A lot of what I wrote about Gangs of Wasseypur I can be said about the sequel. Gangs of Wasseypur II… is a sprawling, picaresque saga set in and around the mining community in Dhanbad (formerly of Bihar; now belonging to Jharkhand)… [and] where films revolving around a hero (or an antihero, a khalnayak) usually become fixated with their every movement to the extent that this hero (or antihero) shows up in every scene, [Anurag] Kashyap tells the story of [Sardar Khan’s son] through the people around him, the people who came before him, and those who come after him… On a formal level, this is easily Kashyap’s most fascinating outing… The film unfolds as a series of voiceovers, a flurry of dates and names, a cavalcade of memorable scenes… [This] is a diffuse epic, content to coast around the revenge plot instead of making it the thrust of its narrative – and what the film loses in terms of dramatic power, it gains in texture…
Several scenes touch upon the hero-villain dynamic that drove a lot of the cinema of the eras this film is set in, but [Kashyap] is not interested in going there…. [Kashyap] isn’t even interested in showcasing [Sardar Khan’s son] as a towering figure, someone capable of anchoring all this churn of activity. The man comes off, frankly, as a bit of a clown… For a film that spans decades, there are no flashy signposts. But for the pattern of a sweater, a film song, a movie poster, we could be in the same time period. The people stay the same, as does the place… [The film] goes after anything and everything in its quest to sweep us through its story, even tongue-in-cheek film references – there’s an homage to [the Don being gunned down while buying fruit, and Michael’s reluctant submission to his father’s world] in The Godfather…
Gangs of Wasseypur II begins at the end of the earlier film, with Durga’s [Reemma Sen] betrayal and Sardar Khan’s [Manoj Bajpai] assassination at a petrol bunk. The death of this fatally flawed man is suffused with some poignancy because his last act was a generous one, a responsible one, handing over to his [second] family a sum of money. And after his death, as his body is borne away, we see not his face but the head he shaved upon his father’s death at the hands of Ramadhir Singh (Tigmanshu Dhulia), and we are reminded about the oath that lies unfulfilled. There are other reminders as well. This film, too, begins at Faizal Khan’s (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) home and wanders into the little lanes around it. When Faizal Khan catches his mother Naghma (Richa Chaddha) being consoled by Farhan (Piyush Mishra), we recall the time he stumbled upon them almost having sex, and now, even under far more innocent circumstances, Farhan lowers his eyes in guilt and shame. (And later, as he did in the earlier film, Farhan flagellates himself when faced with sex, coming off like a puritan simultaneously drawn to and repelled by fleshly pleasures.)
As in Part I, Faizal seeks Mohsina’s (Huma Qureshi) “permission” to have sex with her, and here too, Sneha Khanwalkar’s songs prove the perfect complement to Kashyap’s narrative, occupying the exact mid-ground between down-to-earth (and therefore invisible) realism and shtick-figured, attention-grabbing kitsch. For additional music, we have, like before, Yashpal Sharma, as a troubadour specialising in the Shabbir Kumar oeuvre. (In the theatre I saw the film in, he got the biggest laughs. And unlike other metro-centric filmmakers who wear their RD Burman affiliations like a badge of cool, Kashyap knows that the real India was more in tune with Laxmikant-Pyarelal.) The times have changed. The excerpt from Trishul in Part I gives way to a scene from Maine Pyar Kiya. But Ramadhir Singh hasn’t changed. His mobile phone erupts with the ring tone of the Gayatri mantra (as a contrast, a minor character’s ring tone is Koyal si teri boli), and he says, in all seriousness, “Hindustan mein jab tak cinema hai, log chutiya bante jayenge.”
But we don’t take this statement seriously. We laugh at it because if cinema didn’t exist, Kashyap wouldn’t exist. It’s like the anti-smoking warning on a pack of cigarettes – it means nothing to the addict. Gangs of Wasseypur would not have been possible if Kashyap hadn’t been so drunk on cinema – like Quentin Tarantino, the universe he creates is drawn less from life around us than how the movies have depicted life around us. And his peculiar achievement – and, finally, a praiseworthy one – is that he draws from our cinema and, at the same time, denounces it. His style of narration reminded me of a dialogue from Part I, when Sardar Khan shoots at someone, misses, and then confronts the man who made the gun. Of the weapon’s faulty aim, he says, “Maarte hain kasaai mohalla, jaata hai kalkatta.” (And how can you not smile at this line, which carries more colour and flavour than the entire set of dialogues of most movies.) Kashyap’s narrative, similarly, looks towards revenge and lands up everywhere else, at least till the end. There’s a character, here, named Tangent – that could be the name of the film.
