UGLY – A journey into the dark side, with auteur Anurag Kashyap When talking about crime thrillers, or modern film noir, the usual suspects that come to mind would be a Scorsese, Tarantino, Boyle, and Nolan, or even a Park Chan film. However, over the last decade or so, another rebellious auteur named Anurag Kashyap has emerged from India: a writer/director who’s largely responsible for influencing India’s new wave of independent cinema. Some of Anurag’s work such as Black Friday, That Girl in Yellow Boots and Gangs of Wasseypoor have brought him international acclaim, including high praises by some of the above mentioned filmmakers. “Ugly” is Anurag’s eleventh feature film and as both critics and he himself describe, his most accomplished film. Ugly takes you through an extremely dark, yet authentic journey, exploring the human psyche when confronted by loss, corruption, power, and what it takes to survive within a highly corrupted city life. The film starts with a dramatically explosive scene, where Shalini (Tejawini Kohapure), wife of police chief Shoumik (Ronit Roy), attempts suicide before she gets interrupted by her ten year old daughter, Kali (Anshika Shrivastava). Not only does this opening scene hook the audience for the rest of the ride, but it also establishes the characters and their current situation masterfully by combining brilliant acting, dialogues, and simple visual compositions. The film revolves around the disappearance of Shalini’s daughter Kali, which happens after her father Rahul (Rahul Bhatt), picks her up on their day out, and the situations that surrounds the investigation. “My biggest strengths are actors! I’m nothing without my actors, my cameraman or without my team” Kashyap, A. (2015) Directing Actors UGLY Video. Anurag’s writing manages to keep the audience’s attention by heightening their curiosity through complex character revelations and gripping drama. All his characters win the sympathy of the audience at some point during the film, but he makes sure to destroy those emotions in a timely fashion by bringing out the ugliness of each character. One of my favourite scenes of the movie is when Rahul and Chaitanya (Vineet Kumar Singh) meets the police inspector for the first time to lodge their complaint. The scene unravels for nearly 13 minutes during the first half of the movie, and it fabulously reveals how a typical corrupt police officer from a country in the developing world would impose their power over the people who come seeking justice through the system. Furthermore, this scene was 100% improvised on location by the actors and shot on a single take with multiple cameras, which displays another significant trait of Anurag’s directing style. “The lower the cost of the film, the more you can experiment.” Kashyap, A. (2015) Producing UGLY video. Anurag Kashyap is a heavy endorser and practitioner of guerrilla filmmaking methods. While Ugly is considered to be a smaller budget compared to Bollywood’s (India’s mainstream movie industry) multi-million dollar productions, Anurag has been known to make award winning feature films of similar style, well under $5000. He wins half the battle by casting both trained actors and non-actors whose looks are realistic and relatable, to the characters as written in the screenplay. Perfect example for this would be the casting of Shalini and Rahul’s characters, where he picked two actors who have been experiencing rough times and failing careers in their real lives. He manages to bring their real life experiences and emotions through these fictional characters with utmost care and respect to the actors. He reportedly has spent hours discussing the real life challenges of the actors before shooting them, which are relatable for each scene as a preparation for the scenes. Even with a comparatively smaller budget, Ugly stands out as a large scale production on screen just as much as similar multi million dollar Bollywood or Hollywood thriller films. The film has over 10 sequences, including small intimate scenes and complex chase scenes on the backdrop of the city. Anurag has always used cities and their natural chaos to enhance the impact of his scenes. He uses cinematographers who have worked on National Geographic type nature documentary films, where they shoot with 500-mm long lenses to capture real wild life events. He uses these camera skills to shoot big and intimate scenes in a city backdrop with real life chaos happening around them. In return, the film’s production value goes up, as it looks as if it had thousands of extras and locked down major locations just for the shoot. Ugly is far from being a cinematographically pretty film to watch, instead it uses lots of handheld and steadicam movements to bring up the grungy look and feel of the story. Lighting of the film, wardrobe and background colors brings up the dirtiness and the greyness of the characters we are seeing on the screen. Anurag also uses the city’s natural street lights, vehicle, and shop lights to create the ambience that the story demands, instead of using too many complex film lighting setups which again costs a lot and draws too much attention to the filming unit in a city. Ugly was premiered at Cannes Directors Fortnight in 2013, where Anurag’s films have been screened regularly since, and it's now available to stream on Netflix. Even though his films are highly celebrated around the world today, his first couple of films (Paanch, Black Friday) faced significant pushback and objections from Indian authorities due to the unorthodox nature of his story telling, which led the director to struggle in order to get his films made for years before finally getting recognized by people like Danny Boyle, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Ugly is a great example of how a director can transition from humble beginnings as such, to making great masterpieces like Ugly by utilizing the same guerrilla film techniques used during their no-budget film productions. References:
Rothe, E.N. (2013). Anurag Kashyap Talks Ugly and Bombay Talkies in Cannes. Huffingtonpost.com. Kaushal, S. (2014). Ugly review: A dark, gripping movie that is a must watch. HindustanTimes.com. New Delhi. Gupta, S. (2014). Ugly movie review: Anurag Kashyap takes darkness to an extreme, much more than Paanch. TheIndianExpress.com. New Delhi. Patel, D. (2014). Anurag Kashyap talks Ugly, Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt & more | Full Episode | Freaky Fridays | S3 E8. FuhSePhantom. (2015). Directing Actors | UGLY. FuhSePhantom. (2015). Casting UGLY. FuhSePhantom. (2015). Producing UGLY. FuhSePhantom. (2015). The Basis of UGLY. FuhSePhantom. (2015). Unmasking of UGLY. FuhSePhantom. (2015). Locations of UGLY. Kahsyap, A. (2015, November 28). Personal meeting.
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Briging Flavour To The Table For a long time I’ve been wanting to do a travel documentary film. And recently, thanks to the team at Cha’s Organics, I was able to fulfil that dream. So let me take you on a road trip, in Sri Lanka and tell you all about our amazing spices and the farmers who grow them. In this film you will see how our Sri Lankan farmers coexist with nature… quite specifically cobras, how to identify true Ceylon Cinnamon from cassia, how to select a good coconut from a pile, and many more cool experiences while walking through a number of organic spice gardens in Sri Lanka. Cha’s Organics headed by Chanaka Kurera, Marise May and Matthew Caspersz, are doing an amazing job by bringing down some of these awesome organic spices and coconut milk from Sri Lanka to the Canadian market. If you wanna know more about their products, you can continue the journey at www.chasorganics.com And these guys made this film happen: Executive Produced by: Chanaka Kurera, Matthew Caspersz, Marise May Produced by: Eranga Hemajith Edited by: Amila Akalpa Perera Cinematography by: Anuradha Jayasuriya Musical score by: Jonathan George - Street Light Mist Flute & Percussion by: Eranga Hemajith & Amaresh Augustine Pereira Music Recording by: Pasan Liyanage, Tharanga Rathnayake Produced & Directed by: Rasanga Weerasinghe ::: |
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