A lot of gas
There has been some appreciation for No Smoking, which is as ludicrous as the film. One reviewer found it “subversive, arthouse cinema”, another saw it as “daring, imaginative, often brilliant”. The critics can be forgiven their inanity, but surely one expected better from such an intelligent cinema buff as Anurag Kashyap, and even more so from the peerless Vishal Bharadwaj, who has led us astray by unfurling his banner over the film.
The German-speaking K (John Abraham) is supposed to be Anurag Kashyap’s alter ego (“it is my most personal movie.. I am K”, says Kashyap on his blog), so it seems Kashyap has imagined himself as a Kafkaesque figure. K wakes up from nightmares, gets sucked into a hopeless situation (echoes of Faust, it is said), and finally ends up in a limbo. All for what? For his arrogant, rebellious, subversive urge to smoke, all the time, everywhere. His motivation? Standing in front of the mirror with his chiselled chest bare and his vacant eyes hidden under dark glasses, he looks the epitome of cool with the smoke curling up his lips. “Nobody tells me what to do. Nobody,” he tells his reflection. Is the suggestion here more of Oscar Wilde than of Kafka? K’s narcissism has everyone attracted, and confused.
But there’s no peace for the narcissist. [The oppresive army of the other, concerned more with the world than with itself, is intent on enforcing its dictates. K is tricked into this army’s captivity by his very friends, who love themselves more than they love K. And this Army is the vilest in history: it uses Nazi-style gas chambers, keeps absolute surveillance and has supernatural powers. Based deep under the Dharavi slum, it has also learnt to harness technology to its evil aims. K’s escape is impossible; there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
The problem is that there’s not a trace of empathy with K, apart from the one with nicotine. Our hero betrays not the slightest gesture of compassion or humaneness. Be it forcing a friend to smoke or himself smoking in bed with a wife who can’t stand smoke, or lighting up inside an elevator before an elderly woman or snubbing a hijra on the street, the man comes across as pure can’t-look-beyond-the-nose. So when he gets caught in the devil’s trap and his soul grows penniless to make its voice reach his head, we can only wonder what’s it all about. K is a spoilt brat, no more, no less. His mother and brother don’t want him, his wife looks like she’s sticking around only for the money, and his friends, well. Unalloyed arrogance, without any redeeming sign of generosity, humility, large heartedness or love can only fetch an equal disdain. Anything more is simply undeserved.
The camerawork looked promising at first, nicely coloured frames and all, but soon became gimmicky, and the sepia-tinged underworld of the prayogshala at the end was just rotten. The choreography was as hackneyed as it comes, and the hype about the cabaret number cigaratte jalti hai is thoroughly hollow. We’ve seen it many a times before, sorry. Equally cliched (and sad) was the Chaplinesque sequence of the cigar seller’s stint in Cuba, and all the efort to have Ranvir Shorey as squint-eyed was a sheer waste. Parts of the set for, and shots of, the Dharavi slum were the only standout items in a tale that was only boring, vacuous and lifeless.
When a rich idiot’s addiction to smoking becomes the peg to hang a cinematic statement on rebellion and amateur experiments with lighting and art direction techniques, God save the turn that “intelligent” cinema is taking. And this when as original a film as The Blue Umbrella went unnoticed after a week at a handful of cineplexes in the country. Give me the “boring” Nihalanis and Benegals, or even the Farah Khans, any day. No No Smoking.
