LSD pe mindfuck

Ek din mein do do blog, too much ho gaya sirji.
So I just got home after watching Love Sex aur Dhokha like, 10 minutes ago. The film's gritty hidden cameras captured not only the moral zeitgeist of our emotional atyachar decade, but Dibakar Banerjee also manages to infuse his film (like his previous ventures) with the essence of Delhi. On the car ride home, Imran Khan's "Amplifier" started playing on the radio, which is so appropriate because the song is to our city (and specially to Noida!) exactly what this film is.

Our viewing experience was enhanced by running commentary by a bunch of ढाकर छोराs (who were apparently from my neighbourhood) who sounded like they had just leapt out of the film.
"Yeh badi touchy hai yaar"
"Abbe yeh Senti kyun ho gaya?"
"Yeh wala dil ka saaf hai"
(when girl in skimpy dress comes on screen) "Khatarnak lag rahi hai, bhai"
(Dialogue on screen: "tum kuch accha kaam kyun nahi karte?") "Kar hi toh raha tha!"
(sex scene has been pixellated) "Aur kyun nahi dikha rahe?"

The film consists of 3 intersecting stories of "love", "sex" and "dhoka". In the first story, ambitious film student (Aditya Chopra worshipping) Rahul is shooting a Yashraj style family entertainer diploma film, he falls in love with his actress Shruti who has a Amrish Puri type tyrant lala father. The segment provides a lot of hilarious sequences, the most ingenuous of those being in Banerjee's biting but loving characterization of typical Delhi stereotypes. The rich Karol Bagh chaap businessman ("chandelier shoot karo, ekdum Mughal-e-Azam wala"), the "institute" kids ("yeh Shahrukh nahi hai! Yeh original hai!"), the cutesy couple in love. Rahul's film is also a MTV fully faltoo spoof of DDLJ. The most gripping section of the segment comes like a kick the stomach (though not entirely unexpectedly) and inverts the entire tone of the film so far. The camera here is in the hands of Rahul, who uses it both to make the film and also to record every moment of his life, the camera is seen as an extension of himself, telling his story.

The second story is shot inside a Big Apple store (which I swear I've been in and have done some nautanki in front of the CCTV before, they gave us free Pulpy Orange!) where nikamma Adarsh hangs around trying to seduce "Behenji turned mod" Rashmi to try and win a bet and pay off debts by making an MMS clip. There is a lot of talk of neeyat here (which my Noida friends sitting behind me commented on several times), ultimately sab ki neeyat kharab hi hoti hai. Adarsh is a sort of an oldschool unemployed angsty young man with issues of love, jealousy, trying to make some quick money and ego. Rashmi is a good girl who falls for him and faces dhokha. Also linking the first two stories is the fact that Rashmi is friends with Shruti from the first segment, Shruti and Rahul come to meet her in the store. The other link to the first segment would be a spoiler, so lets just leave it at that. Also worthy of a mention is the perfectly played characters of Rashmi's चंट co-worker, the committee gundas and the security guard. Here is where our voyeurism is brought out the most. The whole hall cried out when the camera is switched off while we anticipate a kiss. Everyone waits for the sex scene, yet everyone is indignant about the dhokha. We as an audience are no less two faced than the characters.

The third story revolves around a dejected TV journalist (whose life is saved by Rashmi in a shootout in her store) Prabhat and "item" Mrignaina who try to stage a sting operation (Prabhat is called "Sting is King" by his co-worker and boasts of stings against ministers and Miss Meerut) against a Mika inspired sleazy Punjabi video star Loki Local. This segment takes a look at the scandal hungry IndiaTV type newswallahs and also the casting couch phenomena. The story is lifted out of tabloid headlines, but the human aspect of it is brought out by the (dil ka acha) Prabhat. The wolfish editor of the news channel points out the fickle public imagination (ek sting toh audience ek do din mein bhool jayegi), she's the bad guy while only catering to the demands of her audience (as Prabhat says, "Desh ko sachai nahi, prime time entertainment chahiye). The end also ties up all 3 segments beautifully (again appreciated by my neighbours). The title song is also reminiscent of "Aye bhai tune pappi kyun li" by Mika in that it spoofs the scandal Loki was involved in.

Nikos Andritsakis's cinematography is amazingly realistic, the camera emerges not only as a window for us, the voyeurs, but as a catalyst and innovatively, as a character in its own right (as indicated by dialogues like "Camera dekh raha hai" and "Camera na khazane ki chabi hai"). The film exists because there is an audience for it. We as a generation have chosen to wash our dirty laundry in public and we get off (quite literally) on watching other peoples lives unravel on or TV screens. Real life is not edited (except the much publicized sex scene), which is why Namrata Rao's editing is seamless. The acting is wonderfully natural, you end up forming connections with the characters, like in Dev D, you would know at least one person who is like one of the characters, which is the brilliance of Dibakar Banerjee's script.

Marshall McLuhan said that "the medium is the message", this idea is made blatantly clear by LSD. In the age of the hidden camera, what is the "message" that we as a society are projecting?