DEEPAK KARNAMKOTIL Anurag Kashyap .... yes.. that's the name everyone looks before going to watch a movie which has new actors, director, music directors, weird movie title (every body expects the title "Shaitan" to be associated with a horror one). And Anurag did it again by just being a produce. Its like "the MIDAS touch". First, i was never going to watch this movie, but just gave a shot coz i am a huge fan of Anurag Kashyap. And.. taddaa ! I was not disappointed, even though the director is Bijoy Nambiar. About Direction - Nambiar has his own style, can say the Guy Ritchie of Bollywood. Super slow motion, more involvement of camera as a character, fast paced flash backs, witty narration and good background music. About actors - Really believable.. 'that's what is required in a movie'. Most of the lead actors were new ,but were well seasoned campaigners from the TV channels. Rajiv Khandelwal's role was very impact full, so was all the support actors. About Music - Perfect ! just fitted the movie. It was just a character of the movie. Am really upset and wondering that ... y the songs.. "Khoya khoya chand and Hawa hawai" is not there in the OST? :(About the Movie - Its the best Bollywood has to offer after "3 Idiots". Its... stylish, has good action, acting, music and its a zero VFX movie. The whole movie is real in its look (the roads, buildings, character, story). We can relate it to our own daily life routine. That's where the movie scores its mark. And above the all.. you can OR just watch this movie in theater... simply superb ! for its action, music, run chase, super slow mo scenes.Aaah ! Shaitan ......

rangdetumpy "There Will be Blood" actor Daniel Day-Lewis once said, "I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it's no problem for me to believe that I'm somebody else."Indeed every mortal has an aspect of self delusion hidden within themselves which is reflected under the spell of specific situations.Every religion believes in the existence of Shaitan within us and we are just wearing mask for the peace of "cultured" society.The concept of God was thus created to give a positive direction to irrational mortals. Shaitan,the directorial debut of Bijoy Nambier under safe umbrella of Anurag Kashyap who is one of the pioneers of Dark movies in Indian cinema talks about existence of Shaitan in this god fearing society. The story involves five youngster from various backgrounds bonded through friendship.The friend circle comprises of Gulshan Devaiya playing the role of KC, a rich brat and a non-conformist living on the edge of reality.A parsi pervert (resembles Fattu of Paanch) Zubin played by Neil Bhopalam,Tanya (played by Kriti Kulhari) an upcoming film actress and a model, then Amy superbly played by Kalkie Koechlin.Amy is the disturbed daughter of a rich NRI father (Played by Rajit Kapoor)who is yet to accept her mother's death.Strangely her mother was a psychic patient who in her self-destructive mode tried to kill young Amy. Amy in her psychotic dilemma loves her mother and at the same time trying to come out of her mother's death web.The gang comes to full circle with Divyanshu sahu aka Dash (striking debut by Shiv Pandit) who is a drug peddler and a coffee shop waiter.Dash is connected to the whole group with the element of Lucy in the sky with diamonds.The friends gang with Screw rules faces an accident in a moment of ecstasy and thus follows the series of crime one after the other while they go into the self- delusional mode.With a dejavu of Paanch the young spirited minds came to terms with their inner Shaitan (satan). To solve the crime a self righteous cop Mr Mathur (played brilliantly and confidently by Rajeev Khandelwal) had been appointed. The cop is himself going through a turmoil in his personal life and while solving the case he finds a connect with the case and his life at a cognitive platform. As they youngsters and the cops life intertwined there are thousands of questions towards society, morality and inner devil raised in a subtle manner that forms the crux of the brilliant story. Anurag Kashyap is a brilliant film maker who understands cinema and gives break to brilliant new directors. Bijoy Nambier like Kashyap pens a unapologetic amoral characters who are reflection of today's rich youth who have no respect for anyone's life. Without going into any morality Nambier simple tells the story of a devil mind in a unique fashion. It is his execution that elevates the story to another plain and with a brilliant technical team he almost created a neo-realistic masterpiece. There are numerous sequence which deserves accolades specially the "khoya khoya chand" sequence which is one of the best executed sequences in recent times. With slow motion he plays beautifully with time and space while there is a background