Titas Chowdhury (HINDUSTAN TIMES; November 8, 2019)

The year 2018 was a year of “rebirth” for filmmaker Milap Milan Zaveri. His directorial outing, Satyameva Jayate (2018), brought the genre of massy entertainers back. His upcoming release, Marjaavaan, is the next step in that direction. With the Sidharth Malhotra starrer, Milap intends on paying another tribute to yesteryear filmmakers such as Mukul Anand, Subhash Ghai, Rajkumar Santoshi, Manmohan Desai and Prakash Mehra, whose films he has watched growing up. “After Mastizaade (2016), there was a complete lull. I was written off and people refused to even meet me. It was as if I had committed treason. I had to fight and convince people to prove that I can also make an angry film or a drama. I’m enjoying this phase a lot, where my films are all about action, drama, masala and dialogue baazi,” says Milap.

Ask him about the inspiration behind Riteish Deshmukh’s character of a devious dwarf in Marjaavaan and he says, “Years ago, I had heard that Subhash Ghai sir was doing a film with Amitabh Bachchan called Deva, which got shelved. Lilliput sir (M M Faruqi) was supposed to be the villain in the film. I thought that having a midget villain would be so unique!”

Talking about the women in Marjaavaan, he elaborates, “The women have a lot to do in Marjaavaan. I agree with the criticism that Satyameva Jayate had. Unfortunately, Aisha (Sharma) didn’t have a very strong part. But Marjaavaan has two very strong female protagonists — Tara Sutaria and Rakul Preet Singh. Tara is the heart of this film. Rakul in Marjaavaan is like Rekha in Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978) or Tabu in Jeet (1996). She has a very powerful role with dramatic dialogues and scenes.”

For Milap, repeating the success of Satyameva Jayate with Marjaavaan is even more significant because he wants to deliver a hit film for Sidharth. “He hasn’t given a successful film in almost five years. His last hit was Kapoor & Sons (2016), but it was an ensemble film. He hasn’t had a big opening. I sometimes wonder why he’s doing the films he does. Two of his biggest openers were Ek Villain (2014) and Brothers (2015), both of which were massy, action-oriented and had angry characters. I wanted to bring back that Sidharth to the screen,” Milap signs off.