Deconstructing a flashback

This is my reading of the flashback sequence of Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!. A story based on the real life notorious thief famously called SuperChor Bunty – Bunty the thief.

This is Lavinder Singh Lucky . Age 31 years

And this is Lucky aged 15 .

That is how the story of Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! goes into its flashback. What makes it out of the ordinary, is the immense detailing of the characters, dialogues and locations. The time period, although not specified can be deduced by Lucky’s age. It is designed to resemble the late 80s and early 90s in Delhi.

The film opens with Lucky, the protagonist in police custody and about to be presented before the waiting media that is getting increasingly impatient for a tasty news nugget. The accompanying Crime Show on TV called ‘Criminal’ enlists the theft list of Lucky over a period with an estimated value of 7 crore. This immediately raises the curiosity of the audience as to how can a thief be so prolific. It is quite like the Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks starrer Catch Me If You Can, where the character’s reputation precedes his action, which in turn is shown afterwards. While the films are distinctly apart, the narrative technique to create intrigue is the same. Tell the audience – this is what he did and the audience will wonder back – how the hell can a person do such audacious things?

If a film manages that, Bang ! It has the audience interested and ready for the story. A good beginning is crucial.Watch the first 15 minutes here. This includes the opening credits.

The flashback in Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! is more about the evolving character that is Lucky. There is no single event or cause of him becoming a thief. Lucky, being a boy from the lower middle class craves for wealth that his socio-economic status can’t help him achieve that easily, what with his municipal school education. That he knows that English is important is shown in the greeting card sequence where he asks the hockey playing schoolboy about greeting cards and girls’ affinity for it. And that he is terrible at English is shown in the same scene when his friends mock him by asking 'can he speak English'. Lucky being the overtly confident young guy answers “why not” in a thick Punjabi accent.

Lack of an elite education is also not an excuse to become a crook, for Lucky’s elder brother is shown to be honest, hard working and studious. The family is conflicted and disoriented. A demure mother who is unable to even convince her youngest son to gulp down a glass of milk and a loud bossy father, who knows that Lucky is more street smart than himself.Lucky’s inventiveness and smooth talking is both an acquired aspect as also a positive that he polishes and practices daily to be what he is. A suave talker with ample charm that is not completely independent of his crass street lingo and which has its roots in his growing up environment .

Lucky’s attitude is seen in the way he stands in for a word of words with his father or the way he twirls his kada (bracelet) on his fingers. He is an opportunist and a manipulator who tries to butter up his father for a bike and his equally sinister father nods along to the idea to get Lucky into a trance of fulfillment of expectation only to shouted back to reality making him flee the house with his friends to yet another of his shenanigans. Lucky is also aware that a ruffian’s life is not safe. They witness one of his friends being killed for unspecified purposes by a couple of thugs. That is probably the reason why he stuck with Bangali as his partner in petty crimes and minor thefts until he hit the big league.

I found mild inconsistency in the heavily overpriced food rates in New Amar restaurant that Lucky takes the girl to and that the bill amount was different to the amount he told his friends at the garage that he paid at the restaurant. That apart, there is admirable detailing. Where banners show old hand painted film posters and sugar is sold @ Re. 1 /kg, there are Bajaj scooters on the roads and messy illegal electricity wires running over narrow lanes.

In the scene set in Lucky’s house, ‘Street Dancer’, a popular song in the late 80s of composer Bappi Lahiri picturised on Mithun Chakravarty is playing on the tape recorder. The car seating rich school students has the number plate – DIL 1000 and the background track is ‘Tu Raja Ki Raaj Dulaari’. Translated which means ‘ you are the princess and I am the poor pauper of the streets’. That subtly indicates the arousing aspiration of a life of cars, girls and money.

The production and costume designer’s work is worth a mention to bring the authenticity of it.The transition to Lucky’s present is through a series of faded photographs with rounded edges that establishes both the passage of time and the friendship between him and Bangali.

