Director: Anurag Basu
Producer: T- Series
Starring: Abhishek Bachchan, Rajkummar Rao, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sanya Malhotra, Fatima Sana Shaikh ,Pankaj Tripathi, Rohit Saraf, Pearl Massey
BLUF
4 stories of people like us, their circumstances and how their parallel stories come together as the hilarious, dark comedy plays out.
THE MEAT AND THE POTATOES
Anurag Basu is the king of multiple thread narratives. With Ludo, he not only shows the tinsel town who the boss of story telling is, but also shows how to tell a story that blows your mind. The character of Sattu ( Pankaj Tripathi) is the nucleus that brings together the 4 stories ( and the colors ) of Ludo to their conclusion.
The main story starts with the murder of a building contractor by Sattu, setting off an implosion of series of events that bring together a hodgepodge of characters, whose paths may not have crossed otherwise.
IN THE ZONE
Ludo, the game, might be the larger metaphor on life. “Ludo is life and life is ludo,” says the narrator of the story.
The first half-hour of Basu’s script is so remarkably designed that you have to admire his genius, in putting together the sequences so well edited by Ajay Sharma, to set the immensely engaging cruise into the next scene as the preceding plot weaves into the succeeding events and how the how each scene acts as a predecessor with a central character — interlinked to one of the four stories of Ludo — that gets its own arc, when Basu shifts the focus (he has doubled up as cinematographer for this film), or should we say rolls the dice?
The epic opening scene with two characters, with shades of black and white (one of them being Basu himself) contemplates the purposefulness of life and death while comparing the uncertainty of outcomes and the labels assigned to actions to how we traverse life and its choices.
As proverbial Gods of Destiny who play the dice in the lives of those, they create to create their fate, the narrators argue right from wrong; hell from heaven as their characters enact the choices they are dealt with.
Pankaj Tripathi plays Pankaj Tripathi in a tailored Pankaj Tripathi role, our national gangster and the heart of the story around whom every character revolves.
Sattu , who wants to settle scores with his once-right hand, Bittu (portrayed by Abhishek Bachchan) So starts the ludo-esque story. Red is the shade for Bittu and his relationship with Mini, a little girl who brings back ethical and moral balance into his life as she fakes her own kidnapping when her parents take away her dog from her.
In the yellow square are Akash, the handsome Aditya Roy Kapur, and an effervescent Saniya Malhotra as Shruti, a girl who wants to make the decision about who she will marry based upon the social status of the guy, even when she sees the innate goodness of Akash and falls in love with him.
The green box belongs to Alok , Aalo( potato, fits into all ensembles) -our favorite actor of this decade, Raj Kumar Rao, as versatile and brilliant as ever in his personification of his Mithun-esque avatar. Sanaa Sheikh as his childhood sweetheart who depends and expects him to be there for her makes a perfect quintessential bollywoodish love story.
And the blue box belongs to Rohit Saraf and Pearl Massey – the runaway couple who figure out where Sattu keeps his money and steal it for themselves (and a fuchsia suit- that only Rohit Saraf could’ve pulled off )
FWAR
Ludo is essentially a captivating whodunit, designed to be a Bollywood style musical. It is a pop-culture satire, which in most story tellers can easily lose their way in. But not Basu, the start, the middle and the end all belong to him and each immaculately chosen character. The actors more than do justice to their parts while the narrator builds his story with great aplomb.
Between multiple sub-plots, characters, twists and turns, all you want is that the story continues to weave its surprises in sheer rapt attention. You want to stay with these characters and given the time each of the subplots are created in, it is a wonder that all seem to have received equal love from the story teller..
WHAT WE LOVED
The story, the narrative, the music, the actors and the entire ensemble.
WHAT WE MISSED
Nada. This is storytelling as perfect as it can get.