score of Khoya khoya chand. The scene where the Negros are firing Rajeev Khandelwal and instead shoots the German lady has an unique sexuality attached to it.The effect of hallucinogenic drug leading to the hallucination of Amy with her dead mother is a masterpiece execution specially the bathtub sequence towards the climax is a master stroke as real mixes with hallucination. The usage of geometric shapes within the narrative shows Nambier's eye for detailing and understanding of cinema. Apart from Nambier credit should be given to A Shreekhar Prasad for editing and Madhi for cinematography.The usage of light is captivating and meaningful.Nambier played with light to show the catharsis within Amy towards the end and also tried to portray The cop as anti-devil which is reflected by the scenes where the cop is standing with bright background light compared to the darkness in the same frame. There are plenty of situations where the camera and editing had the potential to compete with any world cinema.Moving to the music and lyrics each of the songs are appropriately placed in the narrative with the wordings taking the story forward. Dialogues of the film are cleverly written. Without going overboard they are kept short,crisp thus having an impact. The sequence between the commissioner and the cop is well written where the commissioner explains the difference between "sach" and "sachai". Nambier should also be applauded for inducing dark humour in the otherwise disturbing story. The flashback within flashback with a cameo done by Rajat Barmecha (of Udaan fame) will bring the house down. Also some witty one liners like "what will you call a moving vibrator? Dil-doh pagal hai" provides moments of laughter for the cine goers. The casting director did a tremendous job as each one of them gave a powerhouse performance. Rajeev Khandelwal stole each scene he was present in. Like a chameleon he went into the character of the Moral upright cop fighting with his own self as he tries to solve the case as well as his personal crisis.Kalki Koechlin as usual gave a superb performance as disturbed Amy coming to terms with her existence. The whole gang which comprises of new comers (Neil Bhopalam,Shiv Pandit,Gulshan Devaiyya,Kriti Kulhari) are all competent actors who have the potential to rock the industry. Veterans like Pawan Malhotra (as the politically incorrect commissioner) and Rajit Kapoor (helpless rich father of Amy) are the pillars of the brilliant ensemble supporting cast. Overall Shaitaan is another milestone in Indian cinema. One wouldn't expect it to be a blockbuster but it will be lapped up by it's target niche audience. More movies of this kinds need to be made in India. Take a bow Anurag Kashyap, Bijoy Nambier and the whole team.

siddhantadlakha Apart from the marketing, which portrayed the film like a hip, fun, new-age, youth oriented Indian film, there's so much that I found wrong with this movie that I wouldn't know where to begin.First of all, the marketing was kind of misleading, as the film spends far more time on youth- demonization that one would expect. However, that too would have been acceptable if the film had a clear point to it, or perhaps one single strong storyline as its backbone. However, it's muddled with unnecessary subplots that have no relevance to the main story, and seem to be thrown in 'just because', and the film goes through more changes in tone than Nokia phones have over the last decade.If I were to somehow find and isolate what could be called the main 'plot' of the film, it's about a bunch of youths who get involved in a car-accident that leads to the death of.... well it's not clear who dies or how many people die, but they're driving a scooter when they're run over by the car that the kids are in, and then they try and cover the whole thing up, but a corrupt cop asks for a gargantuan sum of money to keep quiet about it.You see, that in itself forms a coherent story, yet the film opens with some hint at a sub-plot about one of the kids' insane mother, a sub-plot that's touched upon only briefly and almost at random throughout the rest of the film, and then spends a good 30-40 minutes showing nothing but the extravagant and edgy lifestyle that these kids live, something that shouldn't have taken longer to show than the length of an average music video. And that's pretty much what the movie felt like until the accident about 40 minutes in, a music video. Flashy images set against music, and NOTHING else.Of course that isn't the only sub-plot that brings this movie down. Somewhere along the way, we're introduced to a cop, who from I can assume, was supposed to come across as the edgy, living on the borders of the law type badass law enforcer, but came across as mentally unstable in a sort of uneasy way. The