Dibakar Banerjee backed it, Yash Raj Films produced it, Namrata Rao edited it and Guneet Monga is selling it. A world premiere at Cannes, that too in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section — an official selection into the world’s most prestigious film festival. Is this what they call a dream debut? In a telephonic interview, director of Titli Kanu Behl says we make it sound all rosy, as he takes a break from the race to get a print ready for sending to Cannes. Excerpts from the chat:
Did you set out to makeTitlia film about genetics, to explore nature vs. nurture, or was it purely born of your turbulent relationship with your father?
It is not that intellectual. It really stems from personal experiences I was trying to understand. We started out with a premise. A story about oppression. A young boy wants to escape his oppressive older brother. And then we asked ourselves what is being said here that’s not been said before. It wasn’t working. And we realised that we were blaming one character and copping out. The older brother Vikram, where did he start out? And after the second draft, we realised we had just shifted the blame to another. So where does it begin, where does it end? That’s how we cracked the third draft. We realised the film was about circularity and about a cycle that needs to be broken. We become who we hate.
You had Ranvir Shorey in mind for Vikram as you were writing it.
Yes, I knew who the two older brothers would be — Ranvir Shorey and Amit Sial. Titli had to be someone new. Fortunately, we were able to get the actors we wanted. Actors bring people to life, they break patterns, add spontaneity and make it real. We extensively workshop-ed with exercises designed to create a memory bank of experiences (backstories) for the characters to invest their performance with.
So did exploring your personal experience turn out to be cathartic?
It has been a cathartic experience because my father plays one of the characters, the father. So in many ways, it was an interesting experience… But the catharsis is a little over-hyped. I can’t say it changed me completely but I was able to understand everything much better. If that’s being at peace, yes, it has been cathartic. But it hasn’t been a huge emotional curve. The writing experience, penning it down, thinking about everything… proved to be much more interesting than making the film.
Not sure how appropriate this question is, but you also made peace and roped in your ex-wife Namrata Rao to edit the film. How did that go?
Nobody could understand the film more than she could. I knew I could go back to her and we worked closely on it. She knows the milieu, she knows the world, the characters, because she’s lived in Delhi. She was a boon... She helped turn it around in a way that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
So basically you had one of the best directors backing you, the biggest banner producing it, one of the top editors editing it and now Guneet selling it.
It all sounds hunky dory from what you are saying, but it was sensitive and tricky material. The early period of writing was pretty difficult. I was a young writer who had a weird story, an anti-establishment story that takes on one of the holy grails of Indian cinema — the family. First, I was on my own. Then I convinced Sharat to write it. We spent 18 months and got into the NFDC Screenwriters Lab. The script got some weight behind it.
I had pitched something else to Dibakar when he was making Shanghai and he didn’t like it. He had asked me to write something more honest. When he read Titli , he told me: What I told you a year and a half ago has worked. The story is universal and yet personal. It is a really difficult film to make and sensitive films like this get lost during release. He said, let’s get a studio, so it comes out right. But we have to make it with our limited resource ethos... A small indie film is a beast of its own. We shot in Delhi in peak summer in a start-to-finish schedule and it was both physically and emotionally sapping… four or five days before the end of shoot, I wanted to run away.
Even the critically acclaimed Ship of Theseus didn’t quite manage to set the box office on fire. What expectations do you have from Titli ?
As filmmakers, we have to realise that cinema is a commercial art form. Certain films have a larger audience and there are others with a limited audience. I started out by actively taking the pressure off myself by asking Dibakar how much to make it in. We cut out the toys — no track, trolley, steadicam. I’m curious to see how it’s received.
What does the Cannes selection mean for the prospects of the film?
I’m too much in the middle of it, doing the sound mix, getting it made as we speak… So I don’t know what it means. A biggish audience is going to see it for the first time and I can’t wait to see the reactions.
