Film

Dev.D

Name: Dev.D
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Released: 2009
Cast: Abhay Deol, Mahie Gill, Kalki Koechlin, Parakh Madan, Kuldeep Singh

Social drama

A savage reinvention of a classic Indian novel, Dev.D transplants Devdas into contemporary Delhi—all heroin, rage, and urban despair. It's funny and merciless in equal measure, letting no one off easy, least of all its protagonist. For anyone ready for a film that despises sentimentality as much as it despises its own characters.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like a restless, rule-breaking reinvention of a familiar romance, where the style is loud and the characters are messy enough to argue with.

Skip it if the lead's self-pity and cruelty toward the women around him are the point, so if you need characters to root for, the long, unhurried stretches will wear thin.

What it asks of you: Two hours and twenty-four minutes, much of it spent in rooms with bottles and bad decisions, so it wants patience more than attention.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

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Black Hawk Down2001

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Kahaani2012

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Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Dev.D

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

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Lootera2013

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Shahid2013

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Wake Up Sid2009

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Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!2008

A con artist film that's also a love story that's also a Delhi fever dream. Banners from different genres flapping at once, but it holds together through sheer narrative swagger.

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Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 12012

An epic crime saga that refuses to mythologize its criminals or simplify its violence. Built on betrayal and vengeance across decades, shot through with dark comedy and genuine pathos.

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Rang De Basanti2006

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Both films refuse the consolation of false hope. Both track the precise mechanics of how a person dismantles themselves, and both suggest that sometimes self-knowledge arrives too late. Both use style—visual or sonic—to make despair feel like a physical thing.

Darren Aronofsky's film about addiction—to heroin, to diet pills, to television, to dreams—is formally ferocious and emotionally devastating. It's not interested in redemption, only in the geometry of collapse.

But It's deliberately punishing. The sound design, the repetition, the ending—all of it is meant to be uncomfortable. It's not a film you enjoy so much as endure, and only if you choose to.

Paterson2016

Where Dev.D is violent and Dev is monstrous, Paterson is gentle and its protagonist is kind, but all three are about men observing their own lives with varying degrees of clarity. Dev.D shows what happens when you refuse to look; Paterson shows what opens up when you do. Both reject the idea that a life has to be dramatic to matter.

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