No Smoking (eng subs) [2007] Anurag Kashyap

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No Smoking (2007)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0995740/

Hindi language with English subtitles

No Smoking is a 2007 Indian Bollywood film directed by Anurag Kashyap and produced by Vishal Bharadwaj and Kumar Mangat. The film stars John Abraham, Ayesha Takia, Paresh Rawal. This film was shot in Mumbai, Russian Federation, Kazakhstan and Siberia. The film is based on the short story Quitters, Inc. by Stephen King. The film was not well received in India.

John Abraham ... K
Ayesha Takia ... Anjali / Annie
Paresh Rawal ... Shri Shri Prakash Guru Ghantal Baba Bangali Sealdah Wale
Ranvir Shorey ... Abbas Tyrewala

To Do Is To Be. To Be Is To Do. Dobe Dobe Do! Bollywood films dont begin with quotes by Plato and Socrates and follow it up with Frank Sinatra. No Smoking does. And its not because the films trying to be different and cool. Its for a reason. Anurag Kashyap, at the very outset, warns you of the existential nature of the film to follow. If you are too dense to grasp that, its your fault. Maybe youre in the wrong movie hall. Or maybe Im being arrogant and No Smoking has been made in the wrong industry and wrong country. Or maybe, Anurag Kashyap has slyly gestured his critics and the tame Bollywood industry a massive ΓΓé¼╦£up-yours! disguised as a film.

Whatever it is, No Smoking surely grabs your attention and doesnt let go for its entire running time. At the end of it though(as an insanely sexy Bipasha Basu gyrates to the impossibly sexier Phoonkh De(Puff It)), it seems that ΓΓé¼╦£attention is merely what Anurag Kashyap is after. But is that a bad thing when youve been treated to such a mind-bending experience? Not since Darren Aronofskys Requiem For A Dream have I seen such a ΓΓé¼╦£rush of hallucinatory imagery.

Most critics have complained about not understanding what No Smoking is all about. Its certainly not a public service message against smoking, although its clever how Kashyap has led the censors to believe so and get them to pass excessive amounts of smoking minus any cuts. So what is it about? It has John Abraham as Just K- a chain smoker who, at the insistence of his wife Anjali(Ayesha Takia) and friend Abbas(Ranvir Shorey) enlists the services offered by a Guru Ghantaal Shri Shri Shri Baba Bengali Sealdeh Waala( played with menacing glee by Paresh Rawal) to rid him of his smoking habit. Would it have made any difference though if it had been porn, alcohol or tele-tubbies instead of cigarettes that Just K was addicted to? Cigarettes are only a red herring, a placebo pill that enables the bizarre script a base around which the narrative gleefully freewheels. Ridding K of his smoking is the least of the films concerns. What the film is concerned about is the cost he will have to pay for it. And therein lays the films existential dilemma.

Although the films basic premise is loosely based on Stephen Kings Quitters Inc.(which was adapted to the screen as a short in Cats Eye), No Smoking has more similarities to Franz Kafkas The Trial. Not very unlike the protagonist of The Trial, Josef K., Just K is made to pay for his inability to accept his guilt. The question then is- does that inability make one less of a human being? Are we supposed to conform to societys laws to be accepted as human beings?

No Smoking is at its heart an anarchist film. It wants you to question the established conventions and the compromises youve made to follow them. Are they worth it? Is it worth dying an old man with a life behind you full of compromises or die an early one doing always exactly what you wanted. The bargain is simple if youve attained clarity. Whats the harm in doing what you want? This is where Kashyaps Just K goes from being Josef K. to Kashyap himself. If you take away the cigarettes, No Smoking is an autobiographical film. Kashyap is Just K, trying to make his kind of films in a world that makes him feel guilty for doing that. But if he chooses to make the compromise, whats the price gonna be? A dead existence, minus the self- the soul. ΓΓé¼┼ôAatma hai to shareer eeshwar hai, warna sab nashwar hai!ΓΓé¼┬¥(The soul is everything; without the soul youre nothing)

Even if one were to dismiss all the events as rubbish (Kafka and surrealism arent everybodys cup of tea, especially when served together), there is still so much cinematic genuis at work here that is being criminally overlooked. Apart from the superlative cinematography(sepia has never looked this good before), the film employs Godards jump cuts and Welles lightning mix sound editing techniques. As if that werent enough, Kashyap indulges in comic book bubbles even.