*This transcript is produced using transcription software and reviewed for quality. Despite our best efforts, some passages may be incomplete or contain errors due to audio quality or software limitations.*

Pete Wright:
I’m Pete Wright.

Andy Nelson:
And I’m Andy Nelson.

Pete Wright:
Welcome to The Next Reel. When the movie ends…

Andy Nelson:
…our conversation begins.

Pete Wright:
Gangs of Wasseypur, part two is over. My lover is a cold dealer.

[Film clip plays in Hindi, indistinct]

Pete Wright:
You finally got to the part I was talking about last week.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, so last week people may remember in our conversation you I was so excited when I finished this movie, but also a little confused by some of the characters and stuff, so I went back and started rewatching the film. You instead instantly put on part two and started watching it and you got to a part that you thought like, Wow, that was crazy. And as I kicked off this film, I’m like, there’s a, you know, something that happens at the beginning.

I’m like, well, that wasn’t really not much. And then I hit what it was that you were talking about. I’m like, oh.

Yes, this is what Pete was so excited about.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. There are a couple of sequences like in this movie. well, I mean we can we can talk about it when we get into the meat of the of the show, but just no sure.

Because there are a number of these kinds of sequences in this movie that seems to level up part one. and I do think that after finishing part two, I go I you know when I search for it in IMDb, it just shows it as one entry, Gangs of Wasseypur, at over five hours. And I get that now more having finished part two.

I think I prefer it as one giant piece. This is a it this the second half feels so deeply threaded and inappropriately broken in the middle. I like it as one movie and I really enjoyed finishing the movie and feeling the complete sort of story all the way through the end.

But I will say I feel like there is much more sort of violence in the second half as the story amps up to its massive third act, and I was super gratified by the way this movie resolved.

Andy Nelson:
How did it hit you? yeah, it was interesting because as it ended I instantly started thinking about the fact that does this make sense as two films, or does it really just seem like one film that you had a little break in the middle of watching? You know?

And I think that It did feel like there was a very natural point where they chose to end the first film and start the second film. Like it felt very natural. Like this is kind of the end of our story.

with Sardar as we’re exploring his journey to kind of take over everything that was going on with these ganks in Wasseypur. And then the second film really follows the, you know, his five sons, but we’re really not watching all five. It largely is three of the film the children that we’re focused on.

But we’re kind of seeing the repercussions of everything that had gone on. So to a certain extent, it feels natural to have split it this way, but at the same time, it does feel so of one piece that I you know, I don’t know, I guess I’m torn. I mean, I kind of dread the idea of sitting down and watching a five and a half hour film I shouldn’t say I dread it.

I’m totally open to it. It’s just not something that I put on my schedule too often. Yeah.

And so watching two hour and forty minute films makes more sense to me. But so yeah, I yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if I have an answer for my preference at this point.

I think I think it works as one film. I would be very curious to just sit down at one point and just watch it for five and a half hours. But at the same time, I do feel that there at least was what felt like a natural break between the two.

Pete Wright:
‘Cause what is it? Three hundred seventeen minutes all in, is that right? Five hours and seventeen minutes, three hours and seventeen minutes.

Am I right about that? Well, I don’t know. IMDb says five hours and twenty-one minutes All right, so let’s say 321 minutes.

The twenty the list of twenty-five longest movies at the top of the list is nineteen hundred at three hundred and seventeen minutes.

Andy Nelson:
Bernardo Bertolucci’s. There’s longer movies than that. What was that movie that came out like That Argentine movie that came out like th two or three years ago that’s like fourteen hours long. I mean, obviously you’re not getting movies like that too often.

Pete Wright:
It’s a different type of movie. But yeah. Right.

1996 Hamlet, 242 minutes. Like, once you’re up in that over 200 minute kinda realm. it just feels like it’s pretty easy to get to 321 for me.

Like just put an intermission in there and be fine.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Right.

Andy Nelson:
As long as you can take a bathroom break at some point.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
Right. Yeah, because what was Seventh Samurai was how long?

Pete Wright:
Is that in that list? let’s see. So 1900 Hamlet, Gone with the Wind, Once Upon a Time in America at 229, Lawrence of Arabia, 218.

Ben Hur, seven Samurai’s 207. Okay, okay. Lord of the Rings Return of the King, 200.

Is that the which version is that? Doesn’t say.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Well anyway. Yeah. Obviously there are some long movies out there.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. So anyhow, I just feel like once we’re in that territory, it’s I’m pro intermission. This movie felt the even as it’s a generational kind of split, we’d already had, you know, so much stuff with Faisal right at the end of this movie and watching Faisal kind of deteriorate into drugs. And that whole experience of Faisal I felt like picking up in the beginning of the movie where he comes to understand how his dad was killed is an important transition and it felt jarring to me to w to watch it as a separate movie because I really enjoyed watching you watching how he transitions into the head of the family.

Andy Nelson:
Well, and I think that’s largely the story that we end up having. I don’t know if we knew that when we watched part one that Faisal was really where our focus was going to be. Like Exactly.

The way that part one plays, it kind of seemed like his older brother Danish was gonna be our principal character, only to have him killed off shortly after Dad died. Yeah. at the end of part one slash beginning of part two.

