“Dhur,
ora abar audience naki, audience toh amra….Dekhechho tomaay je tweet-gulo
korechhe taate kirawm banan bhool!” (You
call them your audience! Have you noticed their tweets? They can’t even spell
right in English! Mind you, it’s us who are THE audience you can call your own.)
His
core audience is this possessive about his work! And he probably realized it in
this fashion only after his last release Zulfiqar (October 2016) – a double
adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caeser and Anthony and Cleopatra
into an unabashed mainstream movie – his first full-fledged attempt to mainstream
cinema by his own admission.
The above is a glimpse of the candour with which the director spoke in this recent chat show.
Right
from the day Sujoy Prosad Chatterjee, a well-known performing artist,
conceptualiser and director of refined and innovative cultural productions,
posted on his Facebook profile that the last edition of his live talk show
‘Conversations’ in 2016 would feature director Srijit Mukherjee as the guest,
requests kept on pouring on his timeline for blocking seats. I know Sujoy for a
long time as I’ve organized shows directed, anchored and performed by him, and
I was aware of his live talk show for a long time. So, I wasted no time to
confirm my presence.
Conversations,
as Sujoy says, is the only live talk show in Kolkata.
I
walked in at The Palms, the multicuisine restaurant on Southern Avenue, the
venue, well in time around mid-December. Someone in a black shirt walked in
alone just ahead of me. I noticed that it was Srijit.
The
medium-sized banquet kept filling steadily and as Sujoy took the mike just past
7.30, not only the seats were full, but many were standing at the rear.
Conversations
started on the most speculated topic about Srijit at this point of time – his
Mumbai stint – Has he shifted base to Mumbai for greener pastures? Will he not
come back?
Srijit
clarified that he has not shifted base at all and has no intention of doing so now.
He shared that the first time he went to Mumbai was when he was offered to do a
Hindi remake of his niche film Hemlock Society – a black comedy. It did
not work out as the actor who would play the protagonist suggested a few
changes in the script. Since then it has been a wait for the most successful
director of Bangla cinema of the present times to make the first Hindi film on
own creative terms. And Rajkahini, which made Mahesh Bhatt ecstatic,
gave him the right opportunity. As it is well known, its remake is under
production in Hindi as Begum Jaan with Vidya Balan in the titular role
under the banner of Mukesh Bhatt and Mahesh Bhatt. Srijit added, the character of
Begum Jaan was originally written for Vidya, which explains the abundance of Hindi
lines said by the character played by Rituparna Sengupta in Rajkahini.
I
was aware that this was not the first time Srijit’s film was being remade in
another language. The one before Rajkahini, and the first, was Hemlock
Society in Marathi. The director informed that it was named Welcome
Zindagi.
The
director revealed that he had to shoot Begum Jaan on a shoestring budget
compared to Hindi cinema. He, in fact, has always had to work within a tight
budget in his seven-year-long directorial career (Rajkahini is known as
a prime example) and has learnt to live with it. To be more precise, he added,
except for the cost of cast, the Hindi version wasn’t much ahead of the Bangla
original in terms of budget. Then the film suffered huge adversities in the
making (again, a fate of some of Srijit’s films). The director of photography
quit the unit days before the first schedule and the set of the haveli where
most of the film happens, erected in Jharkhand, was devastated by strom. To put
it in perspective the director quipped, “It was resemblant of what we see of
the puja pandal of Mudiali during its making in the month of August”. The shoot
for a day had a plan A and a plan B depending on real time condition of the
shooting zone. The cast and crew went through immense hardship through the
shooting and the director saluted the spirit of Vidya in pulling it off.
Srijit
informed that talks are on to remake Hemlock Society and Chotushkone (his
immensely successful thriller) in Hindi. He is also researching on Noti
Bonodini for a film on this legendary theatre actress from Kolkata.
