The LSD High - Fascination for Love Sex aur Dhokha!

(no spoilers)

Let's cut to the chase. Love Sex and Dhokha is unlike anything you have ever seen before. On screen that is. The closest thing I can even think of to this... uh.. film is The Blair Witch Project. And that is only because of the medium. But it would be such an utter waste to dwell much longer on the technical brilliance.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are not talking of the camera here as a technical achievement. What angles, or what shit. Here the camera, I mean the real naked camera is the central character of the film. The so called Hero. You take a few minutes to acquaint yourself to the idea when you are watching it. But once you are into it, snap, you forget the medium and start squirming as you meet the most amoral and non judgemental hero Bollywood has ever seen. The camera!!!

From the Raja Sen review,

It's a notoriously tricky prospect, making a film with raw, unseen actors, going entirely handheld, entirely digital, and there's always the danger of heading into a gimmicky space: where content is dictated by form. 

LSD, which features three very differently themed storylines seen through varied handheld, security and spy cameras, is so finely written that it avoids the obvious pitfalls expertly, and makes the treatment -- that deliciously voyeuristic treatment -- a completely organic part of the storytelling process.

As an aftertaste of the film, the flavor that lingers on is that Dibakar Banerjee has a tremendous sense of humor. An acceptance of life as it is, and a glorious celebration of it. One becomes quite a black humorist when one accepts reality. He also has quite a fucking straight face. You know, like how Anurag Kashyap is a very angry guy. His basic strength comes from the anger, think Black Friday, think Dev D, think the stunning angry epic Gulaal (and note the deliberate omission of the angry No Smoking. Which is another cause of anger). Har madarchod unki films mei gussa hai. And I say that as a big fucking fan!  Every motherfucker is angry in his film, deep inside. He is the Amitabh Bachhan of the Bollywood screens 70s for my generation. The angry young man.

The central hero in all three Dibakar Banerjee films however, is very non judgemental, no morals so to say, no feelings. Ab hai yahi to bhai batao ab aagey kya karna hai, type of attitude. Khosla Ka Ghosla, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, and now Love Sex aur Dhokha, all of them have had that acceptance of reality as it is.

The problem with writing stuff as poetic as above is that people immediately start on the tangent, bhai ye to artistic ho gaya thoda. I am not talking abstraction here.

I have been so fucked over by the LSD title track these last couple of days (from Sunday morning precisely). Somehow that is all that has been reverberating inside me, the beat, the dhiskyaaon. And when it rolled over the end credits at the end of the film, the reason for the lyrics of the song hit me. Bitchslapped me, more like.

It is brilliant how Dibakar both starts and ends LSD with a song. And both of them exist parallely in the multiverse. Everything that happens is stories you have heard about before, just never thought about it much because it is not the one infront of you at the moment. Because it hasn't happened to you.

Love Sex and Dhokha is one of those films where the entire pre release publicity, the reason why the excitement has been building up, all of it makes sense after the film. It is a film whose songs mean much more after you have seen it. Like, for example Dil To Bachha Hai Ji from Ishqiya! It is great as a song, but builds up and defines such a fucking AWESOME character in the film. An essential PART of the film, not a break from it. I am a whore for good well thought out characterization in a film. And oh fuck, the LSD songs do that to the tee! Even the voices, the Mohabbat Bollywood style, the utter joy in the boy's voice, or the reason why the LSD title track, the tu Nangi achhi lagti hai has been sung by Kailash Kher. (The nangi song appears twice in the film, once as a ringtone, and the other time as a song in a store radio.)

Dibakar Banerjee has a wicked sense of humor. And he completely enjoys it! (Yes I know I have said that before). As one of the second teasers out for his film (the first was the #epic Why Mother Won't Say The Name Of My Next Movie Aloud Oh what a fucking brilliant branding note!), he had written up a post on PFC about a supposed conversation between him and the producer Ekta Kapoor (sub text: Ekta Kapoor is the most brazen woman in entertainment in India. Has made an entire evil empire -a whole genre of  serials on television. She has been there, and done him twice.)

From LSD Screening Experience No. 32 at PFC,

Why is the camera shaking so much?

