Review - Anurag Kashyap's Ugly

When you wait for nearly 2 years to watch a movie, you want it to be good, reeeaallly good. You almost want to be swept off your feet by the movie. Ugly was 1 such movie, its release was delayed due to a protracted and some would say unnecessary battle between Anurag Kashyap and the Censor Board. When it finally was released thousands of AK fans rushed to the theatres to watch it with huge expectations in their minds. I was one of them. I was not disappointed, but I wasn't swept off my feet either. It felt more like I was hit hard on the back of the head. And then I realized my expectations were wrong. I was waiting for an Anurag Kashyap movie not a Christopher Nolan one. How could I expect to be swept off my feet? Anurag Kashyap has delivered one of the most dark and disturbing movies I have seen in recent times. In a way he has gone back to his basics. The feeling I got after I walked out of the theater was quite similar to what I felt after watching Boys Don't Cry and Revolutionary Road. The film true to its name is an ensemble of some of the most selfish and wicked characters you can find. But unlike the rich and powerful mob bosses or politicians we are used to watching as villains in most Bolywood movies, the characters here are common people, even the cops in the movie seem all too familiar, not unusually wicked or corrupted but abrasive enough in their behaviour to make you want to stay away.

There is a police station scene towards the beginning of the movie. A man whose daughter went missing has gone to the police station with his friend to lodge a missing persons complaint. The cops there are more interested in knowing how to save a picture as a caller id in the mobile than to look for his daughter. And the hapless father sees that his only option to get them to move on with the investigation is to show the damn inspector how to do it. I guess many of us would have faced similar indifference from the police. And that's the beauty of the scene. In an otherwise grim movie this scene provides comic reprieve but as the scene moves along you start feeling that this is real life, this is how most police stations work in India. And its then amidst the humour that you start feeling for the father and the missing child. The scene its said was planned for just 1.5 mins but it dragged on to more than 10 mins as the actors kept improvising. Anurag Kashyap is one director who doesn't stay bound to his script. He goes by his gut feel.

The story in one line is about the search for a missing child. But the movie is more about the characters than the plot itself. There are lots of characters all with their hidden crooked agenda behind the case. There is an alcoholic mother, a struggling actor for the father, a strict and honest but regressive senior cop who spies on his wife, a casting director who is the father's friend and financer and many more. And some of the characters are related to each other by some twisted connections and circumstances that makes the whole ensemble look like a spider's web. The plot has lots of twists and turns giving the feel of a whodunnit, but the truth when it surfaces paints a sorry picture of human nature. Anurag Kashyap has the knack for looking into the dark recesses of human nature and dig out pessimistic stories from there. In that regard Ugly is probably his most pessimistic.

Moving on. I will remember this movie more for its music and some scenes in particular than anything else. The background score composed by Brian McOmber totally gels with the plot and theme of the movie. 2 songs in particular are stuck in my memory - Money by Christopher Stanley I think was composed for this movie. and the other One day baby we'll be old by Asaf Avidan an the Mojos an Israeli rock band. AK has some taste in music !!

Talking about the memorable scenes, I have already mentioned one.

• In the 2nd one there is a dark quarter in a police colony in Mumbai where the police has kept Rahul Bhatt, father of the missing girl who is also a suspect in the case, locked up. A dotor accompanied by a policeman comes to the quarter to check him, to see if he was fit enough to be produced in court without the court raising questions over police brutality. When the guys enter the quarter, we see a dark room with just a 15 W bulb glowing, while the policeman proceeds to open another door that leads into a 2nd room, the doctor keeps staring at the camera, a look of shock in his eyes. They enter the room where the father is locked up, there is a scuffle there and Rahul Bhatt frees himself, takes the cop's gun, ties both the cop and the doctor up and takes off. But again while he is leaving he can't but stare at the camera again with a shocking expression. And then the camera moves around to show the audience what the actors were staring at. I just loved the way this scene was shot.
• The 3rd one is in the police lockup. The police has locked up Chaitanya, Rahul's friend and manager who is their 2nd suspect in the kidnapping. They have tried their best to beat him into confessing but it hasn't worked. Then they ask Rahul to confront his friend and get him to blurt out the truth. Chaitanya of course is not a saint, he has been lying to the police but its not entirely clear whether he is behind the kidnapping. When Rahul starts asking him some difficult questions, raising suspicions over his actions, Chaitanya launches into a tirade full of expletives against his friend. In this 2-3 mins scene I didn't count how many times he uses the word "bh****ke" and "ma*****od" but let me assure you it was plenty, almost 1 after every 2-3 other words. The interesting thing is till then, we haven't seen Chaitanya utter these 2 swear words at all, he doesn't look like a habitually abusive person. It captures beautifully how some people react when they are caught in an uncomfortable argument. They try to bully their way out of it. On the one hand Chaitanya is trying to counter every accusation his friend is making with a proper reason and on the other hand he is showing his disappointment in his ungrateful friend by abusing him, all the while shouting and swearing to force a quick end to the conversation.

Ugly's cinematography by Nikos Andritsakis is brilliant. Nikos has worked with Dibakar Bannerjee in Shanghai and LSD before. Through his camera he has made the dark look beautiful. The stand out actor in the movie was Girish Kulkarni, a National Award winning Marathi actor who plays a cop. Tejaswani Kolhapure as the depressed alcoholic mother of the missing daughter is also convincing. Ronit Roy as usual is good but I am afraid he has gotten himself stereotyped in Bollywood from where he will find it hard to come out. I was not convinced by Rahul Bhatt's acting who played the girl's father. I heard that he used to be AK's roommate during his struggling years, maybe that's why he got the part. I was also not entirely convinced about the movie's ending, I felt it left some questions unanswered. But I will leave it to you to judge that.

Ugly is a must watch for all Anurag Kashyap fans, but whether its his best, I am not so sure. Actually I would rather not think about it.

For all those who have watched Ugly, watch this. It's a short prequel that AK made. It narrates the events leading to Kali's birth called Kali Katha. Those who haven't watched Ugly don't watch this. Watch the movie first.

And here's the song One day baby we'll be old by Asaf Avidan an the Mojos -