Gandu (2010) User Reviews

A Bengali Porn Movie All The Way

[sudipmaitra · 5/10 · 22 September 2014]

I could never imagine for the life of me how a pornographic movie like this could ever be made and shown in India and above all conservative Bengal. I mean the Mamata Banerjee and her cronies will of course blame it on the previous government but why did they not ban it when they came to power. The story is OK but the language and sexual depiction is least to say deplorable.

This movie is obviously meant for the pseudo intellects and those in the lower stratus of society who have a life similar to Gandu portrays in the film. There is no message or a moral where in the end one should either say no to drugs or denounce it completely. What it does do on the contrary is to glorify it.

By all this Im not saying that the story line was bad or the characters didn't do their part well. They did. The music was great and Im impressed with the band that played the songs but the lyrics are worse than you hear on underground tapes made by Snoop Doggy Dog and other like him. The sound was bad and the background noise makes you think that its a home movie shot on a 8 MM camera of the old era.

Someone commented about the the flat that Gandu and his mother lived in grand but was sparsely furnished. This was because the flat was provided by Gandu's mother's lover.

In conclusion I would like to ask that though I have left Bengal 15 years ago has the mind of the people changed so much that you now show porn movies in cinema halls? This is probably the boldest Indian movie I have seen in my 66 years.

Not a Porn at all!

[amitrajit-banerjee · 15 November 2011]

I would like to start with what 'beerhug' said in his review " I am pretty sure that majority viewers have not got the basic notion of the script."

I don't know how many of you have seen Andy Warhol's "Chelsea Girls", this movie kind of looks like it. The framing mechanisms used closed captions, tiled view points.

The entire movie is shot in B/W, B/W by default adds more drama to a scene (imagine an HDR shot in color and the same in B/W, the later will stand out better). Added to this, the usage of closeup frames (where the environment is missing just the actors present) makes it even more dramatic. B/W has been used by many directors in the past to indicate mundane/monotonous existence. Eg. Schindler's list is shot in B/W except the few scenes in color, it might indicate the grimness of the movie in contract to the bright colorful positive future (shot in color). In contrast, Hey Ram by Kamal Hasan, is shot entirely in color (as the movie is in flash back), but the present (old man in the ambulance) is in B/W showing that the old man in his grim present lives through the colorful memories of this past.

In Gandu, the life of a loser, the only highlight is the scene with the Angel (Rii) his first sexual encounter and something which makes his mundane life colorful, hence the scene in color.

Gandu is a rapper, he writes Rap lyrics, hence the use of Rap all over the movie. The movie is through his eyes.In the movie, his real name is never told, he is always 'Gandu', so Gandu is not an adjective here, but also a proper noun.

Strange is the character of the Richshaw puller. He is Gandu's hero and friend. He is a Bruce Lee fan and practices Kung Fu, Why do I say hero? The scene where Gandu is slapped by Rickshaw, is followed by a scene where Gandu fantasizes of them having sex, a homo sexual dream, which depicts the Alpha male qualities Gandu sees in Rickshaw!

I found the web surfer girl character a bit far fetched, Kolkata girls probably don't sit in an open internet café flaunting their sexuality...

The abusive language totally matches the theme of the movie, I know Bengali, and I have heard local low life's speak, yes that is what they use, if we can promote Dev-D, and The Girl in yellow Boots, and god knows what other movies, then why hit on Gandu?

Coming to On screen ejaculation, well that scene is very cleverly shot, I am sure it is morphed. But that is mot the point here, the point is, that scene fits completely in the mood of the movie.

All in all it ain't porn, it is independent cinema. Yes it is not for everyone, so if you can't take it, please leave it, but lets not call it names.

Q makes a cameo appearance in the movie just like many big directors do. That is when he kind of merges reality with fantasy

Some tech errors I observed: ------------------------------

The first sexual scene, where he steals money, it clearly shows that the woman is lying aside the man, from the angle/position of the legs but they are supposed to be doing 'it'. Also the woman's leg movements don't match the man's 'pushing' at all...director should have been more observant.

