Ludo: Anurag Basu Brings to Life an Absurd World in Dark Comedy

Ludo starts with a prophetic note. The local don of the area, Sattu (played by Pankaj Tripathi), celebrates a not-so-clean killing by singing along Bhagwan Dada's tune, O Beta Ji, perhaps the biggest hit of his career, Albela. The star, whose dance moves were said to have influenced Amitabh Bachchan early in his career, found immense fame and riches after the film – a 25-room sea-facing bungalow in Juhu, Mumbai, and a fleet of fancy cars. And then as it happens in life and tragedy, he's lost it all. The man who lived so lavishly spent his last days in a dingy chawl, doing bit roles in films, forsaken by his famous friends.

Anurag Basu uses the song several times in Ludo to highlight how fate is a cruel mistress. With the word and the spirit, the song becomes part of the metaphor that Ludo is meant to be. It's a weird metaphor to choose when your story weighs good and bad and causes and consequences while tossing chaos theory into the mix through mythology. Yes, Basu is overwhelming, which is both his best and worst attribute as a manager. The befuddling but zany Jagga Jasoos is a case in point -- few films are as polarising as that musical about a boy detective, reports Hindustan Times.

Ludo, despite its missteps, keeps it breezy, with its cast helping it to stay the course. With Pankaj Tripathi, Rajkummar Rao, Abhishek Bachchan, Shalini Vatsa, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Sanya Malhotra and Aditya Roy Kapur, it takes some time to set its world, and reveal the connections.

Ludo discusses the concept of how our lives are a symbol of action and reaction, always a spontaneous act that determines our path. Keeping with the Ludo Metapher, all characters are the four colors of the game with the character of Pankaj playing the dice or the catalyst. Just like a flap of a butterfly wing can create a typhoon half a world away, Sattu's murder sets in motion a sequence of acts that will jeopardize the lives of several characters.

Sattu, the don of Ranchi, kills the local builder after delivering a crispy line about 'making a fres start'. He kidnaps the sole eyewitness, a diffident mall employee (Rohit Saraf). On the way to his den, he also threatens the ex-wife (Asha Negi) of his former right-hand man Bittu (Abhishek Bachchan), who has just been released from jail.

Sanya Malhotra's character comes to meet a rich doctor as a prospective bridegroom, and finds Dr Akash Chauhan (Aditya Roy Kapur), who has a doctorate in Mongolian architecture and drops jokes about cows and capitalism as a part-time ventriloquist. Their tryst finds itself on a porn website with the dhoti-and-leather-jacket wearing Sattu as their only hope.

Pinky's (played by Fatima Sana Shaikh) life has also been irretrievably changed after the incidents of that night. As her husband is put behind the bars, she turns to her high school crush Aaloo (Rajkummar Rao) to get her husband out. Between pelvic thrusts a la Mithun Chakraborty and running a dhaba, Aaloo is actually pining for Pinky and nothing is too farfetched when it comes to making his ladylove happy.

As all the characters come up with hair-brained ideas to dig themselves out of the pit, their lives are always intersecting. Basu weaves in romance, suspense, thrill, tragedy, whimsy and life in a single film, while simply keeping it a black comedy. The universe is whimsical and absurd, with a sharp joke around every corner—sometimes said by the characters, but mostly directed at them.

People are run over by trucks, cars end up on train tracks and cranes ram into hospitals -- the physical comedy and broad humour are very much a part of Ludo's landscape. It all ends in a bonkers climax where everyone ends up at the same place and the bullets fly.

Basu manages to stir feelings at the primitive level by using colors, a device he also used in his earlier films. Here the characters are demonstrated through the hues—-Abhishek's red stands for rage and love, Rajkummar and Fatima's green stands for survival, Aditya and Sanya's easy-going relationship blends well with the yellow while Rohit and Pearl Maaney's blue represent their childlike innocence.

The only jarring note for a film that gets so much right is the title itself. 'Life is Ludo and Ludo is life,' the director of the film tells us at the beginning, as he plays the game while wearing a fake beard chihuahua. For a game that was at best a 'time transfer' during the dreary lockdown, this degree of dedication is also commendable.