I can offer an intelligent, cerebral reply to your query but it won’t be a valid answer,” says director Imtiaz Ali, on being quizzed about his penchant for making romantic films — from Socha Na Tha to Jab We Met , from Love Aaj Kal to Rockstar . He is not predisposed towards them, he claims, but these stories just come to him subconsciously. “It’s not in my control, it’s instinctive.
Even before I became a filmmaker I was telling stories about men and women,” he says. In fact, he admits being confused about the word 'love' itself. “I don’t know what feeling to categorise as love,” he admits. He understands the desire to be with a woman, to be attracted to her, to want to be with her, to get intimate with her and to take care of her. “But the dictionary meaning of love is something I can’t fathom,” he says disarmingly. Perhaps, it’s the inability to arrive at an explanation, this lack of knowledge that makes him constantly probe love in cinema.
We meet him on Diwali evening when his latest love story, Tamasha , starring Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor, is just a couple of weeks away from release. He is distracted, not just by the last-minute promotional work and the festivities around him, but also by his daughter’s eleventh birthday. Plus, it's the fourth year of one of his other babies — Rockstar — and he is tracking the celebrations online.
“There’s an amazing response to it now than when the film was released. There have been so many fictitious stories doing the rounds about the hero, Jordan and about how he was spotted at xyz place,” he says while peering deep into his laptop. For him, it is a reaffirming feeling that films are not transient, that they are not about grand openings and immediate success, but can be of permanent value for years to come.
Not only does contemporary Bollywood’s most romantic director (granddaddy of romance as Ranbir recently called him) shrug off the title, he claims that he doesn’t even like watching romantic films. “I like films that are strange, that are set somewhere out there in space, placed in geographical areas that are unique or show me even a familiar place with an unfamiliar view. They should take me somewhere, show me something,” he says.
Imtiaz likes relationships in films but the more unusual ones. Pester the filmmaker to name one romantic film after his heart and Shyam Benegal’s Junoon comes as a prompt answer followed a while later by Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient. He may have liked Wong Kar Wai’s romantic bible, In The Mood For Love , but it’s the girl’s relationship with the cop in Chungking Express that reaches out to him more. More favourite movies follow — Map Of The Human Heart and a Russian film called Prisoner Of The Mountain 'set in an outlandish village in Chechnya'. “It was almost like visiting the place. I like discovering a place through cinema,” he says. Perhaps a reason why journeys are the leitmotif of his films. They are central to his own life too.
“A journey is a reorienting experience. You are not the same as you are the rest of the time,” he says. And it’s not just all about the geographical journey. The protagonists of an Imtiaz film are perennially on a metaphorical trip — a journey inwards, a journey to love. “But isn’t life like that? Nothing in the world is static. There is a constant transformation,” says Imtiaz, again moving away from the overwhelming love question. We pull him back to it.
The journey to love in his films is an inner one, about men and women fighting their inner demons than fobbing off societal pressures to fall in love. “The world has changed. There are no Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar any more,” he says. “Noone impedes love. The biggest impediments to love are inner alone,” he says.
In fact, his film Love Aaj Kal had a discussion between the old order and the new. If the protagonist from the past was fixated on only one woman to fight for in love the guy from the present is confused because of the sheer choice. He has to make up his mind about his woman.
He is not alone. Most men in the 'Imtiaz world' are confused and callow in their relationships. He attributes it to life. “Women are more evolved, more in command and know what they want. They are smarter and have moved much faster,” he says.
Tamasha is a continuation of these love debates and ties many of the themes of his previous films together. “The title explains it. At one level, it is a spectacle. It has the passion and scale,” says Imtiaz. Yet, it also a tender journey within. “It is about how your innermost, intimate feelings get amplified at the biggest stage of your life,” he says. The film also comes with the tagline 'Why always the same story', a cheeky reference, perhaps, to the critique that all his films essentially follow the same template. Imtiaz claims it’s not about the criticism but about the theme of the film itself — the monotony of life, of getting caught in the rut of life and the urgency to change it. So will we see him change, doing something radically different in his next film, a mystery perhaps? “Could be,” he says, “I am as intrigued about it myself”.
namrata.joshi@thehindu. co.in