So that was that was an interesting setup. and to that end, it I don’t know, I thought it made for an interesting film. So Well, this film, when it was released over here, Limited, was not rated.

And probably would have been R, as the MPAA had their say.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah, they sometimes do their job.

Most of most of the time it’s questionable. Right, yeah. Alright Andy Gangs of Wasseypur, finishing up Gangs of Wasseypur, Anurag Kashyap, directing and writing.

So Talking about fathers and sons as Faisal takes over the reins of so much of the family business. He’s into coal, he’s into trains. He’s into all kinds of crime.

All kinds of crime. How do you how do you think Faisal did as a as a crime lord in the family business?

Andy Nelson:
I think that the setup of this story is interesting because as this film starts Yeah, we’re kind of revisiting the death of Sardar from the last film. We kind of see that death play out. We see his brother kind of taking the helm of the family business, Danicia’s. He’s trying to avenge his father’s death.

He you know, they go after several of the people who had been involved in killing Sardar, and then Danish gets killed, and it’s really Mom, right? It’s Nagma who kind of freaks out on Faisal, who just seems drugged out and he I don’t know, it’s his approach to life is so drugged out and he has not quite realized that you know he inadvertently led to his father’s death by listening to his friend Fazlu and as all of those pieces come into play and his mom freaks out on him and everybody is like, you know, when are you gonna stand up and actually take charge of things? And it’s kind of a trigger in the beginning of this film when it’s like he realizes that I don’t know, it was it was interesting to see that shift in him and it’s the scene that you were talking about when he goes after Fazlu and approaches him as a friend only to then you know, behead him in the most beautiful way.

So beautiful. So beautiful.

Pete Wright:
Like absurd.

Andy Nelson:
So horrific.

Pete Wright:
Well, describe the shot. It’s amazing.

Andy Nelson:
It’s yeah, ’cause I mean it’s night, he goes to see his friend. He’s, you know, drugged out as usual, but and Fazlu is having like a big celebration because he had just been elected to be the you know, one of the leaders in the town. And what he and so Faisal knows, hey, he just ’cause I think it was their kind of I don’t know, their family uncle sort of guy who’s always around Nasir, who is kind of the voice of the story.

He’s our narrator. And Nasir says, Oh, take somebody with you, and Faisal knows says, No, I’m you know, he’s my friend. I’m gonna approach him as a friend.

And so he goes up to Fazlu, and this is after having mom practically want to cut his fingers off it because he doesn’t want to do anything and he says, I’m gonna do it. And this is that moment. He goes to Fazlu as a friend, brings him outside to talk, and they’re having this chat And it’s backlit, so we’ve got this beautifully silhouetted two characters having this conversation sitting on, I don’t know, a wall.

and this party going on in the background. And Faisal gives Fazlu, I don’t know, whatever it is that they’re always smoking, but like a little hash pipe sort of thing. and he gives it to him to and he lights it up for him and then he proceeds to grab him, pull out his knife, and then cut his head off.

And we’re watching it silhouetted, blood just spurting across the scene of the screen in like this rainbow arc, and it’s all backlit, so you just get these beautiful like red splashes just spurting up and up and up. And then finally he drops the body and raises the head. And you’re like, oh, wow, that was that was a shocker.

And because you know, at this up to this point, Faisal just seemed Ineffective. And this is that turning point for him when he makes a change in his direction and is gonna start pushing. Now he’s not always making the smartest of decisions, like when he decides to start trusting Eklok, but still he is now essentially the powerful criminal overlord of the town.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. They yeah, you mentioned Eklok and the sort of unraveling of his ultimate sort of allegiances. And maybe it’s premature to ask this question, but how did you feel about the general unraveling of allegiances in the film around Faisal because he develops quite a sort of cadre of folks who are you know apparently allegiant to him and there are many people or a couple of people in here who are they demonstrate their allegiance to Faisal as sort of double agents and working on both sides with the Ramadhir. Everybody’s working sort of together and against one another. and then Things start to unravel in the big third act.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, it was interesting to see because you know, we really got a setup in the last film of our three families, right? We had the cons, headed up by Sardar Khan well, s headed up largely in the last film by Sardar Khan. He I mean he was the It was his dad who kind of kicked things off, as we kind of see they touch on in this film.

But Sardar Khan and then in this film it’s Faisal Khan. as the cons who are kind of leading. Then you have the Qureshis, which are the in the last film it was they were largely like the butchers and everything.

And Sultan is still the family leader of them here in this film. And the end of the last film we see those two families kind of coming together because of a marriage between Danish and what’s you know I’m not gonna remember. It’s there’s some so many.

Yeah, Shama is the one who marries Danish, and she is cousin to Sultan. And so now you suddenly have this connection between those two families, although Sultan is not happy at all with it, and you know, because his son, and I gosh, I’m I lose track of which one is which and how they all relate, but it’s his son who actually is the unhappy one, right? Sultan ends up being okay with this marriage, but it’s which is the one who is the one who ends up going after Sardar.

Oh my goodness. It’s the not Sagir. Oh no, it is Sultan.

Sultan does kill him. So I so then I’m not I’m r forgetting which is the one who is kind of supporting which of the Qureshis Ramadhir. Ramadhir.

