Dus kahaniyan - happy sleeping!. Review on Dus Kahaniyaan

First of all let me very clear that I consider copycats masquerading as grand artistes, as thieves. They abound in India- many are respected household names. I think a person who buys his expensive cars and suits after stealing someone’s idea, without even having the basic courtesy of attributing the idea to him, is a humbug.

Sanjay Gupta has stolen the first story from Hitchcock’s Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat, written by Roald Dahl, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Bixby_and_the_Colonel's_Coat).

Incidentally I have seen the original episode and it was excellent. A critical part of the story is when the wife sells the receipt fiction to the husband. Guptaji does away with that bit. That part is supposed to be guessed by the intelligent audience, whose intelligence would subsequently be poked and made fun of, in nearly all the stories that follow.

Now if you steal, steal well. First our ‘creativity robbers’ steal an idea without any shame, then, adding perjury to crime, make a hash of the original.

The second story ‘high on highway’(jimmy shergil) does start as if it is going to make a statement, with two styles of narration alternating with one another, touching statements about relationships and interplay of light and shadows. Then, without rhyme or reason, some goons lift the guy’s girlfriend off the highway, and he, after failing to save her, kills himself in grief. This can happen, but I mean, what a banal ending it is! At once the flow of story is hopelessly ruptured.

Sanjay ‘baba’, even if he is given 5 minutes to walk into a frame, will do the Don act. He can’t do anything else; he has no desire left to do anything else, but to portray this tragi-comic aspect of his real life on screen. His story, ‘rise and fall’, of a Don, was made in a tearing hurry, and is accordingly spiritless.

Talking of spirits, what can be more gloriously original than a man being attracted to a bikini-clad woman for sex, armed with a packet of condoms, and then being killed by her, for the simple reason that she is a ghost? I refer to the crowning glory of the movie- ‘sex on the beach’. Why she behaves in this abominable fashion, bringing a bad name to the ghost community will remain a matter of grave speculation among the audience.

That brings us to the firm belief of Sanjay Gupta and his army of ‘promising’ directors- sex can be squeamish, sick, stigmatized and murderous, but it can never be fun. First he must introduce the element of sex in 7/10 of his stories, then, anyone who gets it up in his story will be mercilessly felled, as per Gupta’s strict code of moral conduct(naturally no code is applicable to story theft). This is nothing but a carryover from cheap western movies, where people having sex are often killed, and brutally. In the West, ‘sins of the flesh’ concept may find reverberation in their cinema, but why are we copying them. Isn’t sex the spring of life? Give it some respect moviewallahs, or better still, avoid using it at all.

Another belief- Hindus chase and kill Muslim kids; Hindus distrust Muslims, who are all basically good at heart. My suggestion to Gupta is to first grow up a little. Communal issues can be attended to later.

Nana Patekar holds ‘Gubbare’ together with his acting, but you can predict its ending half way down the story. ‘Rice plate’ is also decent because Shabana Azmi is a seasoned actress. The story featuring Amrita Singh is decently done.

Basically most of the stories are run-of-the-mill. There is an element of hurry, because the time limit is just ten minutes. Five stories would have done well, perhaps. That would have allowed better stories to be selected and developed. Sanjay Gupta is good at shooting scenes, but his initial effort i.e. when he creates the script, is quite mediocre. ‘Kaante’, his earlier mishmash of stolen goods, had a similar problem.

I think the movie is already a flop. Anyways this is just my opinion, and opinions vary widely on movies.