LSD is brilliant but will be a flop: Why?

DeeeBeee presents: A honest, brilliant and on your face movie. Watch it at your own risk. This is really really dangerous cinema.

I read all the reviews of LSD beforehand from all our celebrity and some not so celebrity but more honest critics. I downloaded (was not available at store) its music and played it on loop for almost 100 times. I was glued to TV when they were interviewing Dibakar or were discussing the movie.

So, I was sort of well prepared for the movie.....well, sort of.

Only 50 something guys were present in the hall, few girls and lots of empty seats. I felt bad, really bad. Morons...they don’t know what they are missing.

It started well.......

We all laughed as the movie started in a unique way (I can bet, they actually took it from intro of some sleazy MMS collection DVD). As the punches started coming in, we laughed more. Slowly, the laughs became rare, quiet and finally there were none.... I was serious, damn serious, when I came out of the hall. I was not ready for this.

Technically, movie is a masterpiece. Reality is difficult but faking reality is too difficult. Shaking, out of focus, extra sound, dim lights, glare etc., everything needs to be perfect. Little bit more or little bit less and you will lose the reality touch. They did it perfectly, except on one ground. Although, editing is the strength of this movie, but strangely, that’s the only thing which has lessened its reality effect.

Indian cinema started out from the womb of theatre. I have always felt that acting in Indian movies have always had some theatrical remnants in it and from there comes the term ‘filmy acting.’ This movie is path-breaking in the sense that it has broken that jinx and actors look so natural and straight out of our lives.

Although a totally different genre, film is trademark Banerjee style, especially in the first story. There are some flaws too (Don’t kill me for this). The spoof on Aditya Chopra’s film-making looks out of place in a movie supposedly showing reality bytes. The inter-linking of stories doesn’t fit well and looks deliberate. (For a better way of doing that watch Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ‘Three colours trilogy’ or read/watch ‘Suraj ka Saatwa ghoda’). The third story offers nothing new and doesn’t engage. Sting ops and conditions, which lead to sting – whether arranged or real, are now old. Showing it to us from the view point of a reporter doesn’t make it different.

However, second story is an altogether different game. The characters, situation, performances, dialogues, everything is so perfect, one actually start feeling that you are showing us a real scandal with some background research. Things are predictable there and that makes the things more intolerable. We wait for the scandal to happen and at the same time feel guilty about it. I still am....

This movie is dark...very dark and this is not about the light in the frames. It can kill pleasure out of porn for you, if you are addictive to it. As I said, watch it at your own risk.

But it will be a flop. Dibakar, your brilliance cannot save this movie from being a dud at box office. LSD generated lot of pre-release buzz and that is killing it. The poster, the frontal nudity rumours, newspaper article, censor board’s response, TV debates etc. all generated lot of interest in this movie. This led to a change in its targeted viewers. This is not a sleaze and anybody looking for that will be hugely disappointed. Irony is that because of the entire wrong buzz, persons looking for some sleaze pleasure are flocking the theatres, whereas thinking audience is giving it a miss.

Dibakar, apart from being a significant piece of cinema, this could have been a hit, only if you have designed your posters differently and/or have named the movie in a more traditional way (although I loved both of them, they are awesome).

So friends, if you are more interested in the middle part of that movie’s name; not even think about watching it. It will be like watching Dev D for Chanda’s MMS scandal. Infact, you will not be able to enjoy porn ever after watching LSD.

For others, you can’t afford to miss it.