Showing posts with label Basharat Peer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Basharat Peer. Show all posts
When I look back, I feel so fortunate that I could register my time with Haider-Vishal Bhardwaj
8:08 AM
Niharika Lal (BOMBAY TIMES; October 3, 2024)
Haider, based on Hamlet and set in 1995 during the peak of militancy in Kashmir, narrates the story of a family against the backdrop of politics. Talking about filming it in Kashmir, Vishal Bhardwaj says, “At that time, the average Kashmiri youth felt that Bollywood had cheated them, always portraying them as terrorists in phirans with AK-47s. So, they weren’t very cooperative. But later, when they saw the film, they called me.”
As the film completes 10 years, Vishal feels it was destined to be made. He says, “Now, when I look back, I feel so fortunate that I could register my time with Haider.”
As the film completes 10 years, we spoke to co-writer, director, composer, and producer Vishal Bhardwaj about the making of Haider, which has inspired numerous dissertations and research papers.
How Haider came into being
Vishal says, "I had been planning a Shakespeare trilogy and was working on Hamlet. Earlier, I had a different setting in mind for Hamlet. It was set in an espionage background. But when Gulzar Sahab read it, he mentioned that it felt like just another CIA movie with the tragedy of Hamlet in it. He was absolutely right. Then, simultaneously, things happened. I remember Rekha (Bhardwaj) reading Basharat’s book (Bashrat Peer's Curfewed Night) and her reaction to it. After that, I read the book and realized that, for a long time, I had also wanted to make a film about Kashmir. All these things came together. The structure became clear, we knew our characters, and of course, the history was there. It didn't take much time because there was so much clarity in our thoughts and in what we wanted to create."
Vishal Bhardwaj says that there are multiple scenes in the film that are not just memorable from the film, but from his entire career. He says, "And I'm not just talking about Shahid's monologue, which is very obvious. It was written for the gallery. But there are also 2-3 scenes between Tabu and Shahid, where they're in the Chinar Bagh before the interval, when they confront each other. Then there's a moment in the film when Shahid finally finds his father’s grave, and he breaks down. That scene was really... I had prepped Shahid, and we wanted to shoot with a telephoto lens, so the camera was really far. I told Shahid, 'Don't feel insecure because it's not a close-up. It's actually a very big close-up, and creatively, we want to shoot it with the tele-lens from very far'. He performed that scene so beautifully. He started crying, and we had two cameras capturing it. The way he was crying, I didn’t have the heart to shout cut. The camera was 400 meters away, and in the snow, I walked up to him, let him cry, and then hugged him, saying, 'It's cut, Shahid. It's done'."
Recalling another moment, he says, "We were shooting in the basement of a bungalow. So, -5°C felt like -15°C. Just as we were about to take the shot, Irrfan came to me and said, 'These lines are too few. Earlier, there were just 1-2 lines. I feel like saying more. I wish there was a poem written here'. I said, 'Okay, give me an hour, and I'll write a poem'. Everybody waited, and I wrote the poem right then and there. And then Irrfan performed it. My God, the way he performed it! When Shahid is leaving, and he recites that Faiz line, - Gulon mein rang bhare, baad-e-naubahaar chale, chale bhi aao ke gulshan ka karobaar chale. The way he says it - such a beautiful romantic couplet - and the way he performs it like a coded message in an espionage film. Irrfan ki kami na, every day in some way or the other, I feel the void of him not being here."
'I told Tabu that such parts are rarely written and that I'd be in pain all my life if she didn't play the role'
For casting, Vishal says, Tabu and Irrfan were both in his and Basharat's mind when they were writing those parts. He says, "But it took a long time to woo Tabu into that. She was very reluctant to play the mother. She rejected it twice, saying, 'No, I’m not going to play this. Why do you keep coming back to me? ' When I wrote the first draft and we started casting, after the rest of the cast was finalized, I went to her again, and she said, 'No, I’m not playing the mother.' The third time I went to her, I said, 'I'm coming to you because you're my friend; otherwise, I would have taken it on my ego. But you're my friend, and I want you to know that you're being blinded by the fact that you're playing a mother. Why don't you see it as Gertrude? See it as Gertrude's role, not Hamlet's mother'. I think that struck her. When she realized that, I told her that such parts are rarely written and that I'd be in pain all my life if she didn't play the role. And then she agreed to do it."
As for Irrfan, he says,"Uska toh jawab hi nahi tha. When he read the script, he said, 'This is such an important film to be made'."
One of the scenes in Haider was shot at a location where no film was shot in 30-35 years
The film was shot by cinematographer Pankaj Kumar, who was also the cinematographer for Ship of Theseus and Tumbbad. Vishal recalls, "At that time, Tumbbad hadn’t been released yet, and I was very impressed with the work on Ship Of Theseus. I then requested Anand Gandhi to show me some parts of Tumbbad, and when I saw it, I knew Pankaj was going to be my cameraman. I decided to shoot on location."
Haider’s ‘Hum hai, ya hum nahi’ monologue at Lal Chowk reminded people of Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ and introduced the Indian audience to ‘chutzpah’.
About the scene’s shoot, Vishal says, “At that time, Lal Chowk was a different zone, and we were shooting behind Lal Chowk in the Press Club. And we shot it! It was destined. This film was destined to be made.”
Vishal recalls that there were multiple such locations. He says, “We went and shot at the Zaina Kadal Bridge, and nobody had shot there in the last 30-35 years since militancy started. And we went there and shot with mainstream stars like Tabu, Shahid, and Irrfan.”'
