R aees has not only brought Shah Rukh Khan back as the anti-establishment hero, it has also given Rahul Dholakia his first mainstream success. Rahul, who has given five years for researching and mounting the film about a celebrated bootlegger, says, “As I write and research my films, along the way, I start visualising the film. For people it might be a jump from Parzania to Raees , but for me it is an evolution. I never hated mainstream cinema,” Of course, before Parzania there was Kehta Hai Dil Baar Baar , and after the National Award winner there was Lamhaa. Rahul admits he was conscious of his limitations with the mainstream tropes. “There was a running joke through the film shooting that thoda zyada ho gaya, thoda kam kar lete hain ,” says Rahul referring to his tilt towards masala fare. Like in the drive-in cinema scene, where Raees hits the mill owner, Rahul recalls, there were three options available for doing it. “Shah Rukh said if he would take him out, it would become too massy.” Finally, the way he did it, Rahul says, with “Kala Patthar and its socialist hero” on screen made it look “cool”.
On making a hero out of a bootlegger, Rahul says it is about prohibition and the politics of it. “Bihar has joined only recently, Gujarat has always been a dry state and the subject of prohibition always fascinated me. I wanted to present the pre-2002 Gujarat, the state before Modi. Many of us consume liquor. It is definitely not worse than killing people,” he argues. Reports suggest that the film was originally called Hooch but in the present form there is hardly any reference to the inferior quality local liquor that often leads to deaths in various parts of the country. Rahul denies that Shah Rukh’s entry as the leading man changed the plot. “The hooch part was always there only for the first few minutes of the film. The crux of the film is that no profession is bad and no profession is above religion until it causes harm to people. Raees realises it early and decides to sell only Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) because he feels it doesn’t lead to deaths.”
Rahul emphasises even as he was writing the film the scale of the film got bigger and bigger. “After writing the first 40-50 pages, I showed it to my Hindi filmmaker friends and they all said: Shah Rukh Khan.” He underlines that he didn’t make any changes to suit the star appeal. “The meat market scene was always there. The darubandi yatra scene was always there and so was the cabaret sequence.” But perhaps the way those were shot changed? “Yes, the scale changed. Had it been Manoj Bajpayee and Nawazuddin Siddiqui film, I would not have had the liberty to shoot it in slightly glossy and larger than life way. Still we were very miserly in our low angle and super wide shots. For a Shah Rukh film, Mohanan has shot it brilliantly in a realistic way.”
Coming to the politics of the film, Rahul says he doesn’t think selling liquor is a problem. For him, the system is the villain of the film. “I wanted to explore the 70s and 80s but the situation hasn’t changed much. Perhaps that’s why youngsters are relating to it. Even today people are looking for a hero who could subvert the system and provide them something in return. If the people keep getting cheated by the system, they would keep on rooting for characters like Raees who could stand up to the system. It is another matter that they might use people, along the way, for their own advantage to become mass leaders. It is happening....”
But the fact that the anti-hero is a Muslim is causing concern in some circles. “Neither I nor Raees sees himself only as a Muslim in the film. He is a person who happens to be born in a Muslim ghetto. It is the overindulgence of others who see him just as a Muslim character.” Perhaps, it is the lack of Muslim protagonists that make the media notice it more than it should. “People have their reasons. The film is in that zone and it suits their perception. My point is there are good Muslims and there are bad Muslims. Moosa is an example.”
Does it mean that he gives Raees a clean chit? “No, he is a good guy who does bad things. He has had his choices. He is not holier than thou. He bribes people. He didn’t need to kill his mentor. It was not always the system that was forcing his hands. But when he kills Jairaj, he returns home and tells his wife, ‘Main gunhegar ho gaya.’ The beauty of the film is that he takes responsibility of his behaviour. I think that is important and that’s what Shah Rukh also liked,” reflects Rahul. In fact, he adds, the only time he got indulgent was when he used her grandmother’s surname for Nawaz’s character. “She was a Majmoodar from Junagarh. In my mind, it is my tribute to her. Otherwise, everything else was organically fitting into the narrative.”
