Does realism in film sell

Does realism in film sell? Until we try, how would we know?
Anurag Kashyap and Rahul Dholakia at the EXPRESS

Posted online: Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST

After having done fiery street theatre with the Jan Natya Manch in Delhi, Anurag Kashyap went off to make movies in Mumbai. He lived on the streets, picked up the lingo, and landed the screenplay and dialogues of Ram Gopal Varma’s mob classic Satya — the iconic Bhiku Mhatre, played by Manoj Bajpai, is as much Anurag’s creation as it is Varma’s. After years of writing, and doing what he calls “additional dialogues” for other directors, Kashyap made his first film, Paanch, which ran smack into censor trouble for being “too violent”. His second, Black Friday, a stark, uncompromising docu-drama on how the Mumbai blasts were planned, has taken over two years to release.
Rahul Dholakia’s first movie, a forgettable romantic comedy, bombed, but that did not deter him from a second coming. He was in the US when the Gujarat riots happened, and the images which leapt off the TV screens post-Godhra, shook him. So did the news that the young son of his friends, the Modys in Ahmedabad, had gone missing. The tragedy of those days is brought alive in his searing Parzania, which released after a relentless struggle over one and a half years to get it to theatres. It is still not playing in Gujarat, where it all happened.
Two very different filmmakers, united in the courage of their conviction. And in telling stories which need to be told. Both met the Express team over lunch this week. Some excerpts from the conversation.
Anurag: I was in Delhi in 1993. I saw films at the IFFI film festival, packed my bags and left for Mumbai. Mumbai was strange, it was a kind of city that I had never seen before. I lived on the streets, did theatre for Prithvi, started writing and the break came pretty soon, since I wrote a play that became a cult hit that somebody saw and gave me a short film to write. It was for Shyom Nayar, who eventually ended up directing Ahista Ahista. I wrote that short film on Auto Shankar. That got recognised and Ramu (Ram Gopal Varma)saw it and gave me Satya.

Shubhra Gupta: Ram Gopal Varma keeps saying that he doesn’t give people breaks but I think he actually does and only for his own good. So, what happened after Satya.
Anurag: Things kept happening after Satya. I wrote Kaun, Shool, started doing dialogues as pretty early I realised that when you write a script, it doesn’t remain the same when it goes onto the screen. To avoid that heartbreak I started writing only dialogues. I said I’ll only do dialogues and whatever else I had to do and to detach myself from the film. Then I was working on Water and Mission Kashmir simultaneously. There was a problem with Mission Kashmir. I disagreed with the whole politics of the film and I walked out . Then I did Water and there was some problem with it. It was a frustrating time.,
Rahul: I was into advertising, making documentaries, made a film called Kehta Hai Dil Baar Baar. While I was doing this the riots happened in Gujarat, where a friend of mine friend lost his son. I thought it was time for me to make a statement. After five years it has been released.

Unni Rajen Shanker: How old is your friendship with Dara Mody, whose missing son Parzania is based on ?
Rahul: In 1996-97 we used to hangout together in the US, he was a projectionist. He came to India for extension of his H-1. Every year, all friends would get together for flying kites in January. That January in 2002 he was there too. One month later the riots happened, and the next festival he was there, his son wasn’t.

Shailaja Bajpai: Both your films deal with question of violence. Do you feel that violence is the best way to express communal and social tensions or conflicts?
Anurag : Paanch was banned on grounds of excessive violence. My contention remains that sometimes violence is unexplained , unprovoked, sudden and very brutal. Unflinching violence when you see it on screen puts you off. Violence in Last Temptation of Christ puts you off. I have got the chance to put it out and see whether it has the same impact.
Rahul: We haven’t shown blood, just the whole sequence of riots. We wanted to make feel as if you were part of it and how they were feeling. After the film is over, people don’t come out angry, or wanting to take revenge they ask why. Then it becomes effective, it’s not glamourised.

