In DC, Arun Matheswaran drags Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's Devdas into the modern realm of mainstream moviemaking by borrowing only the names and certain traits of the characters from the novel and planting them in the current trend of gore-meets-unoriginality. Matheswaran's Devdas (director-turned-actor Lokesh Kanagaraj) is not a sophisticated, educated Bengali from a wealthy family. His poor father runs a small repair shop, and he is an outlaw with unkempt curly hair and a long beard, both of which could use a trim. This Devdas gives up his education to pursue a life of violence and vengeance. If Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Devdas inflicted emotional wounds on himself and those around him through his actions, Matheswaran's version of the character inflicts wounds that are more physical. Sure, he, too, is left with his share of mental scars, particularly after the death of a character. But Matheswaran is not a filmmaker interested in psychological depth. If his filmography—which, excluding DC, consists of three films—has indicated anything, it's that this director works with cliches, ideas, and templates that remain superficial and undeveloped. His so-called filmmaking is nothing more than noisy, pumped-up images screaming for attention.
And so, unfortunately, is the case with DC as well, a movie whose loins are so excited by paper-thin concepts that it's no wonder it prematurely ejaculates long before the actual climax. Matheswaran asks what if Parvati (Sanjana Krishnamoorthy) were a bar singer, only to give her a backstory as small and thin as a mark on her hand because her main purpose is to be the "dead lover archetype" who offers the hero extra "moody, haunting shades." This Devdas, who kills corrupt police officers to deliver justice to aggrieved people, is made to suffer when he makes decisions with his heart rather than his head. When he goes to meet Parvati for one last time, he inadvertently ends up fatally injuring the poor woman. Later, when he thinks of helping a family by offering them cash, he ends up getting arrested. Yet it's hard to feel anything for this Devdas, his lover, or his friends. Matheswaran strictly uses his characters as chess pieces that merely underline the script's surface-level designs, leaving behind a vaporous puff that disperses as soon as the lights are switched on in the theater.
Does Matheswaran really want you to feel anything other than how "cool" his images look with blood splattered on them? While watching this director of Rocky, Saani Kaayidham, and Captain Miller, one experiences a sense of relief whenever the events in his films tilt toward violence. Because violence in Matheswaran's films acts as a distraction from his thuddingly undernourished and impoverished writing and his skin-deep characters. When Matheswaran links Devdas's and Chandra's (Wamiqa Gabbi) isolation by cutting between his time in prison and her time in a brothel, it seems as if the director has reached the peak of his visual imagination. What he's left with, then, is a crafty turn of events when Chandra, after being rescued by Devdas, solves a money crisis by blackmailing the men who used to sexually exploit her at the brothel. It's an intriguing step—the sex worker extracting money from her "clients" as revenge—though also one that Matheswaran, unsurprisingly, simply wields as an "exciting twist in the narrative," a justification for the words "Madness meets Madness" that appear during the interval. How does someone like Chandra, who has been trapped in a single room since she was six years old, cook up such a daring plan? All Matheswaran does is rely on a Bonnie and Clyde poster for some sort of explanation that the audience is required to connect in their heads. What does Chandra, who has been trapped in a single room since she was six years old, think about the outside world, the vast ocean, the warm sun, and the places she visits with Devdas and his men? Again, Matheswaran relies on a brief shot of her basking in the sun while standing in the water instead of bothering to explore the thoughts she harbors and what she has to say about her new experiences.
DC, in the end, like other Arun Matheswaran films, brims with empty, stylized images. The director's whole purpose can be boiled down to a couple of hollow twists and brutal action sequences. The latter, especially, seems to be the main reason he makes films. Were it not for the appealing and charismatic presence of his cast, his movies, after the end credits, would have completely evaporated from the minds of the audience. For all the huffing and puffing of the gore on the screen, Matheswaran's aesthetic import is just trivial. His images are simultaneously exhausting and decorated with a degree of self-admiration. Matheswaran overcontrols his movies and suffocates them, thus draining them of both life and vigor. Still, if DC manages to be a hit at the box office, I won't be surprised because it's the product of a time when entertainment journalism is filled with depressing interviews with directors being praised for "mass moments" and "high moments." When the virtues of cinema begin to rest on high-wattage cameo appearances and cool slo-mo walks and poses, then the culture is riddled with DC-like, exhausting mainstream fare. No wonder some critics have displayed enthusiasm for creatively bankrupt affairs—and DC is no exception. If stylized violence and insignificant aesthetics are what they want, that's what they'll get. Just don't write long pieces about why Indian movies are facing a creative crisis then. You know the reason.
Final Score - [1/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
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Publisher at Midgard Times