Mounting a film franchise is often a zero sum game. Even if you match the original at the box office, critics pull you down for reaping the goodwill of the original. Rarely do we find a “Kahaani” that ticks most of the boxes. Sujoy Ghosh has just achieved it with Durga Rani Singh. The film manages to pass on an important message even as it entertains.
“This is what I learnt from Ray sahib. My school is Satyajit Ray. Ray said that it is very important for a filmmaker to have an opinion. You cannot sit on the fence. Good, bad, you have to take a stand in life, in films. That’s what I tried to do in every film. My first film was about priorities, my second film was about infidelity, my third film was for my children to say there is no magic lamp in this world – whatever you have to achieve, you have to achieve on your own. ‘Kahaani’ was my personal view on how to deal with terrorism. I try to take a stand on issues, and it is important to put my neck on the block every time. It is up to the audience whether they want me to live or...”
Well, he has passed the test despite dealing with a grim subject (child abuse). “I had this thought in my mind for a long time but it was a complicated thought. If you have something to say, you can say it many ways. You can write about it in newspaper. Somebody can make a documentary on it, I had to make a film. But if I make a film, I have a duty that no matter what the message is, the film has to be entertaining. No matter what my thoughts are, I have to give it a garb of entertainment. That takes a bit of time.”
What makes me curious, is the title. A couple of years back the media was abuzz with the news that Kangana Ranaut is playing Durga Rani Singh. “When Vidya (Balan) fell ill, she told me to go to Kangana. It didn’t work out. Here I took the name, tweaked the character to suit Vidya but essentially it is a new script.” It is a script that made him work for three years. “The problem was to find a story that was worth ‘Kahaani’ stamp for ‘Kahaani’ is audience property right now. I knew if I did anything wrong with ‘Kahaani’, they would beat the living daylights of me.” Here is a case where the director was scared of his own success. “Mushkil se pyaar milta hai. And I got it with great difficulty. I wanted to maintain that trust,” says Sujoy, whose “Home Delivery” and “Aladin” didn’t find much audience.
Turning to his characters, Durga and Mini, Sujoy maintians he never felt as closely to a character as he felt towards Durga. “I have seen her grow. In fact, I didn’t want to go away from me. She has a difficult life but she is a fighter. Durga is a common name in different parts of India but for me the name has a special value as one of the kids in Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ is Durga. It is one of my favourite characters of Ray. Mini is my favourite name in the world because I grew up reading Tagore’s ‘Kabuliwala’. I read it once a week,” shares Sujoy with pride.
What Durga does in the film, is something fathers used to do in Bollywood films for their children. Sujoy, who considers himself a better writer than director, says, “It is strange as all mothers promise that as long as she is alive, she would not let anything happen to their children. I have seen my mother protecting me. It is another level of commitment. She might be thin but she would stand in front of 50 people to save me. Unfortunately, in our films there were rules that this could be done only by a macho hero. Audience are saying goodbye to such notions.”
Unrealistic expectations
On working with Vidya with whom he, reportedly, had a fall out after “Kahaani”, Sujoy admits there were issues. “There was a fight. We didn’t speak to each other for one-and-a-half years. That’s okay, in every relationship when expectations become unrealistic, problems arise. If I start feeling that Vidya should not say no to any of my films, it is an unrealistic expectation. It is encroaching into somebody’s private space. It is like asking a critic I know to give me five stars. It is stupidity. May be I had unrealistic expectations....” muses Sujoy.
But once they were back together, it was a smooth ride. Did he have to delineate Durga from Vidya for her? “I didn’t have to do anything. Woh sher hai. I just tell her the emotion that is required for a scene. As long as she gives me that emotion, how she gets it is not my problem because audience will not live with her acting, they will live with that emotion. What we do discuss before the film, is the origin of the character. I know all my characters from birth. I give her the whole arc. So that what she did with Vidya Bagchi should not get repeated with Durga Rani Singh because their social status, their upbringing, their convictions and motivations are different.”
Arjun Rampal as the sub inspector comes as a surprise element. “I know him personally but I hadn’t worked with him. I didn’t know his taste, what excites him. He got immersed into the role.” If he turned a low-key Nawazuddin Siddiqui in a fiery Khan, here he presented the hunky Rampal into a vulnerable figure. “That’s the idea. I told Nawaz, Khan draws his power from his chair. Arjun doesn’t hold such a position.”
Sujoy wanted a new story but had to give it a feel of the franchise as well. It came through camera movement and the location. Still he managed to showcase a new side of Kolkata and West Bengal.
“It has only been three years. Filmmakers have been using Bombay for 100 years. I still have 97 years!” he quips. “What is good about any part of India outside Mumbai, is that it is still India. If I shoot overseas, what should I do with people and their language. I make films for my mother. If she doesn’t understand English, why should I make a film,” he avers.
Going digital
In between, Sujoy turned to short films and a made an engrossing Ahlaya in digital format. “I wanted to learn the digital media because I feel that is where the future is. It has its own lensing and sound design. You have a weak speaker (he points towards my smart phone) but still I want to generate the feeling of fear and adventure. There is no film without emotion. And to create emotion, I have to work on shot taking and background music. I wanted to learn that and I also wanted to work with Soumitro Chatterjee.”
Kodak is trying to salvage celluloid and there are filmmakers who feel the quality you could achieve on film is not possible on digital. But Sujoy insists that digital has to be the future. “Very soon, you would be watching films while running on tread mill. That phone can do much more than most computers could do. Anything new is scary. Film is a physical product. It is about chemicals. Over the years, we have learnt the ins and outs of these chemicals. We know exactly how one layer of film would react to certain light. In digital, we still don’t know that. We don’t know how digital would react to certain light. So there is still a lot of R&D going on.”
Has he finally cracked the code? “This is the only medium where you couldn’t learn from your success or failure. There is no formula to it. Each film is a new painting. Nobody knows how it comes together. I don’t even want to know because then the fun would go away. The fun of going into the unknown....” Now that’s joy!