Seema Chishti: Both of you have made very political films, rooted in recent, real life incidents. But how do you look at films like Babel, that play very tangentially on things. How do you compare both kinds of films?
Rahul : I didn’t set out for it to be a political film, it was straight from the heart. Of course, we were making a statement about the riot. The whole film is so much more about what pain people are going through. It had to do with, ‘Even though they were Parsis, they were attacked.’ It wasn’t the politics but the family story.
Anurag: Babel is completely different from what we trying to do film. One thing that was clear was that the film will stick to that statement by Mahatma Gandhi: “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” We wanted to remain factual, most of the incidents didn’t have a balance, they were one dimensional.

Shubhra: Did you ever think of doing Parzania in Hindi?
Rahul: I was disgusted with my last Hindi film. Parzania was made was made during BJP rule, so the issue of censorship was already there, we thought it would never get past the Indian Censor Board. Also, I felt that an international issue needed to be addressed. For me, what Bush was doing was no different. But I am trying to dub it in Gujarati and Hindi. I didn’t start making the movie on film, some footage of the riots was taken from TV stations, but gradually the film became bigger and bigger.

Manini: Anurag, how did your years in Jan Natya Manch (an overtly left-leaning theatre group) that makes no bones about being political, impact on you as a filmmaker?
Anurag: I am very apolitical and the Jan Natya Manch had no impact. I have been very confused and still am. I read a lot of books. Films like Bicycle Thief, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow have impressed me a lot.

Manini: Both your films are political, and in Rahul’s case of the chosen family for Parzania, the latest issue of the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, asks why not a film on the plight of a kar sevak or a Kashmiri Pandit family. Why do you both fight shy of being called ‘political’ filmmakers? Is it for reasons of art or commerce?
Rahul: I didn’t care about commerce, as far as art is concerned it was to the point of making the film..I am not afraid of being political, but I am not political! When making the film, nothing came in between. It was simply the passion of making the film.
Anurag: When you making a film and it’s remotely realistic, there’s a problem, it has to be step by step. We had no patrons, we were asked to change names. It was more on the side of humanity, I am very apolitical. Every party has its own agenda. Ideologies do not define political parties today. The film was more on human carnage, about the foot soldiers of the ideology of political parties who are left high and dry, who pay a price.

Aman Sharma (to Kashyap): Your film was banned on the grounds that it might affect the judgment of the case. Now that the judgment is out, do you think your film could have impacted the judgment?
Anurag: I don’t think so. If it does then we need to question the judiciary. The judiciary has to be objective. In the Nithari killings, everyone including the media has formed an opinion already. When news channels can dramatise and portray it, why can’t I portray it on film? In the US, they made a film called Death of a President, on the fictional assassination of President Bush...that’s freedom of expression.

Aman : Why didn’t you touch on Sanjay Dutt in the film?
Anurag: Sanjay Dutt was not part of conspiracy, the celebrity took focus took attention away from real issue. The idea wasn’t not to distract the audience. Sanjay Dutt was a peripheral issue.

Vasundhara Koshy: Your movie hasn’t been screened in Gujarat. Any comments ?
Rahul: The state government is scared of the Bajrang Dal. In spite of police protection they don’t want to screen a film that they think will create riots. Cinema is always the effect of riots and not the cause of riots. We need to question whether we have any freedom.

Coomi Kapoor: You are one of the new breed of filmmakers whose works are based on stark realism, do you think such films can be part of commercial cinema?
Anurag: It can be part of the industry, if you look at history of films world over, the films that defined cinema — in Korea films like Silmido, the Brazilian City of God, which were realistic and yet made money at the box office. The French cinema of the ‘50s and ‘60s defined and changed the way of living after that. Until and unless we try, how would we know? Cost recovery is possible.
Rahul: The notion of Friday deciding the fate of a film is not true. These kind of films need time. There are various avenues to make money — theatrical release, world rights, DVD rights. Parzania is going into fourth week and they have recovered the print publicity cost already.

