The story of the moral
RAKESH MEHAR
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It's important for a film to have a message. But it won't reach anyone if you don't know how to carry it across through a well-told tale, says director Ashutosh Gowariker
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Photo: Sandeep Saxena
BEYOND STEREOTYPES Ashutosh Gowariker: `We need to break the perception foreigners have of Indian cinema as all song and dance'
Anyone who sees Ashutosh Gowariker nowadays can see that this is a confident man, secure in the knowledge of his recent successes Lagaan and Swades. From the relative anonymity of the days of Baazi, Izzat Ki Roti and Pehla Nasha, he has skyrocketed to stardom with his 2001 cricket epic and cemented his place at the top with his 2004 Shah Rukh-starrer Swades.
Appearing in Bangalore for a seminar on New Trends and New Age Film Makers at the media institute COMMITS, Ashutosh shared the stage with fellow directors Nagesh Kukunoor, who is just coming off his recent success Iqbal and Khalid Mohammed, known for his strong women protagonists.
For Ashutosh, the biggest new trend looming in the horizon is the shrinking of three-hour Indian films to 90 minutes minus the song and dance. "We need to break the conception foreigners have of Indian cinema as all song and dance," he says, while also defending film songs as an integral part of our film culture and not something we need to be apologetic about. The shrinkage of length, he adds, will allow filmmakers to access a lot more creative material that couldn't previously be converted into films because of the sheer enormity of three hours.
The more important need, he believes, is for exploration and experimentation in all genres of cinema. The difference between popular cinema of the West and India he finds most telling in the genre of children's films.
Lauding the recent animation feature Hanuman, he says: "I'm not proud of it: but my kids don't know much about Hanuman, but they know just about everything about Harry Potter." His desire is that his children are exposed to films that are wholly Indian.
His own journey through cinema has been filled with ups and downs. As an actor, he did modelling assignments for television ads, acting in films such as Holi and television serials such as C.I.D. When he made his first venture into direction, Pehla Nasha, he had naively believed that he would revolutionise Indian cinema and change the world through his film, he admits. When the film got washed out, his reaction was to rationalise that the audience "didn't understand" his film. He went on to make Baazi, which also failed. He finally realised that the problem lay with him. Revisiting Indian cinema through the ages, he found the direction to write his 2001 hit Lagaan. "Through that I also found myself," he adds.
He has since taken on the additional responsibility of producing his films, thus earning himself greater creative freedom. "When I pitched Lagaan to producers," he explains, "and told them that I needed British actors for it, their first reaction was to ask why I needed to go to London to find them when there were plenty of foreigners in Colaba. When I told them that I needed 10,000 people for the climax, they told me to use 2,000 people and use camera angles to make them seem like 10,000." The final product only came out because of Aamir Khan's support as producer, he says.
In his Swades, the hero Mohan Bhargav (Shah Rukh Khan) started off as an employee of a much smaller firm. But Ashutosh felt the film needed him to belong to NASA, and as producer he had the freedom to take his character there.
Swades, which has been lauded for its social relevance and references to developmental issues, he compares to a "sugar-coated pill". While accepting that the village in the movie was highly sanitised, he counters that if he had attempted to portray it realistically, it might not have attracted audiences, defeating the purpose by keeping them from hearing the message. For him, the message carries importance, but cannot be all. Telling the story lies at the heart of cinema, and one cannot make a film that is just trying to talk about a social issue without telling a story.
With his next period film, Akbar-Jodha, already on the cards, Ashutosh Gowariker is a man on a high. If Indian cinema is indeed on a new wave, here's one man who's riding on its crest.
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Entertainment
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
