Anurag Kashyap’s Finest?
Bollywood. The land of over-the-top action, songs that’ll leave you humming them (or cringing particularly hard at them when they play in your vicinity). This mecca for films, once known for its’ romanticised depictions of life — with the typical Hero’s Journey portrayals consisting of Campbell’s 17 stages of storytelling over the three broader sections of Departure, Initiation and Return — or as Indians would know it, the story where the hero falls for heroine, the heroine falls for hero, and just as their perfect life was to start, something not-so-perfect happened and we had the central plot trigger, the villain. Through a physically, mentally and emotionally strenuous journey, the hero emerges as the victor in a battle of either brawn or intellect against the antagonist, winning in return a happy ‘forever-after’ situation. Bravo.
Unfortunately, even today, many of the films produced in this industry, still follow the whimsical narrative with no value added in terms of substance whatsoever. But a few creators with a head full of ideas put pen to paper and the mind to the camera, and we get spectacles, formerly unimaginable, in the form of films that grip us, violate us, relieve us and leave us with messages and ideas that are unconventional, to say the least.
A mad genius, if I may say so, in the industry, would be the much-talked-about visual thinker, director Anurag Kashyap.
Moving to what this article is about, but be warned since a few themes discussed here are not well-understood because much like rich wine, these ideas take time to be understood — no wonder most Indian critics fail to fathom the depth in truly creative pieces of visual media, I’ll be introducing you to a movie, many of you may never have even heard of due to the undeserved bashing it received at the Indian box office — No smoking, 2007.
Yes, in the same year where the Indian box-office saw successive hits and big money, Anurag Kashyap gave birth to a modern take on the noir genre, infused with a (first and only of its’ kind) surrealistic narrative — a psychological thriller by the name of No Smoking.
Starring John Abraham, the movie was expensive to produce, to say the least — but it’s narrative is where Kashyap’s genius is at.
Note: for those of you who haven’t seen the movie, this averagely exhaustive article would be useful to navigate through the labyrinth of this noir riddled with elements of surrealism and dystopian themes.
Rather than going on about the industry and the movie’s unnecessary details, we’ll dive right into what makes the movie the masterpiece I claim it to be.
The movie follows the journey of K (John Abraham) a serial chain smoker, whose life is turned upside down when he visits the ‘prayogshala’ — which as he’s told is the best rehabilitation centre for smokers dealing with addiction.
The plot? Let’s just say once you sign up for this ‘rehabilitation’ programme — you smoke once, you lose hearing. Twice, and a loved one will be trapped in a chamber full of the cigarette smoke you’ve puffed in the duration of your life. Thrice, you lose your fingers — index and middle finger, since they’re the one used for smoking — and consequent times lead to more and more dire circumstances, until stage 7, where you die. Delightful.
Works every time, doesn’t it, Paresh?
Now, coming to the real thing — the movie in itself is a twisted bildungsroman tale. The movie’s elements act as the part of a dystopian meta-narrative, and we’ll start from the very beginning using literary notation and why this piece of genius acts as a narrative of misery and human mind battling its’ own demons.
The movie opens on a protagonist, which in all his mannerisms, doesn’t seem to be fitting to that role — with toxic traits abound, an addiction which has breached his personal and professional life. While some may see this as an ‘on-the-surface’ succumbing to a 5-inch roll of paper, it is showing us how in our own ways, we toxify ourselves physically, but we, as humans, as individuals can never truly be free from the chains of toxicity which bind our mind. For everyone who ever believed in the notion, ‘pick on someone your own size’, probably never realised that smaller objects have the potential to harm tenfold as much as someone your own size. For those of you who still disagree, this movie stands as a perfect example — the cigarette didn’t impose itself on you, it wasn’t the one who asked to be smoked, you did it yourself, didn’t you? This idea is which Populism serves. Now to make that bite easier to chew; Populism is a gesture of simplification, you create an image of the enemy. People say Trump is the enemy in the USA, but what people forget to ask is where did he come from? Where did we let him come from? — that is populism, simplification of the creation of a nemesis, with no understanding of actions taken by the self that may have led to consequent events.
While the movie, in all of its running minutes, stands for a number of ideas, but this is an article, not a theory - so we’ll just hop along from element to element while talking about some brilliant nuances — let’s move along.
The way the movie began was enough to puzzle critics — visuals of John Abraham in a dilapidated house in the heart of Russian snow mountains and him desperately searching for a cigarette were his recurring dream which ended in him getting shot before he could jump into what seemed like an exit. In the form of a bath-tub, the exit stood a few meters ahead of a pack of cigarettes, just the treasure our hero sought. Jumping onto the packet rather than diving to safety from attacking Russian captors (wonder why the Soviets are always a figure of such hostility in most films? Me too.) Nonetheless, we here see the impact of the addiction — the dream sequence always ends with him dead. As the abstraction increases, here is where the balance between neo-Fauvism and surrealist depiction tips in favour of the latter, since the notion of self-control is proven to be nothing but a false assurance, of sorts — as you may find out if you continue reading. He had become a servant to the fatal habit, to the extent, he said, “matches?” to an officer pointing a gun at him, which ended with John Abraham’s inevitable death.
