Smoke ‘em up: of ‘No Smoking’ and smoking no’s

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What is it to be alive? To have desires; to be free to love someone; to have the choice to die; to have the liberty to smoke!

K is a narcissist. He loves to admire himself in the mirror and no one tells him what to do. Nicotine flows in his blood and the smoke of cigarettes creates a thrilling aura around him. But when his wife decides to walk out on him, he agrees to go to Prayogshala- a rehab not so much to give up smoking but as to have a look. Prayogshala-a blend of ultra modern and the ancient turns out to be an omnipresent, all knowing, and all powerful entity. Once you are in, there is no escaping from the grip of the ‘Pryogshala’. It is run by one Guru Ghantal Baba Bengali. His methods involve putting the patient’s relatives in gas chambers, chopping off his fingers, bumping off his wife and so on to cure the addiction.
In the second half of the movie the surreal becomes quite indistinguishable from ..well, the ‘real’ and you are totally at the mercy of the director. To borrow an overused phrase, he is quite ‘self indulgent’ and makes no attempt to explain the movie to viewers. So K keeps on dipping in and out of dreams even as you are left wondering whether all the trauma that he is going through is happening only inside his head.
The plot reaches its logical conclusion with his ‘antar atma’ being separated from his body and thereby ridding him of all his desires.

Technically the movie is brilliant. Some shots like the panorama of Mumbai’s skyline and the streaming traffic below from K’s apartment and those of middle of nowhere in Siberia are simply breathtaking. The instant disgust and revulsion that the atmosphere of ‘Prayogshala’ evokes is no less an achievement. The use of sepia frames and comic book like blurbs to humorous effect is another first for Hindi movies.
John Abraham is at his best when he is not speaking and thankfully in this movie, he does not have a lot of dialogues and his body language does the talking quite brilliantly. Paresh Rawal is menacing and funny in just the perfect proportions.

A number of people have criticized the movie because it did not make them tremble before lighting another cigarette. Perhaps with a name like 'No Smoking’ they were expecting a ‘Requiem for a Dream’ for smokers (that the latter has a cult following among the junkies makes for an interesting study in itself).
But then I am not sure that Anurag Kashyap (AK) started off to make an anti smoking movie in the first place. That is a job best left to a certain Dr Anbhumani Ramadoss. In fact cigarette at best is a metaphor here for freedom. If you have killed all your desires, then perhaps you are as good as dead. Not having desires does not mean that you are close to Nirvana or perfection but perhaps that you are closer to depression! No smoking is of course at the core a story of rebellion but in total opposition to what you would expect such a movie to be, it does not romanticize or encourage rebellion. It shows the plight of a rebel, the price that he has to pay. It is not a movie for rebellion; it is a movie about rebellion. And it ends with an ominous message: sooner or later, a rebel has to die. Die by conforming himself.

‘No Smoking’ is one movie which would be remembered in the popular memory not for what it was but what people (or rather the people who call themselves ‘critics’) said about it (not very unlike Jhoom Barabar Jhoom). Almost everyone panned it. They called it a tribute of a self obsessed man to himself. The reviews read like admonitions to Anurag Kashyap for his vanity. “Why”, they shouted “make a movie which no one can understand? What is the point of making a movie which makes no sense? Why make a movie which neither entertains not conveys a message?”
This is what Khaled Mohammed wrote in his review,
“Sir Kashyap, your genius is blinding. Thank you for Quitters’ Inc which you have set in Mumbai and Siberia. And if you ask me, at this very point, I don’t want to quit smoking. I want to quit Kashyaping. See a Bhojpuri or a Blogpuri movie. Just don’t do this to me sir, please, don’t. The rest of the world needs your brain. Ulp, I don’t”

Well, one can’t but help remembering something written by one Mr Ellsworth M Toohey,
“It is not our function –paraphrasing a philosopher whom we do not like-to be a fly swatter, but when a fly acquires delusions of grandeur, the best of us must stoop to do a little job of extermination.”

But if you google the phrases ‘No Smoking’ and ‘Reviews’ the first few results would be of ‘reviews of reviews’, in other words bloggers pitching in for AK and condemning the ‘old men of reviewing’ as senile in the choicest of abuses. It would not be incorrect to say that AK asked for it. With shouting all those cries of rebellion and angst on PFC he has encouraged people- both his detractors and his supporters to focus on him and not his work. He has sought to become larger than his movies. If a guy starts comparing himself with ‘Howard Roark’ publicly, there is something wrong with him. If for no other reason then for the fact that Howard Roark would never do that. He would let his work speak for himself; something AK has to learn. Hopefully with Hanuman Returns doing well and AK keeping a relatively low profile about the movie things will be back on course for him. After all he has movies like Black Friday and Paanch also to his credit which even the most staunch of AK bashers can’t damn.

2 comments:

Suhas Baliga said...

This is truly the best review AND reviews of reviews of the movie that i have come across. Tehelka [http://www.tehelka.com/story_main36.asp?filename=hub151207What.asp] quite mirrored your impressions and I was a little disappointed that you avoided the literary reference to Kafka's Trial, which is what AK dedicates it all to.

In any case it was a lovely read, and I love the way you write. Keep posting!

lightandshadow said...

hey,
great reading, as usual..

me