Paanch

Almost all films stale out if the release is delayed by few months... forget years. Anurag Kashyup's Paanch is one of the strongest exceptions on the list. This film delayed by almost a decade is still so effective, most importantly because its narrative is timeless and was also ahead of its times making it relevant and entertaining even today.

Much before Bollywood had seen any Kaminey, Paanch was one of the first 'dark' and intense films from India and absolutely effective. Drugs, smoke, alcohol, abuse, expletives, kidnap, murder, body butchering, heavy metal rock music, dark lightening in scenes, sexual undertones in dialogues, crime thriller genre, noir treatment, erratic lyrics and much more - and none of this simply forced to make the film look pretentiously dark.

The narrative is unambiguous yet not predictable for a moment. 5 people (4 guys and 1 girl) get involved in a kidnap which leads to murder and the more they try to get out of it, the more they get trapped in it. The 5 people setting reminded of Mahabharat's Draupadi and the Paanch Pandavs (through here there was 1 guy less). There is also a subtle reference to Draupadi in a scene where Kay Kay asks Tejaswini to wear a longer sari - 'Sadi lambi pehna kar Draupadi' (the word Draupadi was muted by censor in the preview copy) - Interestingly in this scene there are 5 guys with the additional one being the one to be subsequently kidnapped (Pankaj Saraswat).

All the characters are negative and Kashyup develops each of them so distinctly. Even his approach to writing and directing every scene is absolutely innovative with the characters behaving unpredictably and the situations changing spontaneously. The characters are so unusual to Bollywood screen but so true to real life. You might have surely encountered one or the other character prototypes in real life in your college, workplace or home. One is a coward (Vijay Maurya), one is silent spectator (Aditya Srivastava), one is partner in crime (Joy Fernandes).

The performances are BRILLIANT. Without a doubt this is Kay Kay Menon's career best performance till date. He is so much into the character of a hot-headed perpetrator who vents out his frustration on anybody and everybody in the team that at times you literally feel a part of the cast who are bogged down by his constant bossing and bullying on the gang. Even when he sings a rock song, he is so much into the act that you feel he's performing for a live audience. Another gem of a discovery of this film was Vijay Maurya (who by now has become popular for his roles in Black Friday (as Dawood) and Mumbai Meri Jaan). Maurya plays his part so perfectly that you actually feel pity for his character's cowardice. Aditya Narayan and Joy Fernandes are good. It's sad that an actress as amazing as Tejaswini Kolhapure got lost never to come back in a proper role in Hindi films.

It's surprising that Censors kept the film on hold considering some of today's Hindi films have more expletives than Paanch. Actually the censor wasn't as evolved then as it is today. That's what makes the film ahead of its times. Now the film is seemingly approved by the Censors but is perhaps stuck due to producer problems. However there is not even a single smooch or even kissing scene in the film forget any sexual intimacy.

Music is one factor that Anurag Kashyap never ever gets wrong with. While we always talk of filmmakers like Subhash Ghai, Yash Chopra or Sanjay Leela Bhansali to have a good music sense that reflects in their films, Anurag Kashyap has always had superlative and path-breaking musical score in all his films (though he is grossly underrated for it) and has a 100% perfect track record. Whether its Indian Ocean in Black Friday, Amit Trivedi in Dev.D or Piyush Mishra in Gulaal, all his films had refreshingly NEW and very good music. Paanch is no exception with Vishal Bhardwaj (in his early days as a composer) who composed some tunes which were traditionally not Bollywood but very interesting.

Some of the most effective scenes from the films are when - Kay Kay and Maurya get into a fight over switching off the stereo, - when Kay Kay scares Joy for a moment saying 'Kya main Joker dikhta hoon' (supposedly a tribute to Martin Scorcese's Goodfellas), - when Kay Kay faces Inspector Deshpande (Sharat Saxena) for the first time and almost every other scene.

The film brought into light the rock culture (much before the ROCK ON happened), had a subtle reference to a human body butchering scene (which has now become a cliché in crime dramas), had a noir treatment when the genre was still in its nascent stage in Bollywood. Again, ahead of its times... or would you call trend-setting!