Sonu Jain: The problem is, when we watch films like these, sometimes we aren’t able to differentiate whether everything that you show is based on facts or fiction.
Anurag: It’s realistic, not real. For examples, the chase sequence in Black Friday was done to cut the repetitiveness of the 139 arrests. It became a metaphor for what everyone had gone through. Badshah Khan was a fictitious name given as he was a police witness. What transpired in that room with Tiger Memon wasn’t known to anyone, no one spoke about it. Based on an interview with this man caught in Algeria and the references he made, I wrote this whole sequence of how it must have happened. The police brutality was also not the official story, it was from a book called Voices. We spoke to people and got their side of the story.

Unni Rajen Shanker: When you made the film did you think it would ever be shown in Gujarat?
Rahul: I didn’t think Parzania would ever be shown in India. The censor board in India isn’t the audience here. Luckily, now we have liberal people on board.

Namita Kohli: How do you react to the criticism that Parzania was made in English because you had one eye on the international awards scene and other on the so called local anti-Hindu activists?
Rahul: People do call me pseudo-secular, but I ask them what have you done for the other communities like Kashmiri Pandits, have you even put in dollar for them? When I started the film, I was working on 35mm, where does the question of international awards arise?
Anurag: One makes films that are close to your heart. Rahul isn’t in the business of making films on people of various parts of India. I have been asked questions like if I think Indian communalism is marketable abroad?

Shubhra Gupta: What films are you working on next?
Rahul: I am working on Navratri: Nine Days, Nine Lives, based in Gujarat.
Anurag: I am working on No Smoking, about a smoking addict who is emotionally cornered into joining a rehabilitation centre run by a quack called Babu Bengali. It’s a comic film about how he loses touch with what’s real and what’s not at the centre. I am also working on Gulal, a film which is set in neon light futuristic Rajasthan. Hanuman Returns, an animation film will come out by Diwali this year.

Kavita Chowdhury: Do you feel that films like yours point to the new wave of parallel cinema?
Anurag: I try to take the most serious issues and turn them into entertaining films. More than a new wave, I feel we are wanting to find our own platforms. For me, elements like humour and cynicism are important. That signifies my style which hopefully in sometime both actors and people will associate with.
Rahul: I am not trying to create any new wave, if there’s song then I would put it in. This is just the way I would express myself.

Shiv Aroor: What do you think of the Fahrenheit 9 /11 and Bowling for Columbine format?
Anurag: Fahrenheit 9/11 was released in India but Final Solution was not. Documentaries are very important and they should be screened in theatres for they will have a huge impact.
Rahul: In fact, we have already formed an Independent Films Association in Mumbai to try and screen such kind of cinema like the UGC cinema chains in the UK.

Abhay Mishra: Many books, movies etc have been banned in the past on the pretext that they pose a threat to law and order. What contents do you think that violate that freedom of expression? Do you think it was okay for the Danish cartoonist to sketch Prophet Mohammed?
Anurag: The cartoons were made in faraway Denmark, you would need to Google to get the cartoons...I feel the first person who raises a voice against a work of art, calling it ‘inflammatory’ needs to be immediately investigated — as he has something to hide or is himself a troublemaker. People who stand up and ask for bans are uncomfortable with those issues themselves. And that’s where the government should come in, but they don’t want to lose their vote bank. Content doesn’t originate from thin air, they come from somewhere. Sometimes the objections can be baseless also.

Unni Rajen Shanker: As a Gujarati Hindu yourself, Rahul, making a film on the riots, how did you observe the riots? What was the response to the film from your community?
Rahul: When the riots happened, I was in Mumbai. Besides TV footage, I met people, went to relief camps. When I was making the film, my immediate family was anti-me. But after watching the film, they said that maybe their attitude may not be appropriate and insensitive. Majority of the Gujaratis who were pro-Modi’s agenda come from a literate background but have a lot of hate within them. Though they accept that it is without a cause. The film is somehow making them question things.

Shubhra Gupta: Both of you are men of the moment, who got their movie out after so much struggle, but do you feel filmmakers like you are now gaining acceptance?
Anurag: A resounding yes. In the last five days many producers are more than willing to do films with me. Things are changing.
Rahul: We are still the same, our styles are the same. But there’s a change in their attitudes.