The house is almost empty, so they are poor people, but the steel fitting in the bathroom and kitchen look posh, they don't gel in. Poor people don't live in such apartments. I think they shot some scenes in a diff house altogether, if one observes the light switches in the house are old cheap type, doesn't match with the kitchen and the modern kitchen getup.

The subtitles something don't match the actual dialogs, sometimes it is good, as literal translation don't work all the time, but it is sometimes over done, i am sure a better translation could be possible retaining the meaning of the original bong low life abusive.

I don't like the dialog delivery of the main character Gandu, it is not clear, and tail drops a lot, might be cheap recording instruments too, or a bad preview copy, but i think his speech is a bit too slurry (ppl say the over all sound recording of this movie is below expectations)

The video scenes (games/porn) have the electrical interference patterns we used to see in scenes from 1970 movies,

I would have expected his mother o be naked in the sex scenes, the bra always messes up the power of the scene, makes it unrealistic. perhaps with his budget he couldn't get an actress to show her breasts

The scene where Gandu is caught stealing, it clearly shows they(mother and Das) are doing 'it' with the 'bra on', the next scene the mother comes to slap him 'IN THE NUDE', a full back view of her behind is shown, but no bra, lack of continuity, no one pauses during sex, gets up from bed takes their bra 'off' and goes to slap their son :)

What's the point? I'm not even shocked.

[archilocushwy · 2/10 · 14 August 2012]

Yea yea, purposeless life, meaningless existence, emptiness engulfing him. Life for this guy - Gandu sucks real bad. But the movie does not need to suffer from emptiness also. period.

The movie has a weird sorta nihilism all the way. A movie like Salo by Pasolini with probably the same intentions as Q's Gandu turned out so much better than this.

Sex used to add shock value, weird characters, Irritating lyrics, dirty bleak world of Gandu, close and jerky camera shots, no story, whore mommy with no explanation of her intentions, weird Bruce lee sorta friend/ rickshaw puller- makes for a good headache in the end.

Pointless, pretentious & narcissistic.

[muhammad-shabir · 1/10 · 27 July 2020]

The director, actors and crew all think their making a life changing masterpiece. Far from it, just something that has been done over and over again by others, but they did it better.

An Ode to Andy Warhol !!!!

[chakrabortyabhishek07 · 7/10 · 4 November 2011]

I am not quite aware whether the director was inspired by Andy Warhol's "Chelsea Girls" or not but the film certainly highlights that exact frame mannerism of presenting the story for cinematic viewing like the one presented by Warhol in "Chelsea Girls".

The film consists of some erotic scenes which are explicit in nature but most certainly not pornographic in any way whatsoever.

The script was innovative for Indian audience though I am pretty sure that majority viewers have not got the basic notion of the script. The cinematography was brilliant must congratulate Kaushik aka Q for that. Lyrics were certainly explosive in nature but truth cannot be denied from it.

Acting is good especially by Anubrata(Gandu) and Joyraj(Rickshaw), Rii is hot but she did not got enough leverage to showcase her acting abilities. Komolika(Mother) was good in her role and Shilajit(Das babu)....well he was just the jolly good fellow.

I have only one complain that the sound was not recorded properly and at times background score became too noisy to hear the dialouges with proper effect.

Must say a good step forward for Indian cinema and kudos to Overdose Joint for thinking out of the box.

Porn in the name of classic

[kishanprakash · 1/10 · 5 March 2016]

Yeah! Yeah! You'll say I don't have the intellect to understand the class that is Gandu. You know what, I don't want such an intellect.