Ekta, just let’s watch the film and then let’s discuss.
I can’t watch it! My head’s swimming!
Ekta…
Why is the camera looking at the sky? I can’t see the guy’s face!
That’s because he’s running away from goons wielding hockey sticks and murderous intent, carrying the camera. You don’t have time to compose in such moments.
NNOOOO!
I know, he’s getting a beating. That’s why the camera’s so jerky.
That sweet boy, my god! Eeeeesh. And the girl! And I want to see them kiss! Why can’t I see them kiss now?
Because their faces are not reflected in the mirror. Only their bodies are.
Why can’t he position the camera in a way that we can see their faces?
Because he’s forgotten about the camera and the film he’s shooting. They are about to be parted. She’s crying! He doesn’t know what to do! So they can just kiss! And in such moments you don’t care whether the audience can see you or not.
But what about that other sex scene? You could see everything!

That’s because he wanted to film himself while having sex.
Pervert….
I know, that’s…
Shhhh… let me see the film. Why’s the camera focusing on his paunch?
Because a hidden camera is shooting him secretly. Those angles are not kind on the figure.
Where’s it hidden?
The locket in the woman’s cleavage.

Sssshit.
What?
The other day a woman with a cleavage and a locket came to meet me! You mean this could happen to me?
Ekta… this is just a film.
Well it doesn’t look like one. Dibakar?
Yes Ekta.
I’m scared now.

When I read that before watching the film, I had a few sniggers reserved for Ekta. After watching it, I respectfully understand why she was scared.

Kudos to Ekta for backing this up.

Now watch him talk about the so called "controversial sex scene" from the second timeline in the film.

I literally get the chills when he says, "right after she starts crying" #Context

And look at him smoke while he says that. Feel him blow that smoke out. How can you not be affected? How can the idea not chill you?

And this was all much BEFORE I saw the film.

Which was today evening. The 5:45 pm show. On a mad rush across the mad (that word twice used in the sentence in respect to calcutta) criss cross country race hurdles to reach the multiplex at precise 5:41. I smashed my Bullet's backlight in a hurry to park. Looked at it once. Said fuck twice. And then ran over the two levels. Ticket booked. Got in.

And it started. The India I have known all my life. On the screen. With a beeping timer in the corner. And a battery remaining icon. I did tell you that the camera is a character in the film, didn't I? No, you are not supposed to forget about the camera. In the first film, the camera is hand held. Carried everywhere. In the second, it is affixed. One of those fixed store cameras. The third one is in this woman's cleavage. Or a little above. And it stays through the whole time. All you see is what the cameras choose to show you.  If you have never known what it feels to be a voyeur, this is your cue!

I have never understood the desire of some people to shield women from gaalis. I mean that is like not eating non veg during these particular days in the indian psyche. That is like being sexist in extreme, saying women can't take it. Why is that? I encounter gaalis in life, outside, amongst friends, in my professional world. I mean why would you want women to not hear gaalis? Or talks about porn? Or sex? I am not saying enforce. I am saying why suddenly become a sanyaasi infront of a female?

The movie has no such qualms and hosannas to it for that. The characters you see on screen are real. Which is why this will fucking shake you from inside. You will find that you know all these stories, have heard about all of these characters, just have never really thought of them coz you can distance yourself from reality. You know, on a day to day basis.

Through the film, particularly the way each story wound around to the end, I had my palms around my mouth. You know, the horror film reaction. Only here I knew what is going to happen. Coz it happens around you all the time. You hear about it all the time. Just that you not hear it. Do not hear about people smoking grass, or how porn is "hum aisi gandi cheezein nahi dekhte" (actual dialogue from the film), or how some of you equate giving gaalis as a sign for bad people.

The fact that YOU do not know that the way ANY new technology moves forward into the realm of common man is by way of the sex instinct. That in the last 20 years more men in india have seen naked women across the country fucking in their homes because the camera got into the hands of every person. You name the region, you have seen the MMS.

But of course, "hum aisi gandi cheezein nahi dekhte". The store owner keeps pointing at the place where the supposed couple on the mms fucked on the floor. Again and again. As if there was something holy about it.

The way each story weaves into the other is fascinating and disturbing and that is what makes Dibakar Banerjee's multiverse so fucking awesome. Everyone would have a favourite part of the story, you know like feeling something particular for a particular Sin City book. Maybe because in some fucking weird way, you identify with it??? You know what I am saying?

Yes, so mine is the second story. I do not like it more than the other two. Just identify with it in a way only I could. Because of the medium used. The fixed non moving store cameras. The freakiness of the store camera, the absolute stillness of it made me fidgety to the extreme. After the first story, I wanted the camera to 'move' in this second one too. But, arghhhhhh! DAMN you DIBAKAR!

