Tribute to Anurag Kashyap 2014 / No Smoking / India 2007
K.’s wife leaves him because he won’t stop chain-smoking. He enrols in a de-addiction programme run by a guru, Baba Bengali. The programme operates on fear: every time K. lights a cigarette, someone close to him will have a finger chopped off, or will die, or his own life will be in danger.
No Smoking, shown at the Rome Film Festival, is the most surreal, bizarre and puzzling of Kashyap’s body of films. He draws his premise from Quitters, Inc., a tale about kicking the habit, from Stephen King’s anthology of fear-related short stories (also made into a segment in the 1985 film Cat’s Eye). The premise is straightforward enough: K. (John Abraham) is a self-absorbed executive, whose wife (Ayesha Takia) leaves him because he won’t stop chain-smoking. On the recommendation of friend Abbas, he enrols for a de-addiction programme run in a strange underworld by a guru named Shri Shri Prakash Guru Ghantal Baba Bengali Sealdahwale (Paresh Rawal). The guru is a big fan of Adolf Hitler, and his programme works on the principle of fear: every time K. lights a cigarette, someone close to him will have a finger chopped off, or will die, or his own life will be in danger. The film hints at modern fascist tendencies regarding individual liberties, and how the state and everyone else gang up to suppress them. The narrative strays from K.’s nightmares in Siberia to Baba Bengali’s latest threats from his office, peopled by staff in burqas, to a scene involving a Bob Fosse-like dance number. Abraham is competent, and the cinematography and production values are of a very high standard.
128 min / Color, DCP
Director Anurag Kashyap
/ Screenplay Anurag Kashyap podle povídky / based on the story by Stephen King
/ Dir. of Photography Rajeev Ravi
/ Music Naren Chandavarkar, Benedict Taylor
/ Editor Aarti Bajaj
/ Producer Kumar Mangat, Vishal Bharadwaj
/ Production Big Screen Entertainment, Eros Entertainment
/ Cast John Abraham, Ayesha Takia, Paresh Rawal, Ranvir Shorey
/ Contact Anurag Kashyap Films Pvt. Limited
Anurag Kashyap Films Pvt. Limited
, 400 061, Mumbai
India
Phone: +91 982 111 8489
E-mail: [email protected]
Anurag Kashyap
Film Director
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