The notion of the human will comes into the spotlight with this instance. Willpower, as we know it, is what could be called the driving force behind human choice or decision, giving it two branches; in turn, making it almost paradoxical in nature. Is our willpower even ours? Is the choice you’re making yours? No matter how strong your willpower is, and the degree of command it’d have on your actions and demeanour; our willpower is shaped by the environment, by the people around us, their decisions and actions. So who are we? An individual, with our own individuality as we’ve come to know that ‘every person is unique’; or are we all reflections of others around us? Are we who we believe to be or are we pawns who shadow the actions of our superiors, who manufacture our consent based on their will? The cigarette stands for the superior and Abraham stands for each one of us, giving in and conforming, failing to escape the system through the exit which is the memento, the bath-tub.
Oh, don’t doubt your actions, they’re mere reflexes, but its all a matter of perspective. We all approach reality from a different perspective — most don’t break the circle of transcendental philosophy.
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(empiricism vs irrationalism); every opposing thought has a connecting thought that binds it together.
Such is the nature of the surrealist depiction, as shown in the film, bringing the unconscious mind to visual, stimulating life.
The film goes on to explore the dystopian society of ‘Kalkatta Karpets’, run by a certain Baba Bengali, who’s known far and wide for his methods of rehabilitation — and K gets the word from two of his old friends, both of whom don hearing aids — seems familiar to the first breach, doesn’t it?
While the motive of his ‘friends’ suggesting Bengali’s place will be looked into later, it’s necessary to know about the labyrinth-like structure of the centre.
The ‘prayogshala’ (which is Kalkatta Karpets’ real name) is a facility, which looks as if it were rotting, with cages of people, peering down at K once he entered. Amidst the stirring and disturbing visuals, we read between the lines;
The ‘prayogshala’ is nothing but the propaganda model. The fourth filter, as per Noam Chomsky’s theory of manufactured consent, the filter of fear.
The reason K succumbs to Bengali’s ways because the rehabilitation centre stands as an extended metaphor for the cleansing of the soul, which would leave behind the man that K was. But as it stood, K was any one of us. He had lost his uniqueness and had become a simple reflection of society, he became a pawn to a certain school of thought, which had become his identity. The 5-inch roll of paper and nicotine was who K was at this point. This metaphor could be unravelled rather simply — we claim to be people who we’re not, but if believing in the self is wrong because our perception is faltered due to notions of conformation, and society’s words are inaccurate because of their personal biases in assessments of you, who are you? And how would you know? Hence comes the question of the subversion of reality.
What we perceive as reality, is not the ultimate reality.
To quote Slovanian philosopher Slavoj Žižek;
Where is the truth? Darwin proves that humans descended from other natural sources, but his friend questioned the Adam and Eve theory — Adam had a navel, and a navel is a connection (of the umbilical cord) between a mother and a child, and Adam was supposed to be the first man. So, why the navel? What is the real truth? Theology and Scientology have different faces and different truths. People say the Bible is true it has to be true, doesn’t it? How do you explain the fossils? Is it an illusion? that can’t be true either, or can it?
Makes one think, doesn’t it?
And in Kashyap’s rendition of the human condition brought about through a struggle against addiction, K, finds his soul to be evaporated at the end of the film, that too in a gas chamber — much like the smoke he exhaled. The inclusion of the gas chamber draws a comparison to Auschwitz, and how prisoners there failed to stand up for themselves and became soulless bodies due to the force laid over them, as they lost control of what they could choose to do or not.
Although it may seem fantastical and perplex upon viewing or reading, rewind to our little chat about free will. In the rehabilitation centre, K was stripped of his will to smoke, leaving behind an empty K — this is a hyperbola since the human isn’t defined by a single trait. But in this hypothetical situation, K was, leaving him null and void.
This brings me to my final point before I sum it all up, and present my concluding case. This point being one of existentialism. We believe to know the solutions to our problems, but like every mortal being to have thought to know the solution, we too, know ourselves only to a certain extent, much less society. K represents the human minds in today’s society — and although an exaggeration, the depiction of a singular toxic trait defining K’s personality is what most of our generation is marching towards — we pick popularity over righteousness and hypocrisy over service, criticism over gratitude and toxicity over chivalry. Kalkatta Karpets is the modern world, and instead of nurturing us and helping us grow, society chooses to blend us in with the herd, and the consequences of standing for who we are are dire and merciless in several regards. K wasn’t wrong to smoke. But was Baba Bengali right to strip his right to live away because he didn’t follow the ‘contract’ — which he was coerced to sign — sounds familiar regarding today’s governments, doesn’t it?
Is our mortal being of lesser importance than their idealistic society in which capitalism extends itself to a degree where it manages to intrude our lives and rob our free will in the name of the ‘greater good’?
In conclusion, before I reveal my outtake of the film, I’d like to say that ‘No Smoking’ apart from being an intense, gripping and entertaining watch, has all the elements which make up a masterpiece, and Kashyap was way ahead of the curve in the making of this brilliant film.
Lastly, the movie’s protagonist isn’t just K. It’s Kashyap. The movie mirrors his condition upon the banning of his first film ‘Paanch’, he was deeply shaken by the way the Board thrammed his film, and he felt as if his right to express had been taken away. The smokers losing two fingers which they used for smoking? It rendered them helpless, just the way Kashyap felt. Kashyap lost his identity trying to work in films that weren’t his brainchild and were not which he saw himself making. The nature of Bollywood’s direction and environment suffocated him, and his narrow escape, like the bath-tub, only appeared in the transient moments where he wrote. Baba Bengali wasn’t a person; it was the Board, which had caused his loss of identity, and Kalkatta Karpets was the industry. K’s rehabilitation? Kashyap’s helplessness.
K is Kashyap.
With that, I hope you enjoyed the read. And if you stayed till the end, stay tuned for more movie insights.
