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Back with no apologies

photo: R.V. MOORTHY

Actor factor Sanjay Suri

If Jhankar Beats made him famous, My Brother…Nikhil further established him as an actor of rare substance. In Bas Ek Pal with Urmila Matondkar, his romantic side was appreciated but the film, more to do with symbols and colours and less with dialogues, failed at the box office.

We are talking of Sanjay Suri who has been missing from the big screen for quite some time. Now he is seen in Sorry Bhai. “I wasn’t missing. I was preparing for Sorry Bhai. It isn’t easy to produce a film with barely any financial support,” he quips. Suri has co-produced this film with Onir, the director. The two have worked together in My Brother…Nikhil and Bas Ek Pal, and they aim to make films high on originality and free of indecency.

A “light-hearted” film as Suri puts it, it is about a woman (Chitrangda) who falls in love with the younger brother (Sharman Joshi) of the man (Suri) she had planned to marry. “It has an original script and some unusual scenes that you may find quirky as we still go by the taboos when it comes to showing morals in the film,” says Suri.

The film has already made news for two reasons: Rabbi Shergill claimed that one of his compositions was used without his permission, and Chitrangda is back on the silver screen after Sudhir Mishra’s critically acclaimed Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi. The film also has Shabana Azmi and Boman Irani “to support us” as Suri puts it.

Despite the critical appreciation he received as Nikhil in My Brother… Nikhil, Suri doesn’t seem to have been flooded with good roles, and once again, he and Onir had to make a film together. “I took the risk doing parallel films like Filhaal in the beginning of my career and it proved to be very good for both my career and ego. Now, no one dares take me non-seriously in Bollywood,” he laughs, adding, “and yet they come to me with the offers of ‘serious fillers’!”

Yet happy with the state of affairs in Bollywood, Suri says he likes to be slow and steady. “With this film we have the support of many production houses and actors like Shabana Azmi and Boman Irani. It’s no mean achievement. I would rather like to be seen in a small budget film with a great role than in a big film with a hollow role,” he asserts. His forthcoming films, Sanjay Gupta’s AliBaug, Nandita Das’s Firaaq, Sikandar by Sudhir Mishra and Flat by Hemant Madhuka, he says, illustrate this approach.

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