What is appreciable is that Dibakar Banerjee and Urmi Javekar’s screenplay focuses on the claustrophobia that the protagonist Lucky feels in a Delhi ghetto in his growing years. The only way out of it is by getting rich and hence he steals without apology or remorse. He wants to escape his native culture which he finds stifling and regressive by embracing the consumer culture. He is an anti-thesis of a male Punjabi lead. He wants nothing to do with the traditions and functions, but then the same ostentatious parties are where he gets to steal expensive Mercedes cars.

The reason it is such an effective flashback is that it is driven by both circumstances and characters. As for why Lucky was a turbaned Sikh and now has shorter hair... well doesn't a thief need to have guises and be sleighty ? The intelligent audience can figure that out.

Love Sex aur Dhokha

Love Sex aur Dhokha

I remember Dibaker Banerjee’s debut film. The opening week of Khosla ka Ghosla was the first time a girl dumped me for something else, yeah not someone, something. The second time around, for Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! I missed the Nov 26 terrorist attack by a week. I had told my friend from and in New Delhi how I was always afraid to go to CST station, because that would be the first place that any terrorist attack was likely to happen.

So that ways the release week of his films have been eventful for me.

Soon thereafter I heard him speak at a press conference where he talked about the new grammar of cinema and that we should not look down upon the digital era where every rookie has a shot at making a film.

I knew then that he was upto making something on the new media,he had dropped hints when asked about his next film.
Love, Sex aur Dhokha in his own words is a film that isn’t one.
Cheap handycams and cheaper mobile cams with their shaky handling and scratchy sound are evolving the way people are broadcasting themselves courtesy youtube.

It pushes some buttons.
But what makes lewd MMS a rage?
That it has got immediacy and lust.
We all try to catch small little clips on our camera mobile .
Why??
Because we are born custom fitted with a 100 megapixel camera right into our heads –our eyes. And that’s what one of the points LSD makes-

WE ARE ALL VOYEURS.
And that’s exactly why Paris Hilton’s ‘one night in paris’ video went double platinum. We have all seen it, inspite of being shot in green night vision and its hazy shooting .News channels will willingly spend for an exclusive steamy sexual pixelated footage. Even in the times when 3-d films are beginning be a norm, furtively and salaciously placed cameras try to get a footage that has the potential to be the national rage, burning airwaves. And it has to have sex involved in it.

About the film, I think it can be termed as a hyperlinkning film but, not so much so .The stories are just very mildly connected. And the length should have been restricted to 90 minutes, because unlike the previous films by Dibaker Banerjee, LSD just didn’t have enough meat .But let’s not speak about the negatives of the film.

Dibakar Banerjee has moved from middle class Delhi in Khosla ka Ghosla to lower middle class East Delhi in Oye Lucky to the snooky and peeping camera mileau here in LSD. He has kept Sneha Khanwalkar as the composer who had dug out a fantastic Rajasthani folk song ‘tu raja ki raaj dulaari’ used beautifully in OLLO during the flashback of the lead character Lavinder Singh Lucky, easily according to my consideration, the best flashback in Indian cinema history. It’s delightful to see a female composer and in LSD, she has given a killer soundtrack in ‘I can’t hold it’ which again has a very rajasthani sound to it because of the lyrics and vocals.

You don’t allow us to say fuck off, alright then we will sing FO FO FO FO FO !

People may come out of the theaters saying we have more sex dished out than this in a local daily news bulletin .That’s the problem of having a juicy title , lest we forget, LSD is a potent acronym. LSD is not being preachy; I for one believe the film is very novel, a fresh idea and inspired by the times of our life, however, the entertainment value has been found lacking.

Society doesn’t know how to deal with a new technology and the debate of boon or bane has to take place to establish an equilibrium. After a while probably sting and sex clips will be passé too.

But that’s not the point of the film. The point is that we are surrounded by the digital eye and that we have to learn to live with the advantages and threats that it brings along.