‘DC’ review: Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Clyde meets Wamiqa Gabbi’s Bonnie in Arun Matheshwaran’s best film yet

The most recurring image in Arun Matheshwaran’s new film is of the loner individual wary of love, also wishing someone came along like a clear stream of water to douse the flames of their rage, the after-effects of their devastating past trauma. But they aren’t so desperate for connection as to cause potential destruction to another person’s life by their presence. They have already made peace with the fact that they’ll probably never be allowed the opportunity to get close to someone — or someone making the first move to get close to them. Funnily enough, one of the most memorable lines in “DC” is uttered by the film’s main bad guys, a cop. He tells a fellow cop, “Either you should’ve stayed single like me, or you should’ve found someone who understood the nature of your profession.”

Matheshwaran, it seems, seeks the answer to the more interesting question: What if you came across someone who also feels the same way — and then you sense that the small sparks ignited during initial contact are slowly blossoming into a raging volcano? A volcano whose rage wouldn’t consume you, but every force that means you harm? What if you also make a deal to return the favour? Now you both have created an inferno that feels comforting to the two of you but vaporising to others.

Anurag Kashyap once said that he made “Dev.D” because he didn’t think that ‘Devdas’, the original Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay novel, was good. Sanjay Leela Bhansali got to mount a lavish, tragic spectacle with his Shah Rukh Khan-Aishwarya Rai-Madhuri Dixit epic. Kashyap, though, made the exact opposite of what Bhansali did — a contemporary, urban adaptation that doesn’t view the world through an intensely melodramatic prism. I belong to the camp that prefers “Dev.D” any day over “Devdas”. Purists be damned. You should be wondering now what Matheshwaran brings to his adaptation — if his version is along those lines or something different? The latter. Beautifully, too, I’d add.

Here’s Matheshwaran coming up with not only a fresh interpretation but also incorporating many fitting influences from world and international cinema in a way that doesn’t look awkward, in a way that feels Indian. Matheshwaran comes up with something set in the time when streetlights and interiors used to look so warm, inviting and elegant — before these so-called ‘energy-saving’ white lamps messed up the aesthetic of our cities.

Warmth. Elegance. I didn’t expect to use these words in the review of an Arun Matheshwaran film. The man is by now associated with a certain brand of unhinged, ultra-violent cinema. Where then, one would ask, do you find warmth and elegance? Oh, you’d be surprised. There’s so much of it. Would it be strange to call “DC” his most… err… light-hearted film?

Make no mistake. There’s plenty of violence — and immensely satisfying, too — but one also gets the sense that he dialled down a bit this time — or, let me frame it this way: he found a way to depict extreme violence without explicitly showing everything. Look, he shows it in the most appropriate, most cathartic places, but he also shows better sense with anything involving women. Let’s remember that he did this in “Saani Kaayidham” too (with the help of a female cinematographer). This is why ‘elegance’ is mentioned, because he finds a way to present even the most unpleasant, ugly situations tastefully. Anything involving women is kept off-screen. Anything involving men is presented in full glory.

And when you have a filmmaker known for glorious violence and stylish heroes, as your leading man, you expect him to bring that same degree of style to his own performance. Lokesh understood the assignment. I loved how he doesn’t play the rugged hero like he has been portrayed many times before. Das doesn’t express a lot; he is mostly stoic. This is not a fault but a characteristic, which fits perfectly with Lokesh’s real-life persona. Those who prefer their heroes to start behaving like Arjun Reddy or Ranbir’s “Animal” character might find the lack of excessive theatricality jarring. I, for one, was completely on board with it.