However the film is not flawless. The epilogue added to the crime drama in the last 15 minutes is clearly stretched and perhaps the only predictable portion of the plot. The twist in the tale that it intends to create almost falls flat. Also an item number was the worst way to end an otherwise original and entertaining film. Plus the footnote added at the end of the film as a moral-of-the-story (perhaps forced by the Censors) which reads 'Crime Never Pays' absolutely kills the noir effect of the film.

Nevertheless the film is so gripping barring this slack ending that you easily excuse that blemish and enjoy Paanch as one of India's cult-classic crime dramas.

I saw Anurag Kashyap's Paanch at the Cinefan Film Festival, 2002. It was clearly one of the best movies of the festival, on par with movies like Hero and Osama.

The story depicts what ambition, immorality, greed and angst, unmistakably the products of urban life, can do to an ordinary person. A little mischief for the sake of success leads a group of 5 wannabe rock stars to get entangled in a gory web of murder and betrayal.

What follows is a shocking thriller of a story, supported aptly by some great performances, the best coming from Kay Kay Menon and Tejaswini Kolhapure. The movie has a great musical score by Vishal Bhardwaj. The songs, most of which Kashyap interestingly uses up in the first 15 minutes, are brilliant. So is the background music. Another high point of the movie is the cinematography, which impresses upon the viewer an aura of fast-paced urbanity juxtaposed with dark, ruthless bloodshed. If there's a low point in the movie, it is the few minutes after the interval where which seem ineffective and dragged. However, they are easily outweighed by the compelling tension and gloom that permeate the movie.

Clever, brilliant, yet utterly pessimistic, Paanch is strongly recommended.

7.5/10

There are hardly any films that stand the test of a year these days, let alone 8 years. Paanch was shot in 2000, but has yet to see a mainstream release in India due to strange business problems (which continue complicating the world rather than simplifying it). There may be cinematic moments in Paanch that have been replicated in later (and far lesser) films, but the whole here is far greater than the sum of its parts. And that whole is driven by a tone of seething intensity that is too individual, too real, to not be the author's personal voice. Films with personal voices are rare in these times, and that is what makes the film special. Whether Paanch is seen now, or 10 years later, it is this tone that will always give it a distinctive voice.

Despite not having a remarkable plot or even a thought-provoking narrative thrust, and despite a few (no doubt, forced) nods to commercial viability, the film's visceral energy still gives it a very compelling quality. The performances are almost uniformly excellent, and the "realness" of atmosphere can make you smell and taste the time and place – qualities Hindi cinema badly needs to incorporate in its thought process.

This is not a film about music or musicians, but about dark mindsets in people who happen to be musicians. The music (with very distinctive Indian rock songs – Vishal Bharadwaj and Abbas Tyrewala at their best) is just a backdrop but it has a force that makes you forget that it is just a small plot point in the overall scheme of things.

The director of Paanch – Anurag Kashyap, has moved on with a highly accomplished film (Black Friday) and a very personal one (No Smoking), but Paanch will always be special for the new voice that emerged in 2000. Whenever the film is seen.

At the outset, it'd be in order to mention that this is the well-known theatrically unreleased film that was in the news (in 2003 and afterwards) over the ethical exceptions that the Censor Board of India had taken to it while denying it permission to release. It held that the film "glorifies violence; it shows the modus operandi of a crime (killing of a police officer); it shows excessive use of drugs; it has double meaning dialogues (with sexual undertones); it has no positive characters; it does not carry a social message".

That episode resulted in further intensification of the lasting antagonism that marked (and continues to mark) the relationship between iconoclastic brigands of Indian cinema (with director Anurag Kashyap at the vanguard) and the government-appointed sentinels of public morality who run the Censor Board. It was primarily through p2p torrent networks and file-hosting sites like Dingora that 'Paanch' trickled into the audiovisual precincts of movie aficionados and elicited reactions that spanned the spectrum from disturbing/disgusting to captivating/thrilling. It has since then developed a sort of cult following among fans of the 'psychological thriller' genre.

The movie itself is a story of unapologetic evilness and unfettered debauchery and most of all a psychological revelation that unfolds as a chaotic sequence of events in the entangled lives of five individuals... who live on the fringes of social morality and discover (with delight) in violent sadomasochistic self-destruction an accessible means of self-realization.