No, Ramadhir is not a Qureshi. Ramadhir is like the politician. That’s what’s interesting.

We kind of have these two warring families, and then you have the political family, which is Ramadhir and his son JP, who he’s always J just telling how useless he is, which is very funny. But Ramadhir and JP sing, they are kind of the political bad guys, and so they’re much harder to touch than these other two families. And they kind of come together with this marriage.

And I anyway, I guess to kind of get to your question about Faisal and how things unravel It is interesting to see how there are tensions in the marriages that seem to play out and then kind of at a certain point, like Faisal and his wife who also is related to Sultan, it’s it no longer seems to be a huge issue for them to be going after each other while still being accepting that they’re all family. It was kind of strange to see how that played out. But then you also have Ramadhir and JP constantly playing all these people.

You have Sardar’s second wife and her son definite who starts getting into the mix and becomes a big player. And so I don’t know, the whole thing I found to be really interesting in the scope of fathers and sons, brothers, and family business and how You know, eventually we get this conversation between Faisal and his wife about how he really never wanted to be in this. He wanted to get out.

He’s gonna try getting out. And then as you said, it has this Godfather III element where it’s like it just keeps pulling him back in and he won’t He can’t let go of these things. They have these needs for vengeance and instead of just stepping away and doing something else, they have to go back and pursue it.

And so many of these things seem to be kind of pushing Faisal to this point where he’s going to go back and cross those lines. And especially as he gets g farther in with Icklock who is an agent for Ramadhir and trying to kind of sway them. And then you find out that, you know, Ramadhir is also working with Durga and through her, definite.

And so then you have this like triple agent sort of thing as Definite is essentially working for Ramadhir to clear out these people on behalf and make it look like he’s working with Faisal, only at the end to be the one who kills Faisal. It was it was a ride, and it’s very complex, but when you’re talking about a five and a half hour movie, yeah, complexity.

Pete Wright:
So you talk about fathers and sons. I think there’s a there’s like a corollary, there’s an asterisk there because the because part of the kind of discussion is legitimacy of children, because some of these children are Not a part of the core family, especially when you talk about Definite and Durga, because you know, it’s the family that had been sort of abandoned. Right.

And so we have this child who is brought into the fold and made to appear legitimate, but because of his he’s so adept with criminality, but he is he’s he ultimately it doesn’t feel legitimate and therefore has these ulterior motives that are that are going on. And I felt like his role, like his trajectory in the film Definites was fascinating to watch. And the punctuation on his storyline of the final shot of him after you know, Faisal is yeah, after he kills Faisal in the police car, standing with his mother looking sideways over his sh and looking then facing sideways.

looking at the camera, was extraordinary, chilling, just chilling, as he exacts not only revenge for all that has been wrought on his family as a result of being made illegitimate But also his ultimate ascension to power as ruler of the Gangs of Wasseypur

Andy Nelson:
Well, and in that story thread we also have JP who is a part of that because JP is the one as we saw at the beginning of part one in that flash forward scene that we get to kind of see the whole thing. He’s the one who sends the Qureshis in to kill Faisal at his house. And we see kind of that at the opening of part one.

We see the full thing here, and we get to kind of follow Faisal in a great wonder. that kind of follows him up the stairs and up a ladder through the roof across rooftops all this sort of stuff as he breaks his leg. Like so many interesting things through that.

But we get to see how JP is really playing the politics of all this too, and going after his own father, because he knows he can probably do a lot of this stuff. I mean, he puts all of that into motion. And his father is never going to let him have anything because his father looks at him as such a complete waste of space.

And so to see him at the end there with definite as the person who’s kind of behind all of this too. Like both of these sons have found ways to kind of exact revenge on everybody who had kind of put them into a space where they weren’t seen as somebody who would have a role in this group.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. You know, JP just because his father sees him as a buffoon is rendered illegitimate in the family business of politics and crime and extortion. And I think that’s another example of these sons Looking to establish themselves in the eyes of their fathers and in the eyes of the organization.

And it makes it just that much more interesting. I think the I think JP is an understated performance in this second half of the story. we get him much less, but when we do get him, especially as the architect of you know, so much of the behind the scenes that attack on Faisal’s house, I think it’s really perfect.

you know, I like watching him age

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Just a quick question about that sequence. the only thing that I felt like when I watched the first film and we see him orchestrating at the very beginning of the film, he’s orchestrating this attack by the Qureshis on Faisal’s house.

I kind of was under the assumption that, well, his dad must be dead because he’s leading this thing. And you know, I can’t imagine his dad being supportive or part of this thing. And then as we watch this film, we realize, no, his dad’s very much alive.

But it never kind of comes up, did it? Or did I miss something as far as his dad ever responding or saying anything to his son about all that?

Pete Wright:
I don’t think you missed anything. And my read on it is that He first of all, this is a way for him to exert authority by doing this thing completely on his own. and not specifically not telling his dad, right?

Just again increasing his authority and power in the organization. But second, the perspective of his dad. I you know that I think some of this critique is performative, that I didn’t find him the way he aged believable.

in some weird way. Like I would watch Ramadhir as he’s you know, as we watch him through the ages and his the way he moved, the way he spoke, felt like he was a much older man or that he was somehow dealing with some, I don’t know, some kind of cognitive impairment, something like that near the end that just felt like he was he was aging more than he appeared. And maybe this is a makeup thing.

