Let me say forthwith that buried somewhere in its interesting plotline, unsentimental treatment and talented performers, there's a great film in Gulaal...it's just not the one I saw on screen. Gulaal's strongest moments come in its first quarter. We see Dileep Singh (Raja Chaudhary) a naïve post-grad come to study law in Jaipur. He is immediately taken under the wing of his roommate Rananjay Singh aka Ransa (Abhimanyu Singh), a booze-swigging roughneck with an affectionate contempt for Dileep's timidity. As it turns out, Ransa is also the son of the local royalty and has denounced his father's decadent practices (which amongst other things has led to a bastard sibling duo that will play a part later in the film). Dileep's visit to the university leads to his becoming the victim of a nasty ragging session where he is stripped and locked up in a room along with a molested lecturer (Jessy Randhawa, annoying bindi and sullen expression). After being rescued Dileep is harangued and egged on by Ransa to get even...an attempt which ends in their complete humiliation, including a head first dip into the toilet bowl. This signals the further spiraling of events where they get involved with the local politico, Mrityunjay Singh aka Dukki Bana (Kay Kay), a militant imperialist seeking to making a separate monarchist state of Rajputana.

Dukki Bana wants Ransa to contest for General Secretary in the student elections and, through him, control the student politics and funds therein towards his own ideology. Ransa's main rival is his step-sister Kiran (Ayesha Mohan), part of the bastard sibling duo mentioned before. Things turn bloody when Ransa is killed by the siblings to prevent his contesting the elections. Dukki Bana then puts up Dileep as a substitute candidate for Ransa. Dileep's embroilment in the murky business leads to conflicts with Dukki Bana and an affair with Kiran who is plainly using him as a means to her end. What happens to Dileep and where things lead to form the reminder of the running time.

A fair enough interesting experience, if that was what had been actually offered. But there are really only two ways you can film a story like Gulaal's with its myriad of characters: 1) Select one or two protagonists and tell things entirely from their context. 2) Go balls out for a layered narrative with multiple points of view, and the luxury of affording sufficient depth to all the players. What Kashyap does here is a soggy hodge-podge of the two. He starts off with Dileep's POV but drags the pace with the completely unrelated and frankly boring events of Dukki Bana's extra-marital flings. The film for me loses zest after the death of Ransa who is the only really likable character in the film. Interest could have been maintained if the writing was more streamlined or worked to give enough emotional meat to the other characters to generate empathy.

But what we get instead is “really fucking poor man's Shakespeare”. Stage time seems arbitrarily distributed between the various characters and NONE of them rise above mundane cardboard sketches. Dukki Bana is reduced to a generic caricature, easily substituted by the Bhavani character in RGV's Shiva. Entities like the molested lecturer and Dukki Bana's mistress (Mahie Gill, painted as a Tabu clone to the extent of an insult) come across as complete hangers-on and could have been snipped out of the narrative with no damage. Kashyap is not even bothered to provide any kind of suspense / ambiguity regarding Kiran's motives for her affair with Dileep. Then there's the insanely stupid “Greek chorus and Conscience of The Movie” element with Dukki Bana's band master brother (Piyush Mishra) and a multicolored abomination that looks like it was shat out. The disco-bar set design and assorted crap pulled with neon signs and strobe lights of Dileep's room are another example of the “head up my ass” attitude that Kashyap has towards getting a reputation as India's Quentin Tarantino / Danny Boyle.

In short, I still give props to Kashyap for taking on an unconventional subject but I was left watching a very predictable narrative with characters I could not give the slightest damn about. And at nearly 2 ½ hours of self-important jiggery-pokery, I can only describe the experience as tortuous.