These digressions are a bit much at times. When Mani Ratnam brought to the mainstream the use of vignettes with Iruvar, telling a story through flashes of memory rather than overly expository scenes, it looked like at least a few filmmakers might latch on to this style, but no one till Kashyap has – and he takes this style to its extreme, where these vignettes are everything. When a character slings a cobra (yes, a cobra) around his neck and saunters about (when asked why he did it, he shrugs, “sexy lag raha tha”), we find it amusing, but it’s hard also not to wish that they’d get on with it. We are torn, constantly, between the scenic wonders along the way, so compelling that they demand that we stop and stare, and the need to reach the destination. Like Part I, Gangs of Wasseypur II works on a scene-by-scene level rather than as a cohesive whole. And you may wonder, as I did, about some of Kashyap’s choices. For instance, why begin Part I with a scene that occurs midway through the second half of Part II?
As a result, we never care for these characters or feel any genuine emotion (at the end, for instance, which takes place in Mumbai in 2009 and at least looks like a poignant coda) – but the only way Gangs of Wasseypur can be considered is by treating it as a super-elaborate postmodern prank rather than a traditional dramatic narrative. The rules, accordingly, are broken everywhere. As with Part I, scenes of horrifying brutality alternate with stretches of burlesque. At one point, Danish shoots down someone and continues shooting at the corpse and then, for dessert, sticks a knife into the dead man’s eye; he returns home and hands his mother the bullet shell casings, like Bheema returning to Draupadi with a handful of Dushasana’s blood. And this very traditional, mythical, emotional scene coexists with a deadpan moment where Faizal shoots down a man in a circle of men, and the person closest to the gun, the one most affected by the noise of firing, pulls at his ear as if chasing away an irksome fly.
At times, it appears that the only ingredient in Kashyap’s khichdi is black comedy, or just plain comedy – from the names of the characters (Definite, Perpendicular, Tangent) to the bit of business about a boy slipping his feet into a friend’s slippers to the difference in size between the scrawny Faizal and the deliciously voluptuous Mohsina (Qureshi is simply wonderful, a self-aware beauty queen from the hinterlands who models herself after heroines), who is taller and broader than him. When they get married and finally consummate their relationship, Kashyap stages a scene of broad slapstick, with the sounds of a bed being pounded and a picture falling off the wall due to these vibrations. The scene is funnier when we imagine the couple together, this tiny man flailing about to consume this bigger woman. And later, when Mohsina visits Faizal in jail, they look at each other through the wire mesh – it’s like he’s a love-struck fan pressing his face against the close-up of a movie star on a screen.
But this comedy serves a purpose. It reminds us that the serious side of life is supplemented by the silly side. But more importantly, it deflates the traditional model of heroism in our cinema, where the heroes are equipped with single-minded purpose, which is to vanquish the villain who walks around with a maniacal cackle and an evil glint in the eye. The entirely sombre Ramadhir Singh, the bad guy, is (as the Godfather movies might put it) just a businessman who had to (literally) eliminate some rivals in order to survive, and Faizal Khan, also a bad guy (though performing the duties of the good guy in the movies), is a druggie whose methods suggest that it’s a miracle he’s still alive. He doesn’t seem all that invested in his mission – if it could be called that – to avenge his father’s death, certainly not to the extent that Amitabh Bachchan was in his movies that defined heroism for an entire generation.