Maybe he just didn’t you know, they weren’t able to make him look the age that he was performing. But I struggled with that and it kinda got in the way with feel with understanding character intentions for me. Did you have any issue with that?

Andy Nelson:
I think I largely wrote off issues with aging with a lot of these characters because you could tell that they were putting, you know, powder in their hair or things like that. it there was a point when Ramadhir when the actor seemed to kind of they were doing kind of the Marlon Brando godfather thing where it seemed like they were putting some cotton balls in his cheeks to kind of give him a little more of a jowly look. And so, you know, I kind of wrote all that off as, you know, they’re clearly just trying to keep a lot as many of these actors as they can over this vast expanse of you know, eighty years that they’re telling this story.

Yeah. And so it didn’t bug me too much. Did any of that get in the way of understanding Ramadhir’s intentions for you?

Well Ramadhir As far as his intentions go, I think that I largely just had a sense that he was like this he was somebody who happened to be in the right place at the right time in the first film, and the British gave him the responsibility to run these coal mines. And through that he ended up ascending into political power and that really protected him largely through the films because there were a number of points when they’d say, Well, we can’t get to him because he’s off in the Capitol And, you know, he’s you know, he’s in a place where we can’t reach him. And that seemed to kind of be a thing with him at various points in the film.

And it seemed to be that I mean, you know, there were a number of points where various cons, whether it was Faisal or Sardar or maybe even one point and definite were all like, you know he is responsible for the death of my father and my grandfather, and I’m gonna kill him at some point. Like they all seem to kind of say that at some point. And so there’s there is an element of him putting himself into a place where he is working against these people, I don’t know.

I guess I found him to always be doing it in that political way that worked well for him to kind of get ahead politically, whether it was with one side or the other, and seemed to be doing it in a way where he might be getting his hands dirty, but never in a way where it was it was direct. And so he was always kind of safe from that. And so to that end, I liked that it seemed To s to be saying, you know, there are these politicians out there who are doing this sort of thing and they’re very much dirty players But they’re doing it they’re putting so many layers between them and what is happening that they’re essentially kind of safe from ever being accused of anything.

Pete Wright:
Right. Well and especially like notable Ramadhir’s plan that like he plays the longest of the long games. Like his plan to undo Faisal is to have definite released and have Faisal like rise to power and then get you know, get completely taken away by the power so that he is unable to focus when people actually come for him and name for him like his game is very long and very risky, but ultimately it kind of works.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, like he’s funding Durga after Sardar well after he dies because Sardar we had seen had been kind of giving money to Durga to help raise Definite. Yeah. But there was that point when Ramadhir says, you know, he was taking care of Durga after Sardar died.

He was taking care of Definite. He brought Deafenate into his fold. And that was what I found so interesting because that was kind of part of the long game, because you’d have definite kind of telling Faisal all this stuff, right?

Like he’s just like, oh yeah, he’s totally having me do all of this stuff for him, but I’m totally on your side. Although at the end we realized, oh no, he was actually always on Ramadhir’s side. Like he had he had definitely had bought into everything that Ramadhir had been pitching him, but was using that to his advantage to always stay close to Faisal.

And that la that is very much part of that Ramadhir long game that was that you’re talking about.

Pete Wright:
Well but wait a minute, because I think it was actually a level up from that. Like He was apparently in with Ramadhir, but really he was in with JP, who wanted to see the death of everybody.

Andy Nelson:
And Jesus, right?

Pete Wright:
Like JP wanted his own father dead. And so it was ultimately these illegitimate kids, JP and Definite, orchestrating the death of both of their fathers. Right?

Right. Yeah. In an effort to take over the thing.

And that was the only surprise at the end, right? Like at the end of the movie, we knew the whole thing until definite. Like I really believed that Definite was on the side of Faisal and that his betrayal of Ramadhir was legitimate.

And when he turns around and the police say, anybody wanted tea to the prisoners in the backseat and everybody gets out to get a T, except for Faisal. I still didn’t quite believe that it was definite who was gonna pull the trigger. He came out with his hands uncuffed and I thought that was That was amaz an amazing turn.

Andy Nelson:
And they shoot it in an interesting way, because we’re just on Faisal and we get to see his reaction when he sees you know, what we essentially know that definite is there who’s gonna shoot him. But we’re seeing it all from as we look at Faisal acknowledging for the first time that this is the person who’s gonna kill you. He’s never been on your side and he’s been playing you this whole time. And that was really interesting. I really enjoyed the way that played Absolutely.

Pete Wright:
And I think that definite the was I mean he played that character so well in a weirdly understated way toward the end because he was just this like criminal intent. He was walking talking criminal intent and his turn as an adult both demonstrating that he’s allegiant to Faisal and then betraying him was but like not telegraphed at all in the most satisfying of ways. I thought that was terrific.

Andy Nelson:
It’s it was very interesting the way that he’s kind of introduced because I think it was who was he working with? I can’t remember who he was working with, but we get that whole sequence when we get to see definite essentially trying to get into the family business as he’s trying to kill some of these people and you see how ineffective he is and he’s you know his gun jams and it’s it almost like turns into this comedy yeah as he is like then running and trying to get away from this guy who just won’t stop chasing him. And it goes on forever.

