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A director's special!

"Taxi No. 9211" is a statement on life, says its director Milan Luthria

SOME ADVICE Heartthrob John Abraham

It's time we stopped taking our women for granted. It's time we started giving them the space that is rightfully theirs. It's time to introspect and stop blaming each other or destiny for our misery. And it's time we realised all human beings are the same, so they have the same problems, and hence their answers are same too...

Quite a sermon, but that, in words, is what Milan Luthria, the director of Taxi No. 9211, is trying to convey subtly through his latest film. This film, feels Milan, is "an intelligent comedy, not a slapstick one." The man credited with Kachche Dhaage and Deewar is considered as one who makes only serious films. Therefore, "to break the clutter" he has tried his hand at comedy this time.

Director Milan Luthria have come up with an 'intelligent comedy' that subtly teaches how life should be lived

But the disciplinarian in him came out at the Pacific Mall, Kaushambi, where like a director on the sets, he would often interrupt his interview with "Silence!" and "Except media all are requested to leave the room!"

Then, he can't seem to help giving advice again. Advice that he has gained from constant travelling in India and abroad.

"I travel a lot. Whenever I meet people from any country, I find that everyone is the same, has the same set of problems and hence, I believe the answer is the same too. But I didn't try to preach it in the film. You would realise that I convey this through small happenings, which are not in your face. They emerge slowly. These are like layers, which get unveiled on their own as my characters, John Abraham and Nana Patekar go through certain situations. They start blaming each other but realise they themselves are the cause of their misery," says Milan, a liberal man who describes himself as one who hates men who ill-treat their women folk and think of them as doormats.

For fair gender

"It is time women kicked out such men from their lives. I have tried to tell women this through the film. In Sameera Reddy and Sonali Kulkarni's roles, I have placed women who don't take everything silently from their men. I have shown them as having their own opinion and being emotionally stronger than them, because they are," asserts Milan, whose Deewar on Prisoners of War languishing in Pakistan trying to escape, despite having a novel subject and treatment, didn't do well at the box office.

"The timing of the release was wrong. Actually those days (the film was released in May 2004), since India-Pakistan relations were getting better, people were becoming very optimistic on that score. But still most films on so-called patriotism or war were full of Pak-bashing. And people were tired of it. Hence they stopped going to theatres to watch those repetitive themes. And that is where Deewar suffered. People took it as another anti-Pak, war film. They couldn't understand that it was about an escape of POWs. My film didn't suffer because people didn't like it. It suffered because people didn't go to see it," he clarifies.

For now Milan would like to wait and watch the response of this film before going further.

RANA SIDDIQUI

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