There is lot to read in the narrative. The glasses of Raees, the Moharram procession, the Moosa connection, his unknowingly transporting terror and eventually the encounter indicate towards Abdul Latif-Dawood Ibrahim story. Similarly, the way political figures have been shown also reflect the politics of Gujarat where the ruling party and the opposition often seemed on the same side from a distance. Raees taking on the rath yatra for prohibition also reflects a bigger picture where the Muslim anti-hero takes on a demagogue. But, Rahul stops one from drawing inferences. “It is a fictional character. In the film, Raees kills Moosa while in real world Dawood is still alive. So where is the connection?” he counters. One suggests that these digressions might be forced by Shah Rukh’s presence but Rahul denies any change in the script because of the star. “It was always about one character with hints here and there about the political situation in the state.”
According to Rahul, what pulled Shah Rukh into the film was the detailed narrative where he had pointed out how he was going to move and what was going on not only in his head but also the motivation of the other person in the scene. “We did lot of rehearsals. I told them that it is the space that I have created for you. Within it, you could do whatever you want. Not just the actors, the crew was also in that space.”
Raees comes across as potent because Rahul has created a strong adversary in the form of Majmoodar. In fact, Nawaz has more punchlines than Raees. “Nawaz’s character is quite quirky. People are noticing his lines much more now because they have not heard his lines in the promos. So lot of them are sounding fresh. That is adding to the fun.”
Nawaz has diluted his Urdu diction to make it sound like a Gujarati cop. “We didn’t want to do a caricature. And I being a Gujarati myself was particular about it. In Nawaz, we found an actor, who improvises on the sets.” He cites the example of the scene where Moosa sends his guy to own up for a murder that Raees has committed. As per his habit, Majmoodar asks the senior officer to give it in writing but even before he could say it, the officer retorts he has it in writing and that he should release Raees. “The scene was supposed to end with ‘Sir’ but Nawaz added ‘Jai Hind’ to it. It is a brilliant touch as it closes the scene very well. It is a statement on the society and the rule of law.”
On how the punch line ‘baniye ka dimagh and miyanbhai ki daring’ took shape, Rahul says, waniya buddhi is a popular phrase in Gujarati to describe a sharp mind. “And then there was a cousin of mine who used to liberally use the word daring to show off his audacious acts like driving the bike between two buses.” The beauty of the line, Rahul says, is it takes away the religion angle out the equation.
Rahul co-wrote the film with his journalist friends Harit Mehta and Ashish Vashi who came up with interesting anecdotes “Like at one point of time people used to steal Gandhiji’s glasses in Ahmedabad and authorities had to keep a separate set of glasses. I saw it an interesting device to establish the brain and daring analogy.” The scene becomes a metaphor for the changing vision of a generation.
Though Raees gets killed, the denouement generates sympathy for him for it’s Majmoodar, who has to compromise on his principles. “While we were shooting, many people were sympathising with the officer. Others were seeing Raees as Shah Rukh. My point is if I had allowed him to survive, it would have been like any other mainstream film. Majmoodar had no choice because putting him in jail would have increased his political stature. But yes, it is an open-ended dilemma.” However, this dilemma augurs well for the growing covalence between mainstream and independent cinema. Here is a filmmaker who has researched about the shape of buttons and the structure of pillars and windows in Hindu and Muslim homes in Gujarat and then doesn’t mind a Sunny Leone song in his film. “It is a strange combination,” agrees Rahul. “We tried to be truthful to the situation. The film is made with the spirit of an independent film. Be it production designers Anita (Rajgopalan) and Donald (Reagen), or cinematographer Mohanan, most of my technicians had experience of working in independent cinema. The actors didn’t rush to their respective vans after the shot and worked like a family.”
