Ludo: Best Bollywood release of 2020
This year I have lost count of the number of blog posts I have started with the phrase ‘this year’. But seriously it’s a mad one, this year. Did you ever even imagine airports being deserted? Or festivals having just a handful of people? Or more bizarre yet, movies releasing for home viewing? Nobody did, of course. As a result of our lives coming to an abrupt halt, a lot of us have picked up routines or alternate hobbies that were abandoned because of lack of time before. I know I have started reading more and watching movies more. Last weekend I watched the newly released Anurag Basu film, Ludo. And I think it’s the best film of this year.
I don’t really consider myself a film buff, but I do watch my fair share of movies. However, if a movie is trending too much I will not immediately watch it to join the wagon like a lot of people do these days. But this one I genuinely found the trailer very interesting. Also, Pankaj Tripathi and Rajkumar Rao. If you like watching movies that are dynamic and follow multiple storylines that eventually intersect at some point right before the climax then this is the movie. Just like the game of Ludo, there are four main players, or stories in this case. One is a ventriloquist, another is a former criminal just released from jail after six years and then there is the don who is the root of everybody’s problems and solutions. It’s a chaotic, funny, heartwarming and witty movie filled with really convincing performances. Rajkumar Rao plays a dhaba owner who dresses like Mithun Chakraborty complete with a mullet. Without giving away any spoilers let me just say, he’s the MVP.
The characters have their inherent flaws and that actually manages to make the story more realistic. The film is in a non-linear, anthology format which I like a lot and which is pretty rare in Bollywood. Overall, the movie is pretty well-paced but it could’ve been made more compact in terms of the two hour thirty minute run time. I enjoyed it immensely regardless. Ludo is a dark comedy interspersed with the lingering themes of virtue and sin, love and second chances, all of which comes down to the hand of fate in the lives of human beings. It is about how they navigate the labyrinth of life meeting people who alter these threads to finally lead them where they ultimately end up.