It’s not that Das isn’t impulsive — in fact, his inability to control his emotions is both a source of humour and fodder for swelling tension in this film’s numerous instances. Devadas, aka Das, has something in common with JD Chakravarthy’s Sathya (from the Ram Gopal Varma film) and some of the protagonists of the 1960s Japanese crime thrillers, especially the ones made by Seijun Suzuki, and starring Joe Shishido, who maintains a mostly detached look most of the time, but also isn’t above feeling pain. Lokesh shows as many expressions as Shishido, but he is relatively more endearing. What he doesn’t show on his face is conveyed through behaviour and gestures. This would be a bit funny to mention, but I couldn’t help but think of one Gautham Menon film and its hero. One reason is a spoiler. The other reason is — wait for it — Ajith from “Yennai Arindhaal”. I know this might elicit a reaction like, “Yov… ennadhu? Ajith-ah?” Must emphasise that Lokesh is not LIKE Ajith, but has similar grace and sophistication. Das, on first glance, would look like a first-class rowdy, an unapproachable one at that, but Lokesh, being Lokesh, plays him like a Literature rank holder who somehow ended up in the wrong profession. I thought this was an interesting creative choice — make him soft-spoken and considerate.

Fans of Michael Mann’s “Heat” would be very familiar with the line, “Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” There’s so much… heat… in this film, considering how these characters are always on the run for doing a crime that, for the audience, is justifiable within the context of the film’s events. It’s the same principle Mann used in the Robert De Niro-Al Pacino crime epic (sequel on the way). One could draw parallels to De Niro’s gang in “Heat” and Das’s gang in “DC” — the idea of unbreakable bonds of brotherhood, the idea of family members not of your own blood, the idea of not backing down on unfinished payback even if it means putting your life in danger…

That’s where the comparison ends. The cop hunting Das is nothing like Pacino’s character. In fact, he is one of the most despicable. There are other bad cops, too. The entire chain of events was started by one, and made worse by a few others. However, I wished the climactic act of retribution carried a little more weight, a little more punch — at least on par with what we saw in the brothel sequence. Could it be because Matheshwaran and team had made something, but had to tone it down due to censorship rules? I don’t know for sure.

This brings me back to how Matheshwaran built a violent tale around the aversion to the idea of having a family and the wish to have one. Fathers being away from their children is another recurring motif in “DC”. When Wamiqa Gabbi’s character enters the picture, the film becomes more alive. Her character, Chandra, is a different interpretation of the character from the Bengali novel. Matheshwaran writes her as the Clyde to Das’ Bonnie. The first hint is the still of the 1967 “Bonnie & Clyde” (one of the greatest crime films ever made, and the most violent for its time) that we see in Chandra’s room heralds the nature of the journey that the couple are going to take the minute Das appears at the brothel, this prison she has been trapped in since she was a child; the prison that never allowed an opportunity to hope for a normal life outside of its walls.

This is why the brothel massacre — the interiors recall Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love” — is one of the most satisfying sequences of catharsis-inducing violence ever put to film. There’s much ingenuity here, given how Matheshwaran incorporates references to the board game in a couple of places, just before Das mercilessly dispatches a nasty guy. And Wamiqa brings the right measure of confusion, disbelief, exhilaration, and resolve to her complex role. The performance occasionally suffers from awkward dubbing, but perhaps we could chalk it up to the complicated history of the character. At one point, she tells Das that she knows multiple Indian languages. At another, we wonder how she knows where each of her clients works. Yes, complex. Not everything has to be explained. We only have to take the cue from the way Das and Chandra trust each other with minimum details about their backgrounds. (Kindly don’t do the same thing with your love life, though.)

“DC” is a perfect demonstration of the principle that a dark, gritty, violent film doesn’t necessarily have to look wholly unpleasant; you don’t need to make it bereft of colours, contrast and lighting. Matheshwaran’s films have always looked good, but “DC” is his most good-looking film yet. Since it’s set in a slightly older time period (as I said earlier, before white lights ruined the beauty of everything, before smartphones took over), the team is afforded many opportunities to conjure up some of the most delectable images. Be it the red haze enveloping a female singer (Sanjana Krishnamoorthy’s perfectly cast Parvathy is the Tamil cinema equivalent of the Jazz Age heroine), the neon signage, the strikingly contrasting overhead shot of a red Omni van against brown sandy terrain, or the gorgeous silhouettes of two lovers placed parallely against the backdrop of a sunset — right where the reflection falls in the water (very Terrence Malick, no?), and much more…. Yeah, this is an absolutely stunning film.

Film: DC

Director: Arun Matheshwaran

Cast: Lokesh Kanagaraj, Wamiqa Gabbi, Sanjana Krishnamoorthy

Rating: 5/5