In the film’s finest sequence, which expands on the attack on Faizal’s home that began Part I, Faizal doesn’t confront his attackers. He, instead, climbs up to the terrace and jumps to the adjacent terrace and shimmies down a wall and breaks his foot and winces with pain and enlists the help of a neighbour to return home. And instantly, a hero, a protagonist, is reduced to a mere man, who has to visit the doctor to treat this broken bone and walk around in a plaster cast afterwards. This, Kashyap tells us, is what avengers are like – fools, sidetracked by love stories (Faizal is as much a fool for Mohsina as his father was for Durga), men with vague aims but without concrete plans. And this could be the reason for beginning Part I with this shootout – perhaps Kashyap was pointing to his intentions of myth-busting, as opposed to all those films where a revenge-oriented plot enabled heroic myth-making.
Even his hero is not the traditionally manly Danish (Vineet Kumar), who asserts his traditional manliness by stuffing his gun down the front of his pants, but the ganja-loving second son, whose smoking isn’t coy, like we’ve seen in the movies, with characters cupping their hands around their mouth – he sucks in the fumes like a vampire feasting on a long-denied infusion of lifeblood. Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s performance is remarkable. He draws on this character trait and plays his part with an addict’s remoteness and cluelessness. (The scene where he demands to know what a pager does is a beauty.) At first, when Sardar Khan’s news reaches home and we see Danish so emotionally overwrought and Faizal in a stupor, we think it’s because he’s in shock. But soon we see that that’s how he is – he walks through life in a drugged-out daze. Kashyap’s two-part saga is, for the first time in our cinema, an acknowledgement of the accidental hero.
Copyright ©2012 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Baradwaj Rangan 
tejas
August 12, 2012
Black humor it is.
The sequence when Phejal’s house is attacked is one of the finest in quite some time. How Faisal goes to the terrace and fumbles though the dark, with us fumbling along, is beautifully shot and keeps the tension alive.
Another amazing scene was when the gang of boys is following Sultan Khan in Bhagalpur.
The bond between ladies was something Kashyap could explore a little more. All these women, with their men living on the edge day-in day-out, were connected at more personal level than regular saas-bahus in our films and often in real life. I was hoping for some sort of reaction from Naghma after Shama was shot down. Kashyap didn’t go there, just like he didn’t go to a lot of other possible avenues.
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rameshram
August 12, 2012
The campaign : takes a perfectly good premise and a lot of potential fun and ruins it with taking itself too seriously. its good for a few giggles and many nuanced inside jokes but it bombs like a romney campaign speech.
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Anjali Singh
August 12, 2012
O my god…what a perfect review!
Could not find a single fault,though i was trying hard.
Bravo!
“but the only way Gangs of Wasseypur can be considered is by treating it as a super-elaborate postmodern prank rather than a traditional dramatic narrative.”
B Rangan has some brains after all.
I wish Rajeev Masand learns from him.
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Anjali Singh
August 12, 2012
I must add that some of the greatest literary works of 20th century have been super elaborate postmodern pranks and are rarely burdened with the devices and stereotypical conflict of a traditional dramatic narrative.
Ulysses,Catch 22,Trial,Lolita,etc
Artist is a supreme prankster…much like the joker above us.
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S a m i S a a y e r (@SamiSaayer)
August 12, 2012
i had a plan to write on this subject but not anymore after reading your piece as you have covered almost everything. there were a few questions that were not answered though.
1. why did definite say to his guys that faijal should not win the elections when he wanted to kill him anyway? how did that make a difference?
2. when faijal cries with mohsina on the roof admitting that he was ‘accidental hero’ as you put it, when did kashyap show mishra asking for tea? was it just for added milieu or did it have any significance.
definite was a winning character in the film. no wonder zeishan wanted to play that role. you could’ve added a bit on chi cha leather chase sequence.
very nice post.
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Utkal Mohanty
August 12, 2012
The most accurate summing up of the series yet. You have said pretty much all wanted to say about the film.
Three insights that you ofer sum up the essence of the film very well:
“And his peculiar achievement – and, finally, a praiseworthy one – is that he draws from our cinema and, at the same time, denounces it. ”
” – but the only way Gangs of Wasseypur can be considered is by treating it as a super-elaborate postmodern prank rather than a traditional dramatic narrative..”
