The approach to adaption here (by writers Smita Singh, Vasant Nath, and Varun Grover) isn’t literal.
Sacred games netflix review series#
The novel, brimming with cinematic potential, has finally found a home in a Netflix series directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane. Whose story were we more captivated by and more sympathetic towards? What does that say about us?
They were also evident in the use of language: Bombay’s street argot back thumping Chandra’s prose, bridging the gap between ‘elegance’ and crass, the kind of book where “love is a murdering gaandu” sits not too far from “Kamble was quite indifferent to the degeneration-of-India gambit”.Įqually important, that binary was hard coded in the storytelling – alternating between Gaitonde and his nemesis, Sartaj Singh, a cop trying to emulate his virtuous father – asking uncomfortable questions of the readers. They were evident in the book’s world – the tussle between cops and gangsters, gangsters and politicians, gangsters and gangsters – and also in its structure: like a sturdy tree, the book grew both inwards and outwards, encompassing the feverish accelerating present, suffocating any scope for pause, with an uneasy confused past threatening to break its barriers. Vikram Chandra’s 2006 novel Sacred Games revelled in its binaries.
The similarities are several: like the almighty, he is feared and worshipped, omnipotent and brave.īut more importantly, Gaitonde has a quality central to all gangsters (and gods): People are willing to kill and die for him. In a world where rulebooks are written, revised, and burned, where anything can be straightened or distorted, Ganesh Gaitonde, the feared Mumbai don, is struggling to answer who he is: a gangster or a god? From Ganesh’s viewpoint, this question is not facile – it has coiled snakelike in his mind and stung him repeatedly. That ultimate binary of life and death spawns different pairs: saint or sinner, perpetrator or victim, local or outsider. Note: This review was first published on Jand was republished on Septemin light of Sacred Games’ nomination for the 2019 International Emmy Awards.Ī life dependent on the accuracy of a gunshot does not provide too many options.
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