And it was it I don’t know, it just made me laugh. It turned into like this scooter chase and so much stuff going on. And I just I found it to be like an interesting exploration of this character as to like Are they trying to just make him seem completely ineffective?

But then I also remembered, you know, we kind of had this with Faisal also when he goes through this whole process. in the last film of learning about how things work in the business. And I guess what and th the whole thing was like when he goes to buy the guns only to then get arrested on the train because he’s carrying guns, only to then learn that it’s the gun seller who is actually has this scam where he sells you guns for cheap and then has the cops arrest you.

and takes the guns back and then will resell them to you if you are stupid enough to come back. Which he does and he recognizes the gun because he had made a little mark on it and that’s how he knows what’s going on and he hides the guns and

Pete Wright:
Anyway, it was this whole thing.

Andy Nelson:
It was this whole sequence that we have. Yeah. And it’s a but it’s a process, it’s a learning process of these young people Essentially being kind of idiots when they get into this industry.

And per you know, maybe for some of them it’s a chance to say, you know what, this is not for me. I was arrested and I don’t want to continue it. But As we see in both cases, Faisal learns from his mistakes and grows more responsible, I guess you could say, even though he never gets off the drugs, but he essentially does become a very effective leader in this crime syndicate.

Same thing with Definite. He is completely ineffective in this assassination attempt. And but, you know, he uses his experience through that and ends up you know, becoming very much this kind of this triple agent, you know, this very much this person who’s working for a lot of different parties in a way that you just don’t expect.

So it’s really interesting to see the way that

Pete Wright:
those two characters had kind of this interesting parallel.

Andy Nelson:
I think so too.

Pete Wright:
And you brought up the you know, some of the comedy in the show, definite, even though not in the scene. is part of a who’s on first comedic scene in this movie where they all try to figure out what the word definite means. And it was It’s fascinating.

It’s like I just found it fantastic. Like these guys talking about like definite. What does it mean?

Deaf. Well, and nobody speaks English, so we don’t know. Maybe deaf means he can’t hear and it net means something else.

Like it just over and over. Yeah. Yeah, and I thought that was just a great little sequence.

Like Just the roller coaster of intents of the movie I think is really, really great. And some of these little comedy sequences, I think we had just a more of a weirdly lighthearted experience with this movie in the scope of some you know, extraordinary violence too. Yeah.

It does transition for me to perpendicular and tangent right, because we had that whole sequence where they’re stealing stuff and really bugging people with and they don’t like it and so they hire Sultan or they send Sultan to go and actually defy the agreement that they had with you know with the between the families and end these kids And it goes to this horrific train yard, just brutal assassination. Yeah, right. which actually is the is the event the instigating event for the last half of this movie.

Andy Nelson:
It’s yeah, it’s that shift that and again It’s these families, right? You have you have these the relationships and the drama between them. And I don’t know, I found it to be always interesting how you know, at this particular point in time, now Sultana is gonna be trying to go after perpendicular or, you know, they like they as long as they can find somebody they can go after who’s part of that family there are these points where they say where it seems to say, you know, this is a good way to get back at them. And so it’s it is a very interesting next step to the film, I suppose you could say.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well and it takes us to this to the place where the first I the I think in the whole epic, the whole saga, the first woman is assassinated in the course of their violence. And that changes things. And that I think is a real testament to the movie, right? Because there’s always Just when you think there’s no line left across, there’s another line that they cross.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, and that’s where they kill mom and in the in the marketplace. And the I d I wasn’t sure who that younger woman was if she was a Like a ha was just a housekeeper or some other relative, I wasn’t quite clear, but I know that mom sent her, hey, run out the back, and then mom gets shot, and then the guy runs out the back and shoots her too. And so it is it’s this definite shift where now they’re just gonna kill anybody who’s involved.

And that’s quite a turn and it definitely takes things I don’t know. I suppose in a crime story like this, it felt eventual. It felt like, oh yeah, eventually we were gonna get to this point where they were just not gonna care who they killed.

And like once we get to that Which a which actually was interesting because when we got to the scene where it’s the attack on Faisal’s house, I knew that they would kind of leave, but it I guess I wasn’t surprised by that point that they’re attacking the entire house and Okay to kill anybody who might happen to be there if they could get them, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

it really kind of gives you a darker sense of potential. danger for everybody.

Pete Wright:
Well and I the last movie, the big line was introducing guns, because so much of the movie takes place with these guys who just have knives and, you know, are stabbing each other and their crimes, sir. But the discovery of guns, of handguns in particular, changes the game. This movie, the line is first they kill a woman, totally changes the dynamic. And then this movie becomes sort of Scarface. The final sequence of the film, the standoff at the hospital, goes from knives five hours ago to a lot of guns, big, big automatic guns, and like a almost comedic number of guns and the final assassination of Ramadhir.