” This, Kashyap tells us, is what avengers are like – fools, sidetracked by love stories (Faizal is as much a fool for Mohsina as his father was for Durga), men with vague aims but without concrete plans. ”
Happy to see you mention that bit about the musical styles of RD Burman and Laxmikant Pyarelal. I ahd elabortaed thus on this in my post at another blog, trying to explain the genius of Anurag in using Indian pop culture and Indian pop music:
“it is not just about a Bollywood song playing during funeral. It ‘s the kind of song that is being sung and how it is being sung. yiou know, the two songs he uses during the the two funeral processions: ” Yaad teri aayegi’ and ‘ Teri meherbaniya” – these are kind of Nadeem-Shravan or Laxmikant-Pyarelal kind of melodies as opposed to RD Burman or AR Rahman kind of melodies. These are the kind of songs sung bu Mohd Rafi. Munna, Shabbir Ali or Mohd aziz as against singers like Kishore Kumar or Hariharan. In other words : less sophisticated more earthy. The singing style is over the top, uber-sentimental…where you hold nothing back, and let it all hang out. This is the kind of song patronized hugely by the muslim hoi polloi , but also by rural and small-town Indians in general. To even a slightly more sophisticated tastes it sounds very banal. But a large segment of Indians empathize with it. That’s how the traditional Indians are, not shy of demonstrating their deepest emotions in public. And Bollywood songs have been operating as the soundtrack to people’s lives for years. The core appeal of these songs become apparent when a brass band plays these songs during a wedding. But they could as well play them during a funeral. Anurag’s masterstroke is in making it look as if they routinely play Bollywood songs during funeral. And the way Yashpal performs it is seen to be belived. He catches the very essence of these songs and their appeal. Note especiaaly the point where he abruptly stops, counts upto 5 beats on his fingers, and then launches into a glass-shattering high octave passage of the song.”
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AV
August 12, 2012
This is the best possible review one could have written of this film!
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Anjali Singh
August 12, 2012
@ Samisaayer
In reply to your 2nd question:
2. when faijal cries with mohsina on the roof admitting that he was ‘accidental hero’ as you put it, when did kashyap show mishra asking for tea? was it just for added milieu or did it have any significance?
There is a significance.drinking tea always involves chuski. chuski means to relish and savour the flavour of something.Kashyap is making fun of faizal’s cry baby act…in a way trying to say “ki audience ab chuski le le kar bhaavnao ki chaii peeyenge.”
The weeping of Faizal was the one scene in the film which made me laugh out the loudest.it was obvious that it has been put deliberately by anurag.
It showed the futility of “rona dhona” before the compulsions of violence.
The dialogues Faizal uttered while weeping were the usual claptrap…. bollywood characters in crisis have been mouthing since time immemorial and thus the myth of hamlet lives on.
In that one single scene anurag subverted all the crisis/catharsis/chutiyapa….the drama loving audience loves to consume as emotional porn.That is the reason why those who were looking for emotional content in that scene were left unsatisfied.
One comes across such things only in films.
How many real life dons cry in actual life at the injustice of their situation?
the consolations given by a physically more imposing Huma to her cry baby..by repeating the black humorous lines…”frustiyao nahi moora”…further stresses the subversion.
The film is a relentless subversion of bollywoodism and melodrama.
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Rahul
August 12, 2012
I haven’t had the chance to see any of the films yet, but just a fleeting thought on subversion and irony – I know these are what one may call a device, or a conscious choice on the part of the director\writer, but I see it more as the natural state of things. Its the nature of traditional appropriation of language and communication to simplify and create a binary picture of the world – I see irony as an internal reaction within language to offset the binary nature of expression- Its not that one is more real than the other, but that subversion\irony and traditional expression both exist in a sort of symbiotic relationship – and depending on where you are standing – you can call the other one a “stylized prank” .
In fact I do realize that I am creating a false binary here between subversion\irony and the so called “traditional expression” ,..
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Abhirup.
August 12, 2012
A very good read, as usual. However, I am a little perplexed as to what you mean when you say that kashyap draws from Indian films but also “denounces” them. Did you mean “subverts” when you wrote “denounces”? Because to denounce something is to publicly criticize, condemn and reject it, and I don’t think that is what kashyap does here. Sure, he approaches the revenge drama in a very different way, but in my opinion, he is affectionate, even respectful, towards the ‘masala’ movie traditions, given the abundant references to popular cinema that are strewn across both parts of this film.
