Rachana Dubey (BOMBAY TIMES; June 26, 2019)

While he has subject been creating content for decades now, it has taken director-writer Anubhav Sinha a film like Mulk to realise his true creative calling. Gearing up to release Article 15, the filmmaker talks to us about casting Ayushmann Khurrana as an intense police officer and braving controversies with socially-relevant films. Excerpts:

You’ve said that Ayushmann cast himself in this film. He’s never played a character that is so intense. Weren’t the two of you in talks for another film?
Yes, we met for another film. It was two weeks after Mulk (2018) released. He had seen my film and loved it. We both wanted to work with each other. When he met me, I told him about an intense relationship story, the kind he hadn’t done before. But by the time our meeting ended, he asked me if I had a socially-relevant subject. I told him about Kanpur Dehat (original title of Article 15) which I had pushed to the backburner because I didn’t know whom to cast in the lead. I also told him that I couldn’t envision him in it. However, he insisted on reading the script, and pursued me to cast him in it. When I looked up his pictures on the internet, I could only find happy-go-lucky photos, but when I saw him on the set, in the uniform, doing his scenes, I realised just how convinced he was about playing the role.

Did you ever feel that he took a while to step into such an intense, hard-hitting character, given that most of his work in the past demanded a fairly different mindset and approach?
Not at all, he never got rattled with any scene, no matter how difficult it was. Yes, he was slightly thrown-off one day, when I rewrote a lengthy scene overnight. He was ready on the set before I arrived and was taken aback when I told him about the change. I gave him just an hour to prepare. He was nervous when he came on the floor, but he just took five-seven minutes to ease into the scene.

You were asked to mute a word from the trailer of Article 15. After the film was passed by the CBFC with minor cuts and a U/A certificate, fringe groups are objecting to its release...
Unfortunately, today, if you deal with any subject other than a quintessential potboiler, you will face obstacles. The CBFC has to look at a film in keeping with the Cinematograph Act, 1952, penned at a time when no one could say where our society was headed. Things have changed so much since. While there have been minor changes in the Act, it still needs amendments. It states vague things like no religious sentiments should be hurt. No government since Independence, has empowered the CBFC with a strong law and order backing to ensure that if they clear a film, it gets to the theatre without any trouble. It’s a big hurdle. As for me, I faced difficulties getting Mulk cleared, but Article 15, despite being a sensitive subject, was cleared with just four cuts. Whatever was beeped out in the trailer has been retained.

Since the story revolves around a social issue, encountering objections is almost inevitable. Didn’t that occur to you while making the film?
No. I can’t think of making a statement and playing it safe. There have been so many opinion pieces commenting on the film, when the writers have not even watched it, yet. People are appreciating and criticising me for making the protagonist a Brahmin. My point is, how can they think that I support caste divide with a film that objects to the caste system? Ours is a diverse and difficult country. As filmmakers, we need to be patient while dealing with such problems. For those objecting to my film without seeing it, I’d just say, ‘Mera paigham mohabbat hai, jahan tak pahunche...’