The film has lewd written all over it. Not just the sex, the whole bloody point seems to be missing. Yes, he's frustrated, he's callous. That in no way makes any sort of sense. Sex is super-imposed every time you start snoozing off on the non-sex scenes. Or when you're about to take off your ear-phones after they have been brutally desensitized by the songs that gives it the tag for "Trying too hard". . Don't waste your time watching this movie. Unless you're in it for senseless fapping sessions you use porn for. Coz trust me, it's porn! Nothing more, might be less!

A bold beautiful piece of art.

[divyy · 8/10 · 5 November 2012]

The film took me by total surprise. Never expected something like this from Indian cinema. At least not so soon. Cinema is an art and this is a beauty. I was always a fan of Bengali cinema for it's art and bold approach. It has given us some beautiful cinematic masterpieces. This film adds another diamond to it. Unfortunately our country isn't bold enough. Films like this get banned. Doesn't matters how good it is. They just won't let us watch it in cinema halls. Disappointing, Isn't it? Because, it is amazingly awesome approach. A good compilation of boldness into art. Something shocking for India. It sure leaves an impact on you. Way to go Q.

Electric vivid reality...

[mike-c-b · 7/10 · 17 May 2019]

There are a couple of things that make this movie a stand out... Sweat is left on faces, camera movements aren't passive-aggressive, characters are genuine, kung-fu isn't perfection, arguments and story are real, and everyone cares about their future...

The sex/masturbation scenes are absolute genius. Makes basically any other movie look shy and pretentious - even genuine softcore porn. There is no ultra zoomed-in body scanning or hiding, just everything shot as it would be seen by the people there. Zero regard for the viewers pretentions.

Half-way between a nature documentary and a story of someone's life... but also could be better in some ways.

Weird, Random, Eccentric but absolutely AMAZING!

[smsupriyorules · 9/10 · 28 August 2013]

Gandu 4.5/5

Tarantino? Lulz. Quashiq Mukherjee makes Tarantino look like an idiot in this movie. I have seen this movie twice in the last 24 hours and am still awestruck by the weirdness. You have never seen something like this before. NEVER. This movie shocked me, in a pleasant way :P

Gandu is a loser who hates his life, who hates his mother and pretty much everything else except his Rickshawpuller friend. Gandu has to tolerate a shady guy who comes and has sex with his mother regularly. He decides to live life on his own terms and enters the world of smack, rap and porn.

The soundtrack is bloody amazing. Absolutely awesome. Indian progressive rock at its f**king best. The direction is top notch and the camera work is outstanding. Actors have done a splendid job.

We often crib about the quality of Indian Cinema but this movie has definitely changed the face of Indian cinema forever. Trust me, this movie deserves over a 100 re-runs. I am probably gonna screen it in my college pretty soon.

I am not always impressed by random stuff but I loved this movie. Devote 90 minutes of your life to this movie and I promise, you won't regret it.

Q's Bold and Artistic Dive into the World of Surrealism!

[akash_sebastian · 7/10 · 28 April 2014]

'Gandu', Director Q's bold and artistic dive into the world of Surrealism, is quite an interesting experimental film. Q describes his film as a 'rap musical' which, in a way, is an agreeable term to describe it. The background score by the alternative rock band 'Five Little Indians' goes quite well with the tone of the movie.

The movie revolves around a not-so-bright jobless adolescent named Gandu (meaning Moron). He has his simple life with dreams and fantasies, getting by on the money he steals from the guy screwing his mom. He befriends a rickshaw-walla named Ricksha (ironically), and both spend most of their time in a heroin-induced haze, filled with adventures, porn, and sex. Gandu gets music deals, wins lottery ticket, has a grand deflowering by an exotic prostitute, gets invited by a Rap foundation, every single thing just blurring the line between reality and fantasy. But most of the incidents have to do with Gandu re-establishing his masculinity, which he had lost over time due to the ill-treatment by the people around, especially his ever-complaining mother.