As for Faizal being the “first” accidental hero in our cinema, I watched a film titled ‘Main Azaad Hoon’ a few weeks ago. Wouldn’t you say that the character played by Amitabh Bachchan there was also an accidental hero?
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Sudipta Bhattacharjee
August 12, 2012
BR – agree with every word. Somehow, a lot of mainstream reviewers are trashing this by focussing too much on the meandering nature of the film, the non-conformity with the traditional narrative styles, its self-indulgence etc – why can’t people understand that not every film can be judged by the same parameters?
By the way, didn’t you feel that Zeeshan Qadri (playing ‘Definite’) has given a new meaning altogether to the phrase ‘author-backed role’? 🙂 Also, as competent as Nawajuddin was, I somehow longed for Manoj Bajpayee – what a fire-cracker of a performance his was! Nawaj lacked Manoj’s charisma and screen presence (or may be thats what the role demanded). Given how this is a subversion of all things bollywood, Manoj could have played the son also, right (like Rajesh Khanna in ‘Aradhana’, Amitabh in several films)? or do you think THAT would have been too much? 🙂
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Utkal Mohanty
August 12, 2012
Sudipta Bhattacharya: I too longed for Manoj Bajpayee, but only fora while. ( He was terific in Part 1, no two ways about iut). But Nawajuddin soon came onto his own, and come on, he was more than competent. Over the length of the film, he too creates his own charisma.
AS for the mainstream critics, woh log nahin sudhurenge. After all that exposure to world cinema they still dont understand that a story or plot is not the film; it’s not even essential toa film. A plot is merely a prop to hang a lot of other things on. Fora Woody Allen film it is his one liners, and ironical takes on human relationship. For Tarkovsky it is his amazing Visuals and the philoosphical questions. for Bergman it is the pirecing gaze into human existence, loneliness, loss, death.
Plot is waht you give to childen. There was a rabbit. There was a tortoise. There is no background noise. There is no texture. It is just the story. For adults, it is the background and the texture that si often richer than the plot, or the story.
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Arturo Belano
August 13, 2012
Why so many ellipses?
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Vasisht Das
August 13, 2012
Gift-Horse Syndrome ? :
it’s a pity that when it comes to moustaches / beards / wigs / ageing-makeup etc we are still amateurish in some of the most competent and well-crafted of our movies.
(even vishal bharadwaj has often bemoaned this while mentioning the awful nails of shabana azmi playing the witch in his Makdee and Priyanka’s ageing makeup in Saath Khoon Maaf).
the actresses are particularly careless about their nail-colour, hair-colour / blowdryed finish when playing older or non-urban characters. most of main characters have their hair near perfectly in place even when are getting out of bed. (tamizh cinema is much better in this regard!)
like i said, one almost feels embarassed to nitpick in a rare, delicious thaali like Gangs of Wasseypur but what to do about greed ? 😉
thank you dr.rangan for almost shutting up most of us from trying to shoot our mouths off about yet another provocative movie; your reviews of the two GOW movies was like reading a whole thesis – minus the obfuscating academic rhetoric (whew, even that is a mouthful!)
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Gradwolf
August 13, 2012
Not sure about the longing for Manoj Bajpai in the 2nd film. Nawazuddin was so awesome that it is really difficult to look beyond him. IMO he chews and spits anything Manoj Bajpai did in the first film (and of course, Bajpai was brilliant). The performance here is the greatest thing (in addition to Kashyap’s filmmaking – Khan household storming tracking shot, the chase sequence and Sultan killing) that lifts the relatively weaker part 2. Part 2 is more straight shooting revenge saga than Part 1, which was more sprawling and convoluted in every way (of course taken together, the 5.5 hour film is proper epic). Faizal Khan blew my mind.
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Govardhan Giridass
August 13, 2012
Anna, idhu ongalke nallayirukka?
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Sahithi
August 13, 2012
I don’t always look for a plot in films. I try to be ‘in the moment’ and go with the flow without expecting an arc or closure etc. My only problem with part 2 was – there were too many such ‘moments’ which eventually became repetitive. I’d have enjoyed it much much more if the length had been cut to a decent size and I could watch both one after another.