Andy Nelson:
Well the final assassination of Ramadhir, which yeah, was very funny But also incredibly dark. But because it’s like Faisal is so obsessed at this point with killing Ramadhir that he wants to be the only one who puts bullets into him. And he wants to put a lot of bullets into him to the point where he has somebody go out and get another loaded gun and bring it up to him so that he can continue shooting this dead body. Like it was like Horrifying and also incredibly humorous in the way that he was kind of obsessed with this need to do this.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, the fact that they bring up just a line of guns and he keeps shooting them. you know, he’s very sure that Ramadhir is dead before he leaves.

Andy Nelson:
Very sure. Very sure. Well, and in it just I found it to be an interesting And I suppose inevitable way for this film to end.

You know, Faisal had started shifting criminal enterprise to working online and doing this sort of online trading and stuff. that I th I was like, oh, okay, so he’s definitely getting into the modern age and finding ways to kind of keep shifting the criminal enterprise into fitting with the times. Yet he still can’t get away from the down and dirty shooting people when it comes to the end of the film.

And I found that for you know, especially coming on the heels of his conversation he has with his wife when he wants to get out of this, only to realize he can’t let go of these things, has to pick up not just one gun, but a bunch of guns. and actually go through the process of this of this vengeance that he cannot let go of, even though he has found so many ways to move on in other capacities. And that’s what I found so interesting about him as a character and I don’t know, just the nature of these crime stories that a person just cannot let go of their roots to a certain extent.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. It really I mean it’s kind of a I was gonna say fun parallel. It’s not a fun parallel at all, but it is it is certainly a parallel.

Like the you know, you look at the sort of addiction to crime, the addiction to violence, and Faisal is also a drug addict and you know, perpendicular is addicted to inflicting pain on others and even kind of himself, you know, playing with the razor blade in his mouth all the time. Like there were some really grotesquely fun sequences of him sort of coming of age as a young criminal. Like this movie really deals with that, like the inextricable nature of crime to family.

Like it’s impossible to get out once you have are so invested, once your family lineage is so invested in this lifestyle.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. And that’s something I found I don’t know, I guess I find interesting with the women that they end up with. And I mean largely the women that, you know, we end up kind of following through the last part of or this film.

are they are they are in the family already. Like they are Qureshis, you know they’re cousins to Sultan. And so we have this sense that they’re raised in this dark underworld.

But in the last film, like when we see Sardar meeting his wife, there was no sense that she had kind of come up in the world. It’s just I guess there are people from Wasseypur or Dhanbad, and so they’re kind of expecting a lot of people to have this darkness. And so I always find it interesting in these sorts of films that these people, these women, end up in these relationships with these men and end up just kind of going along with it.

I guess because it leads to a better life. They’re making their you know, they have a lot more money and a lot more stuff and maybe that’s what it boils down to. Yeah.

Pete Wright:
I think everybody is addicted to it, the lifestyle in their own way. And I think that the movie is big enough to actually give you room to breathe into those observations..

The real benefit of a movie that’s, you know, three hundred and twenty one minutes long. Indeed. Music.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, okay.

Pete Wright:
Lots of music. There’s a lot of music and the way they used music in the first movie, you know, we had the wedding singer guy who was kind of always at events and he would he would sing songs that sort of told stories. Well, I’m just curious your thought on the way they use music this time.

The music it seems like as I’m watching the thing and the subtitles keep kind of cruising by They’re really using the music, not of the performative pieces. There are a couple of sequences, I think, where the women are singing and their songs tell a story, but just soundtrack stuff. It appears to move the story along and talk about characters in a way that feels quintessentially Bollywood without the big dance number.

Andy Nelson:
Like we do have some of that same guy singing here, like at both of the funerals, he’s there singing songs, right? Oh, you’re right. at the very beginning of the film.

And but you’re right. I like that I mean that was kind of a touching part when Faisals in prison and he asks his wife to sing him that song and there were a few points where it kind of created that connection to a place or a time of more comfort or childhood, who knows what it was, but they were very interesting songs in the way that they played here And very much I found it to be interesting that so many ways the film was connecting to people going to the movies and really being fans of particular movies and characters and songs from these movies or soap operas, like so many songs from soap operas that they seem to be talking about. And every time the subtitles come up for a song, it was always I don’t know, you know, I’m sure this was the same case for you, but it was always like song or you know, Bollywood you know, classic Bollywood song or something like that.

Like the lyrics kind of call out the fact that, oh, this is a song from some other movie or something, you know?

Pete Wright:
Yeah, we’re in homage mode right now. And I love the way that whole thing is introduced because we have Durga. We have this th perfect shot of Durga at the movies.

And it’s not like a giant full frame of the theater kind of with the heads down below and the screen. It’s a very low shot. So you have this crazy angle of the screen of this movie and his head looking straight up because he’s like in the front row.

It is just a great shot that demonstrates how askew his worldview is.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
as related to the movies.

Andy Nelson:
Well and it also in a very interesting way, especially in Bollywood where so many movies are tied into songs. There was an interesting conversation that Ramadhir has talking about how one of the biggest reasons that he has been able to last so long is because he doesn’t like movies. And all of these other people They get so attached to particular actors or particular characters and songs from their particular era and they all become their own little kind of click because they’re interested in that thing and then the next generation is interested in this group of actors and this group of songs and movies And because of that they all have these different opinions and viewpoints, whereas he kind of sees himself as somebody, I don’t like any of that, and I just kind of am and they’re just kind of always playing the whole field. And I found that to be an interesting point to bring up in this film that is featuring so many songs and elements from other movies.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, for sure. Last point unrelated to movies is about snakes. Okay.