The decision to show the film in crisp black-and-white was commendable; it depicts the bleak, monotonous and mundane existence of the central character. Colours are visible only for a single scene where the main protagonist Gandu is having sex for the first time, which perhaps is the highlight of his life. The masturbation scene and the oral sex scene are shot quite artistically, and fit with the tone of the movie; there's nothing pornographic about them. The editing and music add to the beauty of the sex scene.

The acting by Anubrata Basu as Gandu is brilliant; he portrays the varies hues and shades of the character with proper tact. His depression, his pain, his dreams, his hopes... by the end of the movie, a proper sketch of the character is etched in your mind. Joyraj Bhattacharya is good as the rickshaw-walla friend. And Rituparna Sen (Rii) is praiseworthy for her boldness in the sex scene. She plays three different characters in the movie, all quite varied and unrecognizable from each other.

People who are tired of linear and predictable storytelling should surely check this out.

Fine Art!

[jesse13788 · 8/10 · 15 October 2013]

Having stumbled across my review of the director's previous venture Bishh on this site (written some four years ago), there came a natural compulsion to jot this down as well.

After the experience of Bishh, my expectations when I finally came across this 'banned' film was not high. The steamy trailer did little to pique much interest although it became a rage among the online (and offline) masses. To be honest, it felt somewhat gimmicky and I was afraid the film was going to turn out to be something similar. Well, it didn't.

Gandu is, despite its name, brilliant. The moments of transgression this motion picture dares to make were outlandish, perhaps even 'affected' by a certain sense of the word, but never fails to make a mark. The cinematography is vibrant, the music stimulating. The writing may not have been perfect, but what do I know of perfection... I liked it. There was a profound 'honesty' to the angst (I was tempted to write 'psychedelic honesty') and it was provoking, even without a blunt before the show.

Joyraj and Anubrata were perfect to the T & Rii was her best yet. Kamalika was hauntingly natural. The direction had a rudderless precision to it that strikes the right chord, and the interesting play of subtitles didn't harm one bit.

I don't know if I can agree with a fellow reviewer calling it one of the best Indian movies ever (although I 'dug' the Midsummer quote), but Gandu is definitely a benchmark as far as Indian Independent Cinema is concerned. It's art, and a fine piece too!

One of the Best bengali...scratch that, One of the Best Indian movie ever!

[dasvid_beckham_me · 10/10 · 6 July 2011]

PORN EXISTS AND YOU KNOW IT!

FTW Type Cinema. brilliant in almost all spheres. 10/10. can't write 10 lines so will copy paste some poem from somewhere

Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire! I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon's sphere; And I serve the Fairy Queen, To dew her orbs upon the green; The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favours; In those freckles live their savours; I must go seek some dewdrops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

High on style and energy, but there is no story or character development

[prasen67 · 8/10 · 18 March 2012]

Q wanted to be noticed with his first independent venture and this film accomplishes it, especially the nothing-but-shock-value sex.

Q has an uncanny ear for local dialogue and some of the exchanges are wry, ironic and sometimes hilarious. He's sketch of the flirty cybercafe Bengali girl is possibly one of the truest sketches I have seen. Also the street talk of lowlifes is bang on.

But then - what? Where does this all lead to? Gandu builds up great expectations, then does not deliver. I felt as frustrated as the main character - empty and wasted.

As is typical of many those who are attracted to film via the superficials - pithy dialogue or "the look" or sensationalism, that only works on the underlying framework of a solidly good story. You cannot erect a memorable film without a solid foundation of plot, character arc or a satisfying ending.

I feel sad that this potentially great talent will only swim on the surface and end up being forgotten unless he goes deeper to see what makes good stories work.

Bengali cinema desperately needs a new voice, a new testament and my fear is that unless Q respects STORY and CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, it will be all downhill for him from here.

Why is that the ancient spiritual Indian culture only produces talent incapable of true introspection? Who destroyed our image of ourselves? Why must everything we do be a copy of a copy of a copy?

