its about the modern times and its pain. Its about the lovelessness. It ceases to be a celebration of love from the word go. Here Devdas (Dev here) never gets into love. He searches for it through out the movie.

This Dev calls up her Paro from UK to know if she touches herself! And the same Dev nonchalantly confirms having sex with another-girl-in-the-marriage-ceremony when he suspects that Paro might have been having it with someone else before his arrival from London. He can call up an arranger (Chunnilal) to get a girl for him. When Chunnilal meets Dev - he asks if Dev likes to mix – Dev nods and later ends up in the bed of a blonde hooker who calls herself Chanda (Chandramukhi) who had earlier in her school days got involved into a MMS scandal and was dumped by her family and was later picked up by the hookers! Uhff!!!

After Paro gets married with one Bhuvan as Dev rejects her love, Dev starts living in a Paharganj (Delhi) room where the graffiti in the wall has a Kali image having George Bush’s face along with the Peace symbol and other nonsense. His lovelessness pushes him to the undergrounds. He drives a BMW – and gets booked for a hit & run case. He keeps spending his industrialist father’s money like a king till his demise – and then literally comes down to the road banging public phone booth machine to get the coins.

He makes love with multiple girls - but never with Paro. He gets irritated when Paro says she is quite happy with her hubby and reminds him of his aukadh. He throws her out of his room and locks himself again.

The movie bangs you at your head with the harshness of the modern times at almost every sequences – Dev asking Paro to send a nude pic (and the desperation of Paro to send that), Dev’s phone sex with Paro, the Bhatinda guy being greeted by a band party at Chandigarh airport when he returns back from UK (Toyota Camry behind a Tractor full of band), the father scolding Dev for deteriorating taste (from whiskey to vodka, from asli ladki to thin girls), the now-famous scene of Paro carrying blankets to the field to make love with Dev, Dev’s realization that Paro knows the game too well and the consequent rejection, Paro’s rejection later when Dev is stuck in the Paharganj room and wants to make love with her, the “Mahilaye” (Ladies – hindi) written in bus without the “M”, the student-in-day-hooker-in-night life, Chanda’s self-proclamation of herself to be CSW (commercial sex worker), the con man in taxi wallah (who later says sorry when caught up) and Dev’s attempt to escape from the maddening crowd into the Himalayas.
The movie ends up in a different tone compared to the previous versions of Devdas - Dev running away from the cops to find a new meaning of life with Chanda.

The story leaves a sense restlessness and emptiness. The oversexed protagonist tries to play around with the darker side of romance. The non-linear narration, the follow-my-eyes camera movement, the alcohol-influenced night shots puts you in a sense of dizziness where you try to reaffirm the basics of relationships and romance. The movie never tries to be soft - the cinematography, the fast forwards, the blood-from-the-nose-in-water, the closeups - all adds up to the corrosiveness of the act.

Go and watch this movie if you want to challenge yourself with your modernity score. Please mind that if you are rating it as vulgar, possibly you have not moved on - and thats the only way of survival in this changing world.