That's how I'd describe it. Like a David Lynch, Takashi Miike type-film but applied to Indian cinema (bollywood included). Like I said the only other Indian film I can compare it to was Moksha.



Agree, it would be great if Anurag could do a commentary track for this because it really needs one. But as Eros is behind it I fear it will be a junk DVD. This film really needs a reputable arthouse label like Tartan to snatch it up, that way it will reach a wider international audience and be fully appreciated.



Whatever you do make sure you see this in the cinema. Do not wait for the crappy Eros DVD. This could be the best Indian film I've seen all year. It's certainly the most different and one not to be missed.

Has Anurag Kashyap plagiarised the plot of No Smoking? It shares very close resemblance to Stephen King’s short story 'Quitters'.

This seems to be his response

http://220.226.195.20/cchat/Fan_Frame.php

Nitin (http://www.chakpak.com/movie/no-smoking/reviews/18882) asked, Hey another one - how different is your movie from quitter's inc. I havent read the book. Have you watched at's eye too ?
Anurag Kashyap answers, do that exercise my friend and tell me how different it is

bunny3 asked, Hi Anurag, Is your movie an adaptation of Quitter's Inc?
Anurag Kashyap answers, no that is just the deparure point for the story

Yes Yes Yes

This film was awesome. Go see it. Its dark, twisted, weird. Everything that most films are not. This isn't the "its pretty good for an Indian film" kind of praise. Its actually an engaging and interesting dark comedy.

Stay after the end credits. There is another scene. Unfortunately the theater I saw this in stopped the film as the credits were starting.

Ask you money back. You paid for the whole film. I would not accept this.

Mhafner, you're absolutely right. Its too late to do anything about it now though. I wish the thought had occurred to me yesterday.

You might have made a complaint, but I doubt any theater would refund your ticket-price because they didn't roll the ending credits...

I remember when I walked out of X-Men: The Last Stand during the credits, only to later discover that there's some movie after them: damn it — .

same here!! darn, I miss Knightely had a baby after end credits of pirates 3! A friend of mine, went to watch it again, just for that scene

A theater was sued over the issue and guess what, the customer won. By the way this is also against the exhibition contract between the theater and the the film makers. Believe me if you make an issue out of it, they will have to pay up.

Caught this over the weekend and it is a love or hate film. It’s one of those movies that can be interpreted a number of ways, maybe done intentionally by the writer/director to spark some sort of a meaningfilness. I liked it and will watch it again when it appears on DVD (it needs a good DVD with it being dark and murky with subtle special effects that can be missed with the substandard transfers we get these days, but little hope in that as its coming from Eros ! ). It is a very David Lynch type of a movie, has the weirdness of a David Cronenberg movie and the acid affect of an Oliver Stone movie (well at least when he used to write the good stuff i.e. when he was high on drugs!) – actually one of scenes reminded me very much of Natural Born Killers when a flash back sequence is told in olden TV style with the added canned laughing and claps. John A, holds his own here, I can’t imagine SRK being in this role at all. All praise to all those in involved in making this movie, it’s a very brave movie to make and appear in. Ranvir Shorey especially is just hilarious.

As intelligent and brilliant as the movie is I don’t understand how AK can expect this to work as an audience attracting cinema. Even the weird brilliant movies from likes of Lynch, Cronenberg & Stone have limited audiences. They sometimes form a cult status as the years go by but it’s still a limited audience. Amitabh Bachchan described escapism quite well in recent BBC documentary (it’s on bwt courtesy of resident pirate faddy); he said that when the normal Indian person gets a chance to watch a movie on the big screen they don’t want to see real life or misery/depressing cinema, they want to see something that is larger than life, something that is a fantasy. No Smoking is fantasy world of AK and is personal film to him. A few might share those thoughts but majority will not even want to see it.

Few pathetic things I’ve noticed surrounding No Smoking. I think generally the critics have been overly harsh on JohnA and AK, especially a piece by Khalid Mohamed, I just read;
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage ... oking%2fEM

Criticism seems to come from the personal dislike of AK & John A and nothing much to do with the movie. As far as Khalid Mohamed is concerned it’s a rip off Quitters Inc. Its articles like this which makes me loose respect for people like Khalid Mohamed (not much respect to start with).

Secondly the screening of No Smoking was appalling. Not only was the second line of the subtitles cut off at the bottom but they were subtitles on the print which was just made up and had nothing todo with the movie. It was like some overly zealous student on his work experience at Eros injecting some creative writing into the subtitles – sense a déjà vu writing this and I’m sure it’s happened before – wouldn’t surprise me if that was Eros screening.

Ali

I finally saw this the other day, and it's just...amazing.

Comparisons to Cronenberg (namely Videodrome and eXistenZ) and Lynch (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive)--or even something like Olivier Assayas's overdue-for-reappraisal Hardcore or, god forbid, Demonlover--are inevitable, but No Smoking is a legitimately radical, visionary piece of filmmaking, a venemous indictment of 21st Century globalized cigarette phenomena. It's an Internet Age nightmare, ingeniously structured and simultaneously erotic and profoundly antierotic.

John Abraham is a relevation here. Oddly enough, his performance called to mind, for me, Gillian Anderson's Lily Bart in Terence Davies' The House of Mirth--radiating the sexiness of icy confidence, but we gradually notice subtle cracks in his armor. "K's" increasing vulnerability and ultimate victimization--as Kashyaps film devolves (in an admittedly Lynchian fashion) from an ostensible genre (neo-noir, socio-thriller) exercise to something far more mercurial and subversive--is nothing short of heartbreaking. Paresh Rawal, Ranvir Shorey, and the incomparable Ayesha Takia are also working at the top of their game here, but it's unqestionably Abraham who steals the show.

This is one of the very best films of the new millennium.

Let Big B keep catering to the masses. "the masses are asses" J.L.G


Interesingly that you mention the subtitles of this film, strangly enough, I felt it had an odd connection to Kashyap's intention of bending the rules (ie. f***,ASSHOLE, BITCH etc), yet playing within the bounderies so that these unheard of vocabulary for a Bollywood film is only visiable to those who know it's meaning and sans the actual dialogue.

You know that had crossed my mind that the subtitles are part of the warped experience of the movie and have been done intentionally like that. There is a bit somewhere at the start of the movie where K frustrates his anger on his wife and she does the same back and this on screen is told via comic type speech bubbles with the text b***** & bitch, no dialogue is spoken and they are no subtitles on this bit. Later on in the movie there is a similar scene where K looks at his wife and she looks back at him, again no dialogue is spoken but also there are no speech bubbles either, instead they are subtitles which say b***** & bitch. That I thought was no much of a coincidence for a zealous student to come up with. Also when K is going down the ‘Laboratory’ for the first time he says something casual in passing ‘where does this end’, at which point the subtitles had some expanded version of the dialogue (can’t remember the exact text) but went on about some architect (reminded of me of the architect from the Matrix movies ). Maybe reading too much into this – definitely need to watch it again.

Ali

have already made up my mind not to watch this film, sounding stupid on account of reading too many reviewers giving film unfavorable rating and these coming from ordinary public opinions. One person described film as TORTURE and confusing audiences, besides how different can it be when theme is similar to Quitters. the cussing subtitles is a turn off HECK with Anurag !