If chaos were a currency, Anurag Basu would be its wealthiest spender. It’s the foundation he builds on, the element that fuels his imagination—and ironically, the very force that occasionally burns it all down. He is both architect and casualty of the madness he creates. For all his public musings about not yet finding a clear “Anurag Basu film” identity, the truth is, we already know what that looks like. If you had to define his cinematic voice in just one word, it would be “chaos.” And if you had to explain his artistic soul in another, it would be “madness.”
But this isn’t madness in the traditional sense—this is calculated creative delirium. This is not about losing control; it’s about finding your own rhythm within noise. And for Basu, music is the only map through the maze. Like the protagonist of an Imtiaz Ali film who seeks himself through songs, Basu finds and expresses his artistic identity through melody. Music, in his hands, doesn’t just accompany the story—it is the story. When everything else blurs, music stays sharp. When chaos asks the question, music is the only answer he trusts.
That’s why it’s a quiet delight to watch Basu and longtime collaborator Pritam reunite for Metro… In Dino, a spiritual successor to Life in a… Metro. The anticipation was straightforward: the film would be steeped in music. But what wasn’t expected was just how much of it would be musical—not merely song-driven, but structurally shaped by songs. With the ghosts of their last theatrical experiment Jagga Jasoos looming large, this return to form is a bold move. Especially in an industry that often punishes unpredictability.
And yet, unpredictability is Basu’s language. He never fully abandons the rules, but he does rewrite them. He plays with conventional narrative beats only to then toss them aside. In Metro… In Dino, he doesn’t simply “use” music—he inhabits it. He bends it, stretches it, leans into it until the line between music and story blurs entirely. Watching the film feels like flipping through a music album where each track opens a window into a different life. It’s both tender and thrilling, disorienting yet strangely comforting. And this contradiction is what makes Basu’s style so compelling.
What’s more refreshing is that he doesn’t let the constraints of a commercial banner clip his wings. Rather, he turns the studio platform into a blank canvas. Here’s a mainstream filmmaker refusing to chase formulas, choosing instead to indulge in invention. There’s a particular pleasure in seeing someone resist the predictable, even when the industry pressures otherwise. And that resistance shows up in the most magical ways on screen.
Take the opening, for instance: a rooftop jam session by Pritam’s band starts off innocuously, but before you know it, you’ve drifted into a whimsical montage introducing every major character. Without warning, characters begin to sing directly to the camera. They break the fourth wall with a casual intimacy, narrating their backstories not through exposition but through melody. It’s almost like a stage play where reality dissolves with every beat. Basu doesn’t bother with transitions—he lets the rhythm carry us from one city to the next.
From a vivid Holi celebration in Bengaluru featuring Thumri (Sara Ali Khan), we seamlessly shift to Kolkata, where her mother Shibani (Neena Gupta) is drenched in her own colorful festivities. Then we jump to Mumbai, where Kajol (Konkona Sen Sharma) and her husband Monty (Pankaj Tripathi) argue in their car, their daughter silently absorbing the tension in the backseat. Just as quickly, we’re back in Bengaluru for another Holi scene, this time focused on Akash (Ali Fazal), Shruti (Fatima Sana Shaikh), and Parth (Aditya Roy Kapur). And tucked into all of this is a moment of melancholy: Parimal (Anupam Kher) sits with his widowed daughter-in-law (Darshana Banik) in a quiet Kolkata home, staring into the distance.
This is how Basu sets the stage: not with logic, but with rhythm. It’s cinematic jazz—loose, improvised, yet somehow perfectly composed.
The camera itself becomes part of the choreography. A pan here, a tilt there, and suddenly you’ve shifted scenes, moods, even entire cities. A street becomes a corporate office, a wedding descends from the sky, and geography takes a backseat to emotion. Continuity? Spatial awareness? Forget about it. Those are for films bound by rules. Basu is after something else: a visual language where the heart leads the way. It’s all about emotion taking the driver’s seat—stories that flow not in straight lines but in rippling, musical waves.
The tone evokes the unpredictability of love itself. At one moment, characters in a café are bursting into a song about new-age dating dilemmas. In the very next breath, another couple sits in a quiet corner of the same city, mourning lost love through a haunting melody. It’s a world untethered from realism—but deeply grounded in feeling.
And yet, for all its spark and sincerity, Metro… In Dino hits a noticeable lull after the interval. The second half sees the inventiveness start to dry up. The music dims. The vibrant chaos that defined the first hour starts giving way to oddly uncharacteristic restraint. Characters make puzzling decisions. Arcs begin to feel repetitive, almost aimless. The film, once bursting with flavor, begins to feel like it’s looping on itself.
It feels like someone whispered into Basu’s ear, urging caution. As though a higher-up feared a repeat of Jagga Jasoos’ divisive reception. As if the moment things started getting too wild, someone hit the brakes. And in doing so, they halted what was shaping up to be something truly original. What was once a free-flowing poem begins to read like a paragraph forced into grammatical correctness.
And that—right there—is the bigger problem. Not just with this film, but with Bollywood at large today. Even the most visionary directors often find themselves shackled by the commercial ecosystem. Studio heads, fearing audience rejection, step in and trim the wings of creators mid-flight. They conflate indulgence with self-sabotage, when in fact, for filmmakers like Basu, indulgence is the style. It’s not a flaw—it’s the DNA.
Basu’s magic lies in his risk-taking. In his ability to hear music in the most mundane human exchanges. To turn chaos into choreography. And to let love, grief, confusion, and madness—all of it—exist together in the same frame, often with no clear resolution. That’s the whole point. Life doesn’t tie itself in neat bows. Why should his movies?
In the end, Metro… In Dino feels like a symphony interrupted mid-performance. But even in its faltering moments, it remains unmistakably Basu. The fingerprints are all there: the tonal shifts, the genre-blending, the kaleidoscopic emotions, and of course, the music that stitches it all together.
It’s a film that dares to listen to itself. A film that, even when it stumbles, sings. And perhaps that’s the ultimate triumph of Anurag Basu—not perfection, but authenticity. Not coherence, but rhythm. Not safety, but soul.
Because in a cinematic landscape increasingly obsessed with universes and formulas, Basu offers something refreshingly human. Messy, moving, musical human-ness. And in a world full of noise, he reminds us that sometimes, the only way to make sense of it all… is to dance through the madness.
