A gypsy with his kaleidoscope entertains two children somewhere in the deserts of Rajasthan. With their heads huddled together at one end of the instrument, the children seem to be lost in the internal world of the box-like machine that has stickers of ’90s Bollywood stars on its surface. Bang opposite this photograph, spread like a twofold mural in the office of Vinod Chopra Pvt. ltd., is a quote by Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa, about the importance of collaboration in filmmaking.
The image and the quote, both of which he refers to during the interview, could bookend Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s idea of cinema, inspired by the cutting-edge innovations in world cinema but rooted in the basic joy of moving images.
“I come from a little village in Kashmir and I make movies that I enjoy. I am a common man and I believe that good cinema is for everybody,” he says while finishing his anda-roti before rushing to a nearby studio for the sound mixing of Wazir , his latest production. Starring Amitabh Bachchan and Farhan Akhtar, the film is written by Chopra and Abhijat Joshi. The latter is best known for being the writing partner of Rajkumar Hirani in Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006), 3 Idiots (2009) and PK (2014), all blockbusters. These films, which were produced by Chopra, were also rare instances where the big bucks earned were not a result of marketing gimmicks but the audience’s love.
A lot has been written about the Hirani-Joshi partnership or the Chopra-Hirani partnership, but little has been said about Joshi and Chopra, who go way back to Kareeb (1998). Under Chopra’s banner, the team of three has been able to create its own brand of cinema — quality mainstream films that cut across class and geography.
Joshi, who calls it Chopra’s three commandments, breaks down the formula. “First, you should make a movie for yourself; there will be at least one person who loves it. But one must entertain. You can have a complex theme but you have to present it in an entertaining way. Second, while you are entertaining, you can’t sell your soul. You can’t think in terms of what the people like and don’t like, it is impossible to second-guess like that,” he says. “Third, make every film as if it’s your last. You can’t make one film for money, thinking you’ll make your masterpiece in the next one. And make sure it recovers its money so that you can make your next.”
Joshi and Chopra have previously shared credits as screenwriters in the Chopra-directed Mission Kashmir (2000), Eklavya: The Royal Guard (2007) and the recent English film, Broken Horses (2015).
But Wazir dates back to a time even before the beginning of their friendship. Chopra wrote the first draft after he read about the scandalous murder case of the badminton star, Syed Modi. He revived it with Joshi; from 2000 to 2004, they developed it for a Hollywood film with Warner Brothers called Fifth Move starring Dustin Hoffman. But the project got shelved with the death of one of the producers. So, another two years were spent in fine-tuning the script for a Hindi film. Joshi and Chopra have written, rewritten and edited Wazir . The result, they promise, is a smooth 99-minute film about the unlikely friendship forged between a retired chess master (Bachchan) and an Anti-Terrorism Squad officer (Akhtar) over the game of chess.
“To me, it is like Rakesh Maria and Viswanathan Anand playing chess. We made it more operatic than the English one. In that sense it’s along the lines of Parinda ,” Chopra says, even as he acknowledges the huge tonal difference between the two films. While the 1989 cult gangster film starring Nana Patekar, Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff adhered to a style of melodrama that was relevant to the ‘80s, Wazir features the consistently understated Akhtar. It also has Bejoy Nambiar as the director, a stylish filmmaker known for his edgy, indie sensibilities. “I just saw a 20-minute track, the black and white portion of David [2013], and I said I want to work with this guy. The rest was rubbish but that portion was amazing,” says Chopra.
A towering figure in Hindi cinema, Chopra has made memorable films such as Khamosh (1985), Parinda, 1942: A Love Story (1994). Over the years, after a slew of not-so-successful films as a director, Chopra struck gold as a producer with a knack for backing the right people. For instance, he produced Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta (2005). But what paid off the most was championing an underdog film such as Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003).
“When I see talent, I just get drawn to it,” Chopra says. In 1994, when he saw A Shaft of Sunlight , a play about Hindu-Muslim conflict in post riot-hit Ahmedabad, in a theatre in Birmingham, he left his visiting card for the playwright. It became Joshi’s ticket to Bollywood. From a full-time professor of English at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, and a small-time playwright, Joshi has become one of the forces behind the most successful movies in Hindi film history.
Hirani and Joshi are known to take long walks in order to have a crack at their scripts. What is Chopra and Joshi’s writing process like? “I don’t know where he ends and I begin. The like-mindedness is critical. The most important thing is whether you are working with someone who’s on the same page,” says Chopra, who has also written the lyrics of one of the film’s songs, Tere Bin.
What the two also share is a common love for the language of Hindi cinema, with all its drama and songs. “I have a problem with the term commercial cinema. It’s not that I have some other film in my head and ending up making something else. This is the kind of cinema we love watching. The drama, laughter, and emotion are essential. I find it bizarre when they make a non-linear narrative for the sake of style,” says Joshi.
But after having spent over 30 years making movies, Chopra, of late, has shut himself out from the banality of Bollywood — quite literally; the windows of his office room are double-glassed. He only watches Hindi films that his wife and film critic Anupama Chopra recommends. “I watched Masaan and I enjoyed it. Sometimes I go back to the films of Ritwik Ghatak, my guru. Just yesterday I was watching Gladiator ,” says the Film and Television Institute of India graduate.
But he sounds disappointed by Hindi cinema’s refusal to evolve. “If you ask me what is terrible about Hindi films, it’s the mediocrity, the artificiality. It’s not real; you look at it and you ask yourself, what is it that you are watching? You can’t connect. At least I can’t.”
sankhayan.ghosh@thehindu.co.in
