Dev D: A Time Capsule by Anurag Kashyap

Credits: IMDB

Somewhere between doomscrolling and replaying “The Office” episodes, Anurag Kashyap announced his chaotic Devdas remake was returning to the theatres, a movie which turned Bollywood go bonkers — Dev D, coming to theatres near you. A normal person would have liked the post and moved on. I immediately opened “BookMyShow” & “District” Applications to find out if there was any chance of the movie showing up in the cinema halls near me, and as expected, there was no news on this movie going to show up in the city I live in (Chennai). Most Hindi re-releases don’t get showtimes in Chennai. Checking up on the other states & cities again, as expected, the movie was coming soon, so I gave up hope of watching it in theatres.

On the Night of 26th April, a reel appeared on my feed, someone speaking about their experience with the movie “Dev D”, note down that this was a Tamil creator (How?). I opened BookMyShow again out of instinct, and somehow, there it was. Dev D had quietly made its way into two theatres across the city (Crazy!). So I texted one of my friends who would actually show up for a film like this (not many of my friends like a movie about a loser), and we planned to roll up on Tuesday (28th April) to the theatres, but it eventually fell through. The Tamil creator’s (his name is Vijay Varadharaj, shout out to him by the way) experience kept coming back to my mind again and again. I kept going back to that reel, watching him talk about how the movie was on the big screen; the songs, the lighting & just Anurag throwing colours onto the screen like a Picasso.

By the dawn of 29th April, I had already made up my mind. I was going to watch Dev D alone.

The real experience started on 30th April.

I had to take my mom to the dentist that afternoon, but even while sitting in the waiting room, all I could think about was Dev D. The show was at 6 PM. After an accidental evening nap, I rushed out towards the theatre around 5.

I usually walk into movies late, but this time was different. There was no rush, no waiting for friends, no unnecessary conversations. I was alone.

I reached the theatre nearly thirty minutes early, bought the ticket offline, and wandered around the mall as the movie had already started inside my head.

Then the lights went out. The censor board certificate appeared on screen, and suddenly it was like sitting on a spaceship heading straight towards an emotional collision.

Dev D isn’t a typical heartbreak movie. It crashes into you chapter by chapter. First comes Paro — intimate, emotional, rooted in small-town desire. Then comes Chanda, carrying shame, loneliness, and reinvention into the chaos of Delhi. Somewhere between them stands Dev, destroying himself one drink at a time while the city quietly watches him fall apart.

What makes it even more tragic is how two heartbroken people end up in the capital city of India. Dev & Chanda.

The movie builds its mood inside this neon-bloomy, messy version of Delhi. The cinematography is what makes Dev D feel so extraordinary. Every chapter looks and breathes differently, almost like each character exists in their own emotional universe.

When Paro’s chapter unfolds, the film feels rooted, warm, and deeply desi, full of small-town intimacy and suppressed desire. But once Chanda enters, the tone shifts completely. Delhi suddenly feels colder, lonelier, and dreamlike. Then comes the “Dev D” chapter, where the movie fully loses control in the best way possible. The screen explodes into messy colours, distorted camerawork, shady corners, drunken nights, and emotional decay.

Anurag Kashyap uses the city and its spaces to reflect Dev’s collapsing state of mind. Dev isn’t written like a tragic hero. He’s narcissistic, insecure, self-destructive, and constantly trying to escape himself. Even after Paro’s marriage, he desperately searches for ways to remain close to her, only to be confronted by the reality of what he has become. Her telling him to “marry the mirror” feels less like an insult and more like the film finally exposing Dev to himself.

Shattered Dev gets along with Chanda; the movie shows how small the world is and how beautiful you can make it once you actually listen to people rather than jumping to conclusions and judging them further.

Sitting there made me think how can a story that’s nine decades, almost a century old, could inspire these people working in the movie to come up with something like this. I was genuinely flabbergasted, watching Dev D in a theatre felt surreal, especially after years of only seeing it on a phone screen through Netflix. I was again a child who used to watch cartoons without distractions, no scrolling in between & most importantly, no small talk. It was just me in the whole row. As the film ended and the credits rolled from the top instead of the bottom (quite an upside-down), just as crooked and bonkers as the movie itself, I caught myself holding back tears.

Some movies don’t really end when the credits roll. They quietly leak into your life afterwards. They change the way the city around you looks for a few hours. And before you realise it, you spend the rest of your life recommending that movie to people who will probably never love it as much as you did.

On my way to my friend’s place, with two bottles of beer. All that I can visualise is me going back to the state that Anurag captured, though Chennai has less of Delhi’s neon-soaked chaos, it’s still a city of lights and somehow that made the movie stay with me even longer.

Thank you, Anurag Kashyap, for stripping male ego down to its ugliest form and showing exactly what a loser deserves in the end.