In giving up, treacherous step by treacherous step, the social fiction of goodness and embracing ruinous crime they discover a seductive freedom of the soul… a primal condition that allowed for (and indeed drew forth) a most authentic, albeit disturbing, response to the fact of existence in a hostile world of urban ambitions, transient fame and chronic estrangement. The protagonist of the movie (Luke - played by KK Menon) is one of the most convincingly frightening and psychologically well-constructed characters in all of Hindi cinema. The script is cogently carried forward by the development, definition and motivation of this character. The plot consists essentially of Luke's psycho-socio-pathology and his domination of the will of the four other characters… a domination that eventually sucked all of them into a spiral of heinous crime and moral degenartion that kept their existences constantly hinged on the edge of egregious bloodshed (and frequently precipitated the same). To think that the times they had together as drug-stealing socially-shunned impecunious musicians were the actually the best they ever had is to betray some sign of how dark their lives were. Amongst the secondary characters, of particular note is Shuile (played by Tejaswini Kohlapure) who discovers a taste for evil most serendipitously… but goes on to unhesistantly accommodate seduction, manipulation, intrigue and cunning in her repertory of sin.

I have to say though, the denouement of the drama suffers a debutant directors' capitulation in face of the conventional need to impose a closure on a story that might have been better left open-ended. The movie ends on note which is somewhat redemptive and life-affirming but mostly a clear reflection of the makers' desistance to sink further into the dark recesses of human psyche which have otherwise been prodigiously explored more intrepidly than ever before in modern Hindi cinema. Anurag Kashyap is genius. He employs the visual medium in its fullness and enhances the cinematic literacy of the viewer. The soundtrack is awesome too. A gem of a flick that ought to have released theatrically and celebrated for its contribution to the coming of age of Hindi cinema.

(see the original review at http://www.voxmentis.com/search/label/Movie%20Review )

Prompted me to chip in after the ROCK ON!! "euphoria". A film I saw at the at Osians in 2003. A film made way-back…..an underground fav. Though a envy worthy status for a film to be loved and sought after even in it's unreleased state.…it's been long and it needs to be out in the open. What if we never got to watch Fight Club or Old Boy ever and just were privy to the downsized Indian Censor friendly Sanjay Gupta's Zinda and what if the only Fight Club I knew was Vicky Malhotra or Chopra or whatever's Zayed Khan starrer Fuzz Club? I would dread it if censors all over the world kept a film in limbo for their own immaturity and stunted growth process.

And now that it's cleared what are the producers upto? Is it a medical product to have an expiry. Will it lose it's value?

For me Paanch still looks fresh and dark/morbid/stark/gritty and this is the movie which patented Anurag Kashyap's neon fetish. When the first poster of Alwyn Kalicharan was released in the TOI some years back…..it read… "This Winter Think Neon"

15 fps shots...time transitions.....great music....VIJAY MAURYA is awesome....as usually towering over the expected SHOW STEALERS....KK and Aditya Srivastav......who are GREAT anyways....the problem is they are so good....you know they are gonna blow you...so you expect it....awesome music......Abbas Tyrewala's legendary "TAMAS" lyrics...they still manage to haunt me......

IT'S ABOUT ROCK…….and there is ROCK…..they dope....they swear…they scratch armpits….they want a better life….Luke wants to be recognized…ever worshiped…and music is a let out…a let out for angst/love/lust/greed and unfulfilled dreams and not just a Sunday relief in their plush Malabar Hill penthouse.

A film which gives me the choice to explore or feel for the lesser evil than the GOOD v/s BAD routine or is PAANCH about EVIL v/s BAD ASS EVIL. How often do we have that on screen?

ONE OF THE BEST TITLE SEQUENCE....ONE WHICH YOU WILL REMEMBER....AFTER SEVEN WHICH HAD A SIMILAR GRUNGY FEEL TO IT.....I LOVED THIS ONE.....PLUS THE CITY CAPTURED IN IT'S PSYCHEDELIC GLORY.

Paanch needs a wider platform to be seen…..to be loved/hated/criticized/debated on.