first thing we see him do is push a guy from a floor's height, and then beat up a guy HE happens to be bribing. And then the film starts to focus on his love life but barely touches the surface of it. And I don't mean his love life is mentioned, entire SCENES are devoted to the relationship between him and his wife to absolutely no consequence.The film gets very preachy at times, straying away from the story to show police corruption, time consuming divorce formalities and even a short scene about rikshaw drivers refusing fare, all of which seemed to belong in a different movie altogether.Oh and for the sake of having a shootout, the cop is sent to investigate the disappearance of a German tourist named Claudia Jones (which doesn't sound German in the slightest), a woman who is meant to be blonde, as stated in the PREVIOUS SCENE, but is played by an Indian girl with dark hair. Oh and the cop also stops machine gun fire with a MATTRESS.But I'm getting off topic here. The sub-plots keep creeping up here and there but are never fully explored as they have little or nothing to do with the actual plot, which takes far too long to get set into place, and even as the film's events begin to unfold, there are some absolutely appalling changes in tone that almost seem random, if it weren't for the fact that I got the indication that the camera angles and scenes had been thought out beforehand, and then the 'story' was added in later. And the characters ended up seeming more like one- dimensional characters than anything else. It seemed like the writer/director threw in every cinematic idea he has ever had into one film.The only positives I felt this film had were 1) Neil Bhopalam (Zubin), the only actor who seemed to have any sort of grounding, while all the others were either devoid of the slightest hint of emotion or shouting and crying like the sky was falling. He was at the same time entertaining and engaging, but the script didn't do his talent justice. And 2) The cameo appearance by Rajat Barmecha of Udaan. Not because it was an especially great performance, or necessary at all for that matter, but because it reminded me that films like Udaan still exist, so all hope for youth-oriented Indian cinema isn't lost just yet.All in all, I felt it was a film that promised a lot, but in the process of trying to deliver too much at once, failed to deliver any thing at all. All style and no substance, Shaitan is one of the most disconnected films I've seen in recent memory, and will be remembered as nothing more than a severe disjoint between content and execution.A film being well directed is pointless if it's a bunch of well directed nothing.

Chatswood The self realization process is always tough. You have to deal with inner demons and divinity. Some people call it Emotional Intelligence. Emotional intelligence is about to know your emotions and being aware of how to express it. There are lot of among us who doesn't know how to express rage. They prone to rage instantly and make unfavorable decisions. Shaitaan talks about it but unfortunately in unorganized way. The director, cinematographer succeeds to set loud premises for the film, but then they fails to deliver organized, tight film. It is script that fails to realize resolution point. Director tried too many concepts but he never concluded a thing. This film ends with uncertain note. Director wanted to tell that inner demon can destroy you and there is also divine side which can be pulled out by love, sympathy, affection. Screenplay is real star of the film. Sequence where two protagonist fights in front of Jesus gives you multi-dimensional perspective. Shaitaan comes with surprises, because only predictability of inner demon is its unpredictability. Love can takes you away from your inner demon. It was justified in the film.Acting department has got new talent. Rajeev Khandelwal is the one who stands out. You can see maturity in his acting. Kalki's story is a high point of the film, especially opening sequence that exactly portrays inner demon. Actually director treats it as a part of personality rather than predefined emotion. Cameramen used similar camera movement in the introduction sequence of the film that enriches the experience. I enjoyed that part most. Background score is funny because it brings out the sarcasm. There are very small details that make this cinema more interesting. Things like original name of Amy that sounded like typical Indian rural name, which emphasis on contrast between personalities. Hammer car that denotes loud, care free attitude towards life.Somehow this film reminds me Danny Boyle's Trainspotting, may be because of care free attitude that portrays in both films. In the era so called entertaining cinema, this kind of cinema maintains balance in Hindi film industry,