There’s a scene when Definite goes up to a street performer who is playing his little horn to tame the cobra and definite grabs the cobra and begins wearing it like a boa around his neck, holding this live cobra by the head. And I’m gonna tell you, Andy, nobody seems to care enough for my level of anxiety around that entire sequence. Like he won He walks in and everybody’s like laughing at him.

Oh, you have a cobra. He’s here, hold this, gives it to Nasir, I think, or somebody. He gives it to somebody else to walk around with the with the Cobra and hold on to it.

And I find that very disconcerting. That whole sequence I thought was just too much. All the violence of the movie, the beheading, for me it was handing a snake from person to person.

I couldn’t think of that.

Andy Nelson:
It was the snake. It was the snake. That pushed me over the eye.

Pete Wright:
You gotta know how to hold it, Pete. You gotta know how to hold your snake. Wait, that sounds awful Stop.

oh, and that leads us into the flashback. There’s a from a narrative structure point, they do a lot of this where A character will be telling a story and then they flash back to the whole sequence or they flash to you know, it very much is sort of a caper trope where you have somebody saying, We’re gonna have to break in to this bank. And then they show the heist.

It’s an Oceans 11 thing. It’s a I mean it’s a it’s a tool used for years and years. And this They have a couple of those sequences in this and my favorite one is the trick that is actually in the snake scene where it shows definite tricking the other kid to jump the motorcycle over the ravine.

And the kid actually hurts himself quite badly.

Andy Nelson:
The one that I thought was interesting, oh and more just because it was a surprise flashback to have added was the one where we jump back to the scene in the first film where you have a group of I think they were Qureshis who kidnap a woman from town. to kind of use her as kind of a the sex slave and then Sardar forces the main guy who did this to divorce his wife and marry this woman that he had. Yeah.

that he had soiled and sullied. Then through this flashback, we learn that the person that is involved, Iclock who actually becomes this person who’s kind of working with Faisal is actually the son, and speaking of illegitimate sons, he’s the son of that guy from the first marriage, who he and his mom ended up getting forgotten because of everything that Sardar did and how Sardar forced his dad to divorce his mom and marry this other woman. And so again, like that was just out of nowhere that flashback came, but talk about another interesting element about fathers and sons and you know, vengeance and everything.

Pete Wright:
Well, and recontextualizing past events, right? We didn’t know the whole story and the fact that Icklock becomes such a central figure in the undoing of Faisal and Ramadhir at that point is fascinating because we only thought it at the point that it was presented to us as the audience, it’s a good deed. It’s you know, it’s saying, hey, you gotta take care of your business. But You know, the fact that it turns out to have been you know, every somebody loses no matter how that equation gets solved is you know useful. It’s a good tool.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, really interesting. Got anything else? I think that’s everything. So we will be right back. But first, our credits.

Pete Wright:
The Next Reel is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Mahesh Vinayakram, Oriol Novella and Eli Catlin. Andy usually finds all the stats for the awards and numbers at The-Numbers.com, BoxOfficeMojo.com, IMDb.com, and Wikipedia.org. Find the show at trustory.fm. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, consider doing that for our show. Alright, how to do it award season.

Andy Nelson:
Same as same as last time We yeah, pretty much. I mean, we talked about this last in our last conversation because both films came out the same year, and largely as I was kind of looking at it, it seemed to kind of be just treated as one film in the awards circuit. So all of those awards that I talked about in the last film largely are all part of the same conversation here.

Pete Wright:
Okay, so how do you handle the box office for a movie like this?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, it’s tricky. What’s weird is it does seem like in conversation of budgets, they did kind of split them out because they were released separately, and so I guess they were trying to track how much they each made. so I was able to kind of find some information on this.

So part two did follow very quickly on the heels of part one, just six weeks later. Opening August 8th, 2012, in India, after the initial premiere at Khan, as we talked about last time, this movie garnered less of a crowd than part one, but still Barely profitable. from the overall budget of 2.

3 million for both parts, this part seems to only have cost 1. 2 million, at least that’s how they’re saying it. very small budgets from what we’re used to here in the states, especially for such an epic film.

this movie earns two point nine million or three point two million in today’s dollars that lands This with an adjusted profit per finish minute of almost twelve thousand dollars. Again, poorer than they had been hoping for, but still profitable.

Pete Wright:
I wonder how the movie has done over the years, like in the last you know, ten years. Like it feels like this is a movie that could, you know, establish itself in the long term as one of those like Indian crime classics.

Andy Nelson:
I would think so. I mean it’s very highly rated on you know everywhere you look on IMDb, on Letterboxd. It seems to be something that has quite a fan base.

and a group of people who support it and find a lot to talk about with it. And yeah, I mean I’m right there too. There’s a lot to discuss in the course of this massive crime story.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, I’m so glad we put it on the list. but especially the second you know, getting through the second half made the entire thing so much more rewarding. I really enjoyed this movie and I can’t wait to see how you rate it.