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anon
August 13, 2012
I haven’t seen either of the films but I just wanted to say that that Siddiqui is charismatic as hell.
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Parallel
August 13, 2012
If I were to scrutinize this article rigorously to find a word or two of discord to what I thought about the film, I’d be doing a great disservice to your brilliant articulation; in much the same way that the nitpicks a pedantic micro-review of GoW could throw up, would essentially be finding a point that should’ve been missed.
This is a remarkable film (both the sum and its parts), with so many delicious nuggets that you’d want to go back to it once every few days for a few months. It is in some ways, an intentional, polished Gunda. I am glad when they said this would be Kashyap’s first commercial film, they meant it in the more literal sort of a way.
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Utkal Mohanty
August 14, 2012
I dont want to get into whether Anurag Kashyap is the greatest Indian film director right now or not as it is a futile exercise. But he is certainly up their among the best ever.
At this moment it is more pertinent to celebrate the burst of creativity he has brought into the Indian film scene. I felt the same exhilaration upon seeing GOW 1 & 2 as when reading A Hundred Years of Solitude for the first time. Wasseypur is Macondo for me. It is a totally misplaced to bring in Godftaher in the context of Wasseypur. Godfather is a straight narrative like any Hollywood film. Of course it is a very good narrative with many resonances, but ultimately it is a conventional drama where the story from A to B to C.
GOW is anything but that. It is a multi-layered cultural product that mixes conventional narrative, drama, songs, buffoonery, folk humour, linguistic invention ( Womaniya, Setrightway karo, ), pop culture, poetry ( Ek bagal mein chand), in a crazy mix that also has a unique auteur’s signature.
That is why it is more Marquez and Cervantes than Godfather. Though I must add even the Marquez parallel can only partly hint wht GOW is like. In the end, it is a fiercely original work so steeped in Indian roots and speaking a new cinematic language.
We should not go around expecting critics foreign or Indian to get it all in one go. Though I must admit Rangan has made a very good beginning.
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rameshram
August 14, 2012
“I dont want to get into whether Anurag Kashyap is the greatest Indian film director right now or not as it is a futile exercise. But he is certainly up their among the best ever.”
dear utkal uncle i havent seen gangs but if your use of hyperbole here is anything like the paroxyms of joy people exhibit when rangudu writes some random shit( in the truest sense of the phrase), then i must agree and admit that in the exact same sense Anurag kashyap is among the greatest directors ever.
The sense being ” oh won’t someone please notice my existence at least if i say ridiculously superlative things about SOMETHING!”
since i have stopped watching anurag kashyap films three or so years ago, i have no way of knowing if he makes worthy movies, so i cant debate this with you no matter how much you thicken the bait….so …maybe the next film we both happen to see?
maybe? 🙂
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brangan
August 17, 2012
Anjali Singh: “B Rangan has some brains after all.” Thank you for that rare compliment. Very reassuring.
Abhirup: What I meant was that his narrative is, on the outside, structured like our films usually are (hence he “draws from” them), but within this outline the shadings are very different, contradicting what we’ve been led to expect from our movies (hence he “denounces” them.)
Sahithi: I agree that “there were too many such ‘moments’ which eventually became repetitive,” but I suspect this is what will make the movie endure. Each viewing, I think, will show up newer highlights, we’ll like different ‘moments’ from the ones we liked earlier…
Arturo Belano: Because those first couple of paras are quotes from my review of Part 1.
Gradwolf: “Not sure about the longing for Manoj Bajpai in the 2nd film.”
Me too. Didn’t miss him at all. If anything, I missed Reemma Sen. Thought she could have used a few more scenes, considering how she drives the conclusions of both Part 1 and Part 2.
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Abhirup.
August 17, 2012
Oh, I get that, Mr. Rangan. All I said was that “denounces” is probably not the right word to use here, for kashyap clearly is too deeply influenced by Indian commercial cinema to “denounce” it, for, as I said, denunciation means to reject something out of contempt. That is certainly not the case here.
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Nitin
September 8, 2012
BR,
You have to mention RD Burman when LP songs are chosen, to get eyebrows raised by caRD carrying members, huh!! 🙂
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