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Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap spoke about actor Abhay Deol’s disparaging comments about their film Dev D, and admitted that the film’s protagonist was a toxic misogynist. Abhay, who has often accused Anurag of hijacking his vision for what the film should be, had previously accused Anurag of glorifying the titular character. In an interview, Anurag said that audiences these days have become overly ‘woke’, and that some introspection is in order if one wants a terrible character to be redeemed.
Asked about Abhay’s comments about Dev D, Anurag said, “For me, I have done what I wanted to do, and what I’ve seen. I like films to be very real. I don’t want to give unnecessary redeeming qualities to a character because…” Anurag said that he has often ‘tested’ the audience’s morality through his films. Citing the example of his yet-to-release thriller Kennedy, he said, “In Kennedy, when people feel sympathy for the psychopath character, I’m saying, ‘Question yourself’. You get one redeeming quality, and you say, ‘Bechara’.”
Anurag continued, “The problem isn’t with the character; the bigger problem is with you. Ask yourself why you’re enjoying watching such behaviour. Ask yourself why you’re cheering for some things despite feeling uncomfortable about others. Those who point fingers should look inwards. That’s how I test the audience. Filmmakers here are so dishonest, forget making grounded films, they have no idea if they’re even making Indian films…”
In a social media post a shared a few years ago, Abhay had written that it took him a long time to get somebody to direct Dev D, a contemporary adaptation of the classic novel Devdas. He wrote that he would’ve liked the female characters to be more empowered in the film, and wouldn’t have gone with the ending that Anurag eventually went with. “In my version Dev gets shot by the police (he becomes a drug dealer) outside Paro’s house and dies just like in the book. Chanda does not fall in love with him, and neither is she ashamed of being an East European high class escort (again, in my version). She’s the strongest character of the three, and isn’t afraid of being judged. She does empathize with Dev, seeing how broken he is, and I went with the ‘prostitute with the heart of gold’ theme from the book,” he said.
He added, “Anurag felt a happy ending would make the film more accepted by the audience, and his twist was to have Dev and Chanda fall in love. My vision was too dark! I went with the flow…” Both Anurag and Abhay have taken pot-shots at each other in the years since Dev D’s release in 2009. Anurag said in an interview recently that he reached out to Abhay to clear the air, and congratulated him on his performance in the Netflix series Trial by Fire.
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