Art house extravaganza

[spicy_bee · 8/10 · 21 October 2019]

I'm surprised artistic movies like this exist in Indian cinema. A complex yet simple to the core story of a Gandu in bengali streets. Explicit but with taste, not for the light hearted or close minded.

Out of the box!

[riadmsh · 8/10 · 14 July 2020]

What a happens when a boy goes through adolescence, from puberty to youth? See this one. I'm surprised to see such a strong Bengali film. Its out of the box, it breaks off the boundaries, it creates its own thoughts. thumbs up.

Non-inspiring rugged and raw

[cynthia2006 · 8/10 · 5 April 2022]

The unique feature of this film is that it shows no backstory of the protagonist nor his related characters and storyline is linear. The cuts are very aesthetic, atypical of traditional Tollywood cinema. Unlike a traditional movie, there's no social message or something like that. The devilish depiction of Kali that haunts him makes no sense to me. Also slangs are overused than they should be. The cybercafe girl talking with a man, was shown in a scene talking with Gandu or Gandu's lookalike whilst Gandu staring at her didn't make sense either. Frankly the prostitute meowing is a funny reference to the catgirl phenomenon in Doujinshi (Hentai) though I'm skeptic if the writer is aware of Anime/Hentai genre.

cinematic master piece for india but with a very basic plot

[iarunpandey · 9/10 · 16 August 2022]

Thsi film was shot and directed very good but the story was very week according to me.

But the impact of this film as a filmmaker my self it affected me the most. The style of this film is very unique.

Characters were very different and there life situation is very different. But the story was not that strong i think the directed wanted this film to be this way.

Ballsywood

[NoDakTatum · 8/10 · 10 October 2023]

"Gandu" is a hardcore and fast paced experimental look at the life of a young aspiring rapper growing up in India. Anubrata Basu is Gandu, who lives with his youngish-looking mother (Kamalika Banerjee) who makes a living sleeping with the owner of the local internet cafe, Das Babu (Shilajit Majumdar). Gandu doesn't work, and hangs around the cafe and back streets of his hometown, constantly playing a lottery and losing. He literally runs into ricksha driver/Bruce Lee worshipper Ricksha (Joyraj Bhattacharya), and the two become friends. The duo begins dabbling in drugs, and the film takes a bizarre turn into the downward spiral that is Gandu's life. The director even makes a cameo appearance in the film, playing a director of a film entitled "Gandu"...

While the film is light on plot, "Gandu" is heavy with showy editing and enough bells and whistles to keep the viewer interested. Director/co-writer Quashiq Mukherjee turns many film cliches on their ears. The film's credits are placed at an odd point in the running time. The black and white photography gives way to blinding, saturated color toward the end, and this does feature some very un-Bollywood hardcore sex scenes. Even the subtitles are played with, brilliantly. I am not a fan of rap or hip-hop by any stretch of the imagination, but Gandu's angry and explosive raps are very good, and Q (as the director was originally credited) films them in such a way that I appreciated both the use of the songs as characterization, as well as the songs themselves. My one major drawback with the film is the almost nonexistent plot. Watching a character descend into a drug-induced life has been done before, and while Mukherjee brings all sort of new ideas to his film technically, he comes up short with any sort of character arc. Some of the main plot points that occur are telegraphed undeliberately, and I got the feeling that I was having a bait-and-switch being pulled on me. That being said, not many out there can say they have seen a film like "Gandu" before. The drug hallucination scenes are simple and creepy. The cast is excellent, with Basu anchoring everything well. His Gandu is not nobly angry, and not unlikable. He is a confused, pained young man who I eventually came to care about. The supporting cast is all good, and the setting is gritty and unexotic, losing the viewer in this dark world. Much has been made of the film's sex scenes, but this is one of the few films I have seen where they actually add to the entire experience. They are not erotic. They play realistically, although you wonder where the hallucinations end and the sex and success begin. Throughout "Gandu" I kept thinking back to Abel Ferrara's body of work. This film is grim and fascinating, and not one you will soon forget.