‘Ludo’ movie review: Largely entertaining, with an in-form Anurag Basu

 ‘Ludo’ movie review: Largely entertaining, with an in-form Anurag Basu

Even before the twin words: hyperlink cinema was officially introduced into the jargon of film critics, Anurag Basu made Life In a Metro. It could be said that since then, all his stories have been mounted on a large canvas with multiple narrative threads, even something as pedestrian as Kites.

 

It's hard not to think of Thiagarajan Kumararaja's intrepid Super Deluxe, another multi-story film, where the plot points move incredibly well and whose proceedings are fueled by philosophical reflections on life and morality, as you watch Ludo de Basu, which also follows a similar narrative trajectory. Of the two, Super Deluxe is a better and less forgiving movie. But unlike Kumararaja's movie, Ludo plays with the perception of karma and dharma.

 

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The backbone of any multiple narrative film is the intersection of stories; the point of convergence where the world begins to close on the characters. The first half hour of Basu's script is remarkably structured and you almost delight in awe, given how little established (the editor, Ajay Sharma, does a fabulous job) and how each scene acts as a predecessor with a central character, interrelated with one of Ludo's four stories, which has its own arc, when Basu changes focus (he has doubled as cinematographer for this film), or should we say roll the dice? Let's get this out of the way: Ludo, the game, could be the greatest allegory of life - "Ludo is life and life is ludo," says one character - but it has very little purpose to serve except the four colors- stories encoded.

 

‘Ludo’ movie review: Largely entertaining, with an in-form Anurag Basu

Ludo

Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sanya Malhotra, Pearle Maaney, Rohit Suresh Saraf and Inayat Verma

Director: Anurag Basu

Plot: The murder of a contractor by a gangster, who has defeated the God of Death, unleashes a bomb that brings together a variety of characters, whose paths might not have crossed otherwise.

The film has a Bergman-style opening scene with two characters, in shades of black and white, one of whom is played by Basu himself, contemplating the purpose of life and death, as they settle for a game of ludo. They are both the narrators and the gods of destiny, writing the destiny of the main characters. In other words, ludo is his game and the die that ties these individual stories together is Sattu Bhaiya (Pankaj Tripathi plays Pankaj Tripathi in a role of Pankaj Tripathi), a very lovable gangster and the core, around which each character revolves. Sattu has to settle old scores with his right hand, Bittu (a defiant Abhishek Bachchan, who embodies a bit of Lallan de Yuva, albeit a bit worn out).

 

Anurag Basu

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The shades of red in Bittu are indicative of the blood on his hands and past "sins". He gains a redemptive bow when he finds a daughter in Mini (a lovely Inayat Verma), who restores moral balance in his life. Would Bittu rot in hell from her violent past or go to heaven to save a family? In your case, is it karma or dharma? You don't know, you never know. The same goes for Sattu's case: well, it's nice to see a Bollywood movie devoid of unnecessary virtual cues and a tone-deaf politics after a long time.

 

There is the yellow square in the shape of Akash (Aditya Roy Kapur) and his girlfriend Shruti (Sanya Malhotra), the most banal of all. If Bittu is dealing with something internal, Akash and Shruti struggle with external forces when they come across a video of them having sex on an adult website. Since ludo has another square, we have the addition of a blue-tinged story with Pearle Maaney and Rohit Suresh Saraf.

 

It is not that the arcs of Ludo's story are exceptional, but the “extraordinary” circumstances in which the characters find themselves trapped and the way in which Basu evokes humor from his helplessness, they are. And they are wildly funny, often straying between a black comedy and a musical drama.

 

 

 

Take for example the story of Alok Kumar, inspired by Mithun Chakraborthy (a wonderfully animated Rajkummar Rao. Someone please write a full-blown masala movie already), for example. He plays a quintessential Bollywood hero, an embodiment of what Dhanush has mastered over the years: a soup boy, in unrequited love with his high school girlfriend Pinky (Fatima Sana Shaikh), who is now is wife and mother. Your portion