It was all about compressing 16 hours in the Pan Am plane that was hijacked in September 1986 while on ground in Karachi to less than two hours on screen. Director Ram Madhvani explains the nitty-gritty of filmmaking as we begin asking him about the real/reel parallels in his forthcoming film, Neerja . Another quandary was dealing with the facts of the incident when there were many versions of truth staring back at him. “People in different sections of the plane, saw different things, had varied experiences,” he explains. During the research, they took all these truths into account. There was the logical truth: the timeline of the incident, the putting together of the chronology. Besides, there were the emotional, psychological truths and the truths of memory, how the incident acquired a different colour when recalled by the same people many years later. “Unlike Rashomon , it wasn’t just about different points of view but about varied spaces and experiences of a life altering incident within one person,” says Madhvani. The aim then was to distil things from all these experiences to make the audience feel what the passengers would have felt, to make them relive the experience.
However, ultimately, as the title suggests, the film is about Neerja Bhanot, the courageous flight attendant who gave up her life saving passengers. She hid passports so that their nationalities couldn’t be identified and, later, opened an emergency exit to let them out before she was shot dead herself by the terrorist-hijackers. She was awarded the Ashok Chakra posthumously. For Madhvani, Neerja is also a mother-daughter story and that of the trauma of the Bhanot family. Incidentally, Neerja’s mother, Rama, who supported the project all the way, passed away just two days before the release of the trailer.
Neerja marks a return to filmmaking for Madhvani, 14 years after his feature debut, Let’s Talk, a devastating portrait of a crumbling marriage, a film that made the audience live through the claustrophobia of a relationship on the verge of a breakdown. Was Let’s Talk ahead of its times? Would it have worked better today? Madhvani firmly believes in the notion of zeitgeist. “A film has to be part of, be one with the spirit of the times,” he says. According to him, there are four kinds of successes a film can achieve: personal, critical, popular and commercial. The big thing is to be able to tick all the four boxes. A rarity, but one which makes a film stand the test of time. Let’s Talk was a personal and critical success but could not deliver on the popular and commercial barometers.
And where was he in the interim between the two films? Well, he was extremely busy being one of India’s leading advertising professionals creating some of the most popular, award-winning commercials: Happydent White, LMN, Airtel Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai and Airtel Jo Tera hai Wo Mera Hai, among others.
In the meanwhile, he did try a hand at making films, wrote scripts (one was to star Amitabh Bachchan, another was with Kajol) but as he puts it “the universe didn’t conspire, the stars didn’t align.” According to him, being a filmmaker is like being a farmer. You plant the seed, water it but can’t ever be sure of a good crop. He also compares the journey of a director to climbing Mount Everest. You have to keep at it, keep carrying on. Like he did, to finally arrive at Neerja .
The aim as a filmmaker in Neerja remains the same as in Let’s Talk : to arrive at human truth. He cites Asghar Farhadi, Satyajit Ray, and Mike Leigh as his favourites whose films have drama and yet are never far from life. As he puts it he likes the “humanist plus visualist” school of cinema. To keep it as close to real, a 360-degree, four-camera set up was used and the 250-odd featured cast (chosen from 10,000) went through a workshop, those playing hijackers learnt Arabic, and Sonam (who plays Neerja) took air-hostess training. They all had back stories. “If they were supposed to board the plane at 2 am, they did board it at 2 am. The terrorists did enter at 6 am,” says Madhvani while sharing his process of shooting. The idea was also to zoom in on the interiority, “the inner whirrings, what goes on inside the head.”
Sonam Kapor was always his first choice and he’d have looked at somebody else only if she would have refused to play Neerja. “She also comes from theatre. Both of us talk the same language, like the same kind of cinema. She is also opinionated, has strong views on issues,” he says.
As the film nears release, Madhvani says that Neerja hasn’t just been a creative experience for him. It has also helped him learn about marketing and distribution of films, which date to release it on, what are the other films around it. “It’s been about how to land your film.” Safely, securely, and hopefully, successfully.