I used to work with Envirosell, the Paco Underhill owned company (author of the #kvlt epic book Why We Buy?, the sole reason why I joined the job in the first place. It is the stuff that marketing guys in B school jerk off over. The book, that is ). This is what I used to do there (Here's a better description and an engaging read). Get to a store. Fix up cameras around it. Follow shoppers around. Then at the end of the day, carry all that camera footage back  to the office. Every moment from 8 am to 10 pm. Then take observations on how many people, gender, age, what time did they enter, how long did they stay in a particular aisle, which product did they pick up, how long, did they look at the front of the packaging, the price, so on. Have you ever worked at a retail store? The first thing that hits you is that there is no place to sit. And that there are no breaks. Through the day.

So I know what it means, the unblinking non stop store camera footage. Let me repeat that word. Non-stop. It is the coldest, the most unforgiving medium possible. And it gets me shaken, not stirred.

Don't be mistaken. This film is an adrenaline rush. One of those where you know the people making it have had an immense amount of fun through it. In the third story, because of the camera being stuck somewhere around the cleavage, there are some stunning moments. There is the jumping off the bridge scene (there was a similar moment in OldBoy, the camera there hand held) and the girl exercising in the morning (she is wearing a bright red tracksuit and is doing crunches at a ground where the grass is bright green. So on the screen you see alternatively, bright red bright green bright red bright green. Like FUCK! Who THINKS of these things?). You see the woman's long legs stretching out from below you (on the screen). You because You watch what the camera is. Like this

Smack my bitch up, anyone?

Also I love the way the stories have been arranged. The first story acclimatizing you to the medium and then waking you up in a way that says, "Bhainchod, koi saas bahu ka serial to hai nahi ye" (that comes up in the third story though. The dialogue! Ekta Kapoor is the producer. Yes). The stories needed to be arranged in that order.

The film has beautiful flow. The camera plays each of the characters one by one, the Love Sex and Dhokha of the title. Suffice it to say that the film's technical brilliance shall inspire a whole set of film makers, but that was not the purpose of the film. 

This entire build up of the film, everything that you know about the film till now is only to get you to the theatres. The trailer below, the songs.

What greets you when you walk-in to see this film is something that you just cannot anticipate beforehand .There is no precursor to this in Bollywood. Or anywhere in the world.

As @diptakirti says here 

I have to fall at Dibakar Banerjee's feet and remain there. LSD is funny, gritty, gutsy, intelligent. And its just the interval.

And in the next one, 

No review for LSD. A reco: Drop everything and watch it. Twice. And then once more.

  

I am not good with ending posts, so instead I shall borrow from my favourite Bollywood reviewer Raja Sen's 5 starred paean to LSD,

It is, as the oft-abused phrase goes, an 'important' film, and one you should watch if only to acquaint yourself with the way things inevitably work. 


It's bleak, bittersweet, funny and markedly unglamorous, and yet you come out humming the theme tune, your head blown clear off your shoulders. 


Hell yeah. Welcome to adulthood, Bollywood, can we get you another beer?

Five stars it is.

P.S. I have been incredibly pained with the news of the cuts made by the censor board. Irritable, hurt, pained, and frustrated. Rahul Bhatia (@yesnosorry) wrote about the process evocatively in The Open Magazine at Love, Sex aur Censor. It didn't help matters. However, having said that, the censor cuts do not jar the flow of the film. Except that cut in the dalit line. That was crucial. Tch.

P.P.S. SPOILERS IN HERE. Wrote this comment on zennmaster's review of the film, and I wanted to reproduce it here.
"I honestly felt that Dibakar Banerjee planned the flow all along. First story let me start mocking Bollywood. Let the viewers get comfortable with the cuteness, the ha ha's. Then let me bring out the axe. Then let me chop off the head off the cute heroine and the cute hero. Show the severed head dangling. Okay, now that the wind is knocked off these motherfuckers viewers who were giggling, let me get you into the second story where I show these bumscratchers how things really work around the world. "MBA walon ke karan duniya chal rahi hai by god" and end it with "Hum aisi gandi cheezein nahi dekhte". SLAP SLAP. And then move on to the third story where I will let these screwballs have some fun (I LOVED the girl caressing the guy's fingers while she is on the phone with the other guy asking him to "Milo naaa") until the end credits rolled and the title track played on.