Andy Nelson:
‘Cause I do want to sit down and just watch this whole thing as one fake movie. For sure.

Pete Wright:
Do you think they’ll ever release a black and chrome edition of this movie? Just the whole thing in black and white.

Andy Nelson:
That would be that would be interesting. Yeah. I’d be there for that. I’d be there too. We’ll be right back for the ratings, but first here’s the trailer for next week’s movie, The Slumber Party Massacre, directed by Amy Holden Jones, kicking off our next series, the Slumber Party Massacre trilogy.

[Trailer clip plays for The Slumber Party Massacre]
The basketball team is planning a party. A slumber party. The party begins at 8 o’clock. clock. Love it too. Do you think I’m getting better? But be on the lookout for an uninvited guest. Please and please. When the pizza arrives, things really start jumping. Some people may have to leave early. But others Spinning around. Courtney, you’re underage. Negative. You’re not gonna eat that dead guy’s pizza! I feel better already. Really I do. But for those who stay, there’ll be plenty of surprises. And non-stop action. One thing’s for sure, no one’s getting any sleep the night of the Slumber Party Massacre. Close your eyes for a second and sleep forever

Pete Wright:
All right, Andy, what are you doing? I told you last week that I felt like my Letterboxd rating was going to probably equate to both movies. So whatever happens here will define a change potentially to my rating from last week on Letterboxd dot com. What do you how do you how are you handling this?

Andy Nelson:
you did say that. I feel like I’m still at four stars for both parts. I think I found this to be a very just a very exciting, gripping, large story. I think this is one that there’s just so much going on that it would really take me viewing this, you know, two or three more times to really get to a place where I would be happy to say, oh yeah, I’m I would give this a higher rating.

Pete Wright:
I’m actually with you on this. I came into it thinking, okay, this is this one’s gonna move everything to a five star because you know Pete know half star is right. I feel like I’m gonna stick with four stars now with the full intent of doing the five and a half hour watch at some point.

Like maybe I’ll con my son into sitting down and watching the whole thing with me. because that I feel like that whole experience might push everything up a star. Yep, that’s right.

All right.

Andy Nelson:
Four stars in a heart. Well, don’t forget to visit TheNextReel.com slash Letterboxd to get your patron or pro membership.

And remember it does work for renewals as well. And remember, we also have membership. And if you are interested in learning more, you can go to TheNextReel.com slash membership. Members get every episode a week early, plus ad-free and additional content at the start and end of some of the episodes. Plus we do member bonus episodes.

We have a ton of member bonus episodes this year. and definitely worth checking out. So again, we’d love we love that you’re tuning in and if you would love to sh throw some love our way just go to TheNextReel.com slash membership where you can learn more So, what did you think about Gangs of Wasseypur Part 2? We would love to hear. Hop into the Show Talk channel in our Discord community where we will be talking about the movie this week.

When the movie ends. Our conversation begins. Oh, you know what I didn’t we didn’t talk about?

Did you get a sense? from this film that the crime was ever gonna end in this area. Because I was I was reading about it and in the in the reality of this area.

It does sound like the mafia’s downfall actually didn’t come from Gang Wars, but what it says, it came from the differences between the widow of essentially the Ramadhir character and his brothers, there were a lot of differences and it gave people an opportunity to make space for themselves. And so it ended up kind of the mafia all kind of ended in the area. But it did sound like I mean this thing was based on you know real stories and so it’s interesting that the film kind of depicts it in a way where, yeah, it’s gonna keep going, just under new leadership.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, and I you know, I wonder if they were like when would that have happened? Because this movie is telling a story that goes up through 2004, 2005. I think, somewhere in there.

Andy Nelson:
And it’s after that, because it’s after Ramadhir, the Ramadhir character. Although he dies it’s a that’s another difference. He dies, he gets poisoned in a his home village where he’s there for an election, I believe, or he’s campaigning

Pete Wright:
Well it sounds actually ninety one actually sounds fairly similar, right? It just m more bullets in the movie version. Yeah.

But it’s it was around the election. I think that’s actually really interesting, and I wonder just how much the movie would have been able to make an observation being made and say made in 2010-11, released in 2012, like maybe they didn’t know that crime was ebbing and flowing. the way it was kind of the mafia was kind of falling by that point.

Right. Fascinating. Great movie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Letterboxd giveth, Andrew, as Letterboxd always doeth. how’d you how’d you do I went high, I went four stars.

Okay. I went high. So why don’t you go why don’t you go first?

Andy Nelson:
Mine is it fits into, I guess, the male fantasy and draw to violent gangster films. Srijan Sinna says watched both in one sitting and didn’t even get up to piss once. But I had an erection the entire time.

Pete Wright:
Damn. Yeah, okay, we’ll see if this holds.

I had a five-star from Sharath Srivatsan who says, Moral- don’t nut in bongs.

Andy Nelson:
Okay, that’s pretty awful.

Pete Wright:
Hey, I will say here’s one more. Gulam as a five-star who says the satisfaction of getting revenge plus bass drops are the dopest thing Indian cinema has given me. An awesome conclusion. That is true. Awesome bass drops in the second half of the movie.

Andy Nelson:
Indeed. Thanks, Letterboxd.