As the closing credits appear on the screen, you are desperate to get out of the auditorium. Life outside seems so much better after watching Ugly. For a moment you are happy to forget that Anurag Kashyap has scooped up elements for his film from the same world that suddenly seems so comforting. A thriller — edgy and unrelenting during the two-hour course — it is ruthless in the depiction of human relationships. When a little girl called Kali is kidnapped, the police’s botched-up rescue operations serve to unmask the adults apparently close to her, exposing their greed, lust and vengeance. With Ugly, Kashyap has pushed the envelope even further and exercised remarkable restraint in the narrative, letting out only the bare essentials to sustain the viewer’s curiosity.

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The genre may have dictated his style, but the director — whose earlier attempts at breaking the mould with No Smoking and Gulaal were marred by self-indulgence — had already evolved into a fine storyteller. He raised the bar with Dev.D, an original and quirky take on Devdas, and finally entered the big league with the critical and commercial success of the two-part Gangs of Wasseypur in 2012. As the new muscle in an industry that peddles candyfloss entertainment, Kashyap knows he can’t afford to make silly mistakes in his quest for popularising realistic cinema. That also explains his need to stay grounded because Ugly will generate extreme responses from the audience, evident at the Cannes where the film was screened in 2013.

As we settle down for an interview at Phantom Films, his production house in Mumbai’s suburb, Kashyap is happy that the film has left me unsettled. “We are banking on word-of-mouth publicity,” he says in between puffs from a rolled-up cigarette. “Our focus is on the Internet, especially the social networking sites, to attract viewers below 35 years of age, who are willing to watch new kinds of films.” A week before the release, Ugly’s three trailers had together got more than 18 lakh hits.

Compared to his much talked about 100-crore-plus forthcoming release Bombay Velvet with Ranbir Kapoor in the lead, Ugly was made with small change. It doesn’t have an A-lister to brag about. Among a cast of relatively unknown talents, the only familiar face is Ronit Roy, thanks to television and his performance in Vikramaditya Motwane’s film Udaan.

The autobiographical snatches aside, Ugly is a genuine attempt at exploring the human psyche, especially the forbidden crevices. “We are what we hold within us — that defines our existence and charts our trajectory. We are ugly inside, when the emphasis is more on bettering our appearances,” says the director who has stubbornly refused to sugarcoat life. His obsession with reality is such that the film replicates the procedure the police follows in real life while dealing with kidnappers. For Ugly, he sought the expertise of a member of the Special Task Force.

Kashyap has mastered the art of extracting the best from his cast. “None of the actors knew who the kidnapper was. They only did their bits while remaining clueless about how it would end.” That uncertainty reflected in their performances, bringing Ugly closer to a sordid reality. He adopted the same approach with Ranbir, Karan Johar and Anushka Sharma for Bombay Velvet. That’s a rare accomplishment since such an approach demands complete surrender of the actors, who, regardless of their status in Bollywood, love to trust him.

Ugly wasn’t a smooth ride for Kashyap. Its release was delayed when he took the Censor board to court over the ‘Smoking is Injurious to Health’ tag that appears on screen every time an actor lights up. The board prevailed because Kashyap couldn’t afford a long, drawn out legal battle with the producer’s money at stake. “If the government is truly concerned about people’s well being, it should have banned tobacco industries. All it can do is preach through ridiculously juvenile ways. Take the anti-smoking ad films, for instance. They are sleep-inducing. When you go abroad you realise how strict anti-smoking laws are; none of them have been implemented here. In Ugly, that little irritant of a cautionary advice would only end up distracting the viewers,” he says, angry and disappointed at the way things panned out.

He has another battle to fight — taking his film to the masses. With PK hogging the limelight and an overwhelming number of screens, his labour of love might slide into obscurity. Kashyap himself admits, with a tinge of regret, that his films are more successful on YouTube than in multiplexes and single screens. It’s a worrying fact if dedicated cinephiles are reluctant to push-up ticket sales. At the heart of the movie-making business is revenue; where every Friday is a struggle for survival. If Ugly fails at the box office, it would deter moneybags from investing in films that challenge the mainstream. “If we want to create space for meaningful cinema, we need more theatres. Look at China where thousands of multiplexes have come up in the last few years. We will soon overtake China in terms of population and still have far fewer screens. No wonder, Hollywood is more interested in our neighbour — it’s a huge market now. Ironically, ours is a country obsessed with films, where even the small towns can provide substantial revenue.”

Kashyap already has a gameplan in place. He released a 5-minute film Kali-Katha, which he calls a “dark prologue to Ugly”, on the web midweek. “It’s on marital rape that results in the birth of the child (Kali) who is kidnapped in the main film. The short takes on another dark aspect of life: A man blindly following a religious guru’s advice when success eludes him.” 

Ugly is already a talking point. Motwane, his friend and collaborator, calls it his best film since Black Friday — Kashyap’s journalistic exploration into the 1993 Mumbai blasts. That praise should whet the appetite of those who take their cinema seriously.

The author is assistant editor with dna