You don’t expect the obvious from Onir. This week, the director who has given us meaningful films like My Brother Nikhil and I Am, has come up with Kuchh Bheege Alfaaz , a romantic drama between a radio jockey and a girl who is dealing with leucoderma. Meanwhile, his documentary Raising the Bar will also be screened in the city. An uplifting film, it traces the journey of three Indian and three Australian children with Down Syndrome who met at a conference in Chennai on World Down Syndrome Day in 2015. Here he talks about how he shapes his diverse characters and his new found love for Urdu.
Excerpts:
What brought you to “Kuchh Bheege Alfaaz”?
I have not done a film like this before. Nobody dies in the film (laughs). It is fresh and contemporary and reflects on the essence of love. It took me back to my college days to the first experience of love in the 1990s when the Internet first came. There were chat rooms and I used to spend hours every night chatting and I found some of my closest friends through that. This film is about Whatsapp and Tinder. This is very similar as you do not meet the person and you can also make some friends across the seas. There is more beauty and curiosity in a scenario when you don’t know who is there opposite the other screen because no one judges you in any way and you can express yourself. In a way, I can relate to that people connecting through a telephone call and they do not know who they are. It helps them get over their insecurities, discover the beauty within and move on.
What has been your association with Urdu?
I am fascinated by Urdu. I love learning languages. I know German, Russian, Tamil, Nepali, and obviously Bengali. I always thought that Urdu is one of the wonderful languages to listen to and I feel incomplete because my Urdu is so bad. Even my last film was called Shab which means night in Urdu and now Kuch Bheege Alfaaz, it sounds so good! Honestly, I did not know what Alfaaz meant, and found out later. The script was mostly in Hindi but after developing the script, I decided to have more of Urdu. I am going to join an Urdu class soon.
You have introduced a lot of new actors…
For me, my work is my life and I am very much conscious about people I work with. You do not go out searching for an actor just because you are working on a script; you can find them anywhere. Zain Khan, the male lead, auditioned for Shab but I had some roughness in my mind for that character, which Ashish Bisht brought. When you are working with new actors, they must be with you for two-three years just like the time one gives studying medicine or engineering. One must be focused, politically aware, goal oriented. One should figure out whether the actor loves the glamour of the industry or the profession.
Does improvisation happen during shooting?
It depends. When I work with actors, I make them write their history of the character before we start the film. A lot of the memories, thoughts, come from them and I always consider their inputs for shaping the character. Like in this film the idea of using music came from Zain. He loves dogs, so we had a pet in the film. I want the actors to live the character rather than just acting it out. I always like the actors to build familiarity with the space around them.
The characters in your films are from a diverse background. Is it reflective of your own worldview?
As the style and colours are reflective of the theme, so are characters. This film has brighter colours but it shows real space and the warmth is of the real people. I will not grow until I keep doing different things and while discovering these characters, I discover myself. The people, in reality, are so diverse and that is why they are like this in the film. Archie in the film has leucoderma and has fear for the outer world. It is a question of perspective. I can relate to Archie’s insecurities with my childhood in Bhutan where people used to tease me because of the colour of my skin as my siblings were fair. But in Germany people loved me because of my skin colour. I have seen people crying after watching the film and saying, “I always thought I was ugly and after this film, I am feeling beautiful again.” It has a wonderful message.
What about the issue of representation?
Our cinema only talks about a few regions and sensibilities. It is not inclusive as it has to be. When the script came to me, it was Jyotsna from South India but when I started casting, I changed it to a girl from Darjeeling played by Geetanjali Thapa. We are one country, why cannot we have people from different regions of our country in our films. Alfaaz is a Kashmiri person but I broke the stereotype by naming him Abhimanyu. It would have been very obvious to have Zain Khan playing Alfaaz Khan. We have Kashmiris, a female director of photography, female lead from northeast and I am a representative of LGBT community (laughs).
Though you have said in your earlier interviews that you are not an art filmmaker, your sensibilities are definitely not mainstream.
I have a certain kind of lyrical filmmaking style which I have developed over a period of time and I am happy people do give recognition to it. The border between art film and mainstream is diminishing with films like Newton , Bareilly Ki Barfi doing good business and many big-budget films getting doomed.