Around
this time, Sujoy, who was steering the conversation deftly, turned to the
audience and invited questions. Someone asked Srijit whether he would be
casting directors as some of the central characters in the Chotushkone
remake, to which Srijit informed that things were different in Mumbai. Here in
Bengali cinema, also in Marathi and Malayalam cinema, directors are revered
like star actors, while in Mumbai it is a star-driven system. So it won’t
generate as much of curiosity as it did when the famous directors Aparna Sen
and Gautam Ghosh played the protagonists in Chotushkone. He was quick to
add that Sanjay Leela Bhansali was a bright exception.
He
talked of his experience of waching Sanjay Leela Bhansali, one of the friends
he had made in Mumbai, on the sets. The whole cast and crew is scared of him
and his obsession with details is the stuff legend is made of. It can so happen
that he spotted one of the many group dancers in the rear of the floor not doing
his/ her step right and as a result he will halt the take and do a re-take even
if it is the fourteenth one. Srijit named an A-list actress who appears
completely different when Sanjay is on the sets. Sanjay even shows dance steps his
heroine if he is not satisfied with the take. Many don’t know that Sanjay is
good at choreography and he directed the song sequences of 1942 : A Love
Story.
Sujoy
asked Srijit about the most hotly debated topic about him of the times – what
prompted him to make a hardcore mainstream flick like Zulfiqar (released
in October 2016). At the outset, Srijit admitted that Zulfiqar was
unlike his other films and it didn’t work at a critical acclaim level and it
evoked extremely polarized reactions. Many people from his core audience had
problems accepting that he had made a mainstream movie. But the director set
the record straight saying that he really wanted to have a shot at mainstream cinema.
Elaborating
on the audience reactions to Zulfiqar, the director disclosed that there
was a sharp divide between his core audience and the new audience he got with
the film (like those in small centres like Baruipur and Seoraphuli). In the age
of social media, everything is open to public. So the tweets and Facebook posts
praising the film were noticed by his core audience members many of who were
unhappy that the film was attracting such quality of audience. Srijit quoted a
representative remark to show how strongly dismissive a section of his core audience
was of this new audience –“Dhur, ora abar audience naki, audience toh amra….Dekhechho
tomaay je tweet-gulo korechhe taate kirawm banan bhool!” (You call them
your audience! Have you noticed their tweets? They can’t even spell right in
English! It’s us who are the audience for you.). The director, however, made it a point to acknowledge in the show that he owned his new audience just as he owned his core audience.
The
director urged the audience in the show to let him make his kind of cinema. “Please
don’t box me, let me be”, said he.
Since he now has a body of work built
since 2010, Sujoy asked him to pick his favourites. Srijit stated that it was
like picking his favourite children, however, if it had to be done, it would be
Jaatishwar, Hemlock Society, Baishe Shrabon, Chotushkone and Rajkahini.
The conversation was at the last lap. Sujoy
invited questions from the audience and many pitched in. Noted film critic and
journalist Shoma A Chatterjee attended the show and she shared her honest view
on Srijit that he could do much better. She added that directors shouldn’t act
as protagonist in their own films as that runs the risk of narcissism. Srijit
gracefully accepted this and revealed a piece of information for the first time
– When he was making Autograph (his debut
film), Shoma wrote a wrong email to him with a word of encouragement. She narrated
her story of struggle in it. Srijit acknowledged that it was inspirational to
him.
Post event, the director was surrounded
for photographs, selfies and more questions which seemed endless and showed the
stardom he enjoys in his city.
There was some refreshment for the
audience post-show from The Palms. I liked the succulent and done-to-perfection
chicken kebabs and the fried vegetable wontons.
Finally, one line for the host - It was
such a delightful and insightful conversation with a sprinkle of wit and humour
(by both the host and the guest) because of the excellent conversationist Sujoy
Prosad Chatterjee. I am looking forward to the next season of Conversations.
#TollyDiaries #livetalkshow
#conversation #SrijitMukherjee #Cinema #BengaliCinema
