AK vs AK: A Meta-Meta Cinema commenting on the Bollywood Industry with the contrasts between the two AKs

Ishika Aggarwal December 26, 2020

352 3 minutes read

AK vs AK, a film about filming a film on Kashyap kidnaping Kapoor’s daughter

AK vs AK, an experiment never done before in Indian cinema, is a film, which appears to be realistic but is a work of fiction, casting the two AKs of Bollywood, Anil Kapoor, and Anurag Kashyap who are playing themselves with their families, including Sonam Kapoor, Boney Kapoor, Harshvardhan Kapoor as themselves. A Vikramaditya Motwane’s directed film can make the viewer forget if it is a fiction or is happening for real is a successful experiment for various reasons, for the most – it is natural, it is ironic and critical, and is thrilling.

Characters

Anurag Kashyap – Anurag Kashyap has lately been that director of India, who is best known for experimental cinema, yet the fact that he is not what the Indian audience has a craze for is very aptly being shown in the film. Both Anil and Anurag are roaming across the whole city of Mumbai, yet there are hardly a few people who took moments to recognize him, or those who do, mistook his name as Anurag Basu. While the world sees Anurag’s work as a work of Art, screened in the biggest places in the world, his presence in the crowd is shown as, as trivial as any other member in the crowd.

Anil Kapoor – Anil Kapoor, ‘a Kapoor’, known as one of the most known entertainers of all time yet is known for the industry as someone who has extended strings of nepotism has been just himself in the film. He is loved and mocked, for these two reasons. Anil Kapoor, where ever he goes, while in the desperate hunt for his daughter, is always being asked about getting being clicked, be it police station, taxi stand, Mumbai Local, or any other place. There is a scene where Kapoor asks the crowd to help him find a driver. Kapoor’s face and body are badly injured, yet the crowd asked him to do his signature step and entertain them. This very fact shows that despite being a star, he was required to entertain his audience, and hence, he is a puppet to them.

ak vs ak

Cinematography

The film is shot on handheld documentary cameras, and the natural lighting setup feels just like Anurag is documenting whatever Kapoor is doing. An excellent camera work by Swapnil Sonawane, and a splendid job of Motwane in making a fiction not look like fiction as it really is confusing whether it is fiction or not.

Story and the script

Something that deserves appreciation is the story and the script, written by Avinash Sampath, the story makes us think and question what part of the story is fiction, the storyline is fictional, the dialogues are fictional, or it is just the flow of events and the final twist which has been fictional. The lines between what is fiction and what is real are so blurred that for more than half part of the story, you would like to call Anurag, a psycho-heartless man who is brutal and mad for his cinema, and Anil as an actor and a father, who is really struggling till the tables turned and so did your emotion for each other.

The film doesn’t give you the space to think about what part of it is real. There are so many instances in the film where the real is being seen as acting, as rehearsal, that represents the greyness of the characters and the film itself. And last but not the least, going to how the film started, ‘the conflict’. Both the AKs sat on a talk at MAMI with Sucharita Tyagi as a moderator, which happens to have a conflict on the show, and the media spiced it up to a level where Anurag’s career became questionable, just as the way, media does so in real life.

Well, there are a few things in the film which you might feel like are not fitting properly, or maybe you will feel like in real life, this might not have happened, but it is an experiment and a work of fiction, so big ups for that.

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