Jhelum hai ya Khul Kabhi, uss tarah ke gaane - that's the pace of my soul. It’s actually a texture of me'
Vishal Bhardwaj says that music was very close to the script of the film. He says,"Uss tarah ke deep romantic gaane banana, ya uss pace ka gaana banana jis tarah ka gaana Jhelum hai ya Khul Kabhi, uss tarah ke gaane - that's the pace of my soul. My real self is songs like Khul Kabhi Toh or Paani Paani Re (from Maachis) - those kinds of songs. It’s actually a texture of me."
Jhelum
"Jhelum gaana mera bahut purana composition hai. It had such a deep connection. The day my father died, I had composed the song that morning. I was sitting with him, and in the afternoon, he passed away. That song had such an emotional bond with me that I didn’t have the courage to use that composition for 30 years. Then Haider, being a father-son story, felt like the right place to use it. I never told this to anyone. That’s why Jhelum remains a very, very special song to me."
Bismil Bismil
"We created this song like a mousetrap where Shahid performs a play within a play. I wanted to create our own Ek Hasina Thi, Ek Deewana Tha moment in my way for Hamlet (laughs). Karz had a similar situation where Rishi Kapoor performs in front of Simi Garewal about the murder. Sukhwinder ko bahut khula gaane ki aadat hai - he's used to improvising a lot - but I told him, 'Is gaane mein track pe gaana padega, this is like an opera. We are telling a story in it'. Itna khoobsurat Gulzar sahab ne likha hai. I had only given him the phrase Bismil bismil bulbule bismil, and from that, he wrote an entire epic. He’s a master."
'Bismil is so un-Bollywood like'
The song was choreographed by Sudesh Adhana, who is a professor of contemporary dance in Norway at Oslo University. Vishal Bhardwaj met him when he was directing an opera in Paris at the Châtelet Theatre called The Flowering Tree.
Vishal says, "In that opera, I used long, oversized puppets by Dadi Pudumjee, a great puppeteer, and he introduced me to Sudesh. I worked with them for two months continuously in Paris, and right after that, I started shooting Haider. I brought all the sensibilities I learned during the opera, working with Dadi Pudumjee and Sudesh. It was so unconventional, so un-Bollywood-like. I'm saying this and I belong to Bollywood. And Sudesh won a National Award for that choreography."
Vishal shares, "There was a guy who was president of (student union) Kashmir University. When we were shooting in the university, a lot of problems occurred - there was a lathi charge, bottles were thrown, pata nahi kya-kya hua. The CRPF had to take us out and safeguard us. It felt like a battle between students and cops. The next day, we were shooting at another location, and that guy was there. We were showing the court chamber, and there was a character of a stenographer, and he was playing that role. After the shoot, he came to me and said, 'I was in disguise and wanted to check what you were shooting! (laughs). I think we made a mistake. You're not making the kind of film people usually come here to make'. When the film released, he somehow found my number and apologized to me for half an hour."
Did You Know?
-In July, when Vishal attended a tourism conference in Kashmir, he was told that after the film, the Martand Sun Temple where Bismil was shot became a popular tourist attraction, which prompted the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) to remove encroachments from the site.
- Gulzar shot the song Tere Bina Zindagi Se Koi Shikwa Toh Nahi; at the same Martand Temple where Bismil was filmed.
- Khul Kabhi song from the film was Arijit Singh's first collaboration with Vishal Bhardwaj
Films on Osama’s killing have only shown the western perspective. We’re going to show the other side-Vishal Bhardwaj
7:47 AM
Adrian Levy, co-author of The Exile, and Vishal Bhardwaj, who is directing its screen adaptation, Junglee Pictures’ Abbottabad, elaborate what their ‘prequel to Zero Dark Thirty’ will be about
Anshul Chaturvedi (BOMBAY TIMES; November 23, 2017)
Adrian, I have heard Vishal’s side of how you and he came together for this project, but what brings you to this part of the world to make your book, The Exile, into a film? Wouldn’t it be more natural for it to be made out of the West?
Adrian: Well, nearly everything I’ve done, particularly the last four projects, have been based in South Asia. I’ve spent nearly 20 years writing, researching, travelling, and I’ve wanted to do something for a long time with Vishal. We talked about it earlier, but the timing was never right, and the project wasn’t right, because I had other ideas. And then finally, there came this chance. I don’t think this film can be made in America. It needs to be made in South Asia, and it needs to be made with people — writers, directors and producers — who understand the subject matter, the culture, of the story. Without that, it would be meaningless. We are in a golden age of TV right now; we’re in the age of brilliant drama. And these stories are told in their original languages, not in English, by filmmakers who understand that culture — Arabs, Palestinians, Columbians. And that’s the reason to make this here, to bring a multinational group of people who understand the culture, and make something extraordinary that comes out of India.
You said you wanted to work with Vishal for a while, but why would you want to work with Vishal?
Adrian: There are so many reasons. He’s quite a Renaissance Man. He’s brilliant with character, and I think he really gets to the combination of the character and social realism. Also, he is really good at understanding, bringing, cultures together. He was brilliant in finding local context in universal language.And I think we both share a love of detail, and a love of places. And detailing character, really, is going to matter in this. For example, this book is being really well received, and I think people in all kinds of countries, in the Arab world in particular, have enjoyed it. And the film has to cross the same threshold. It has to be seen as being cast correctly, the language has to be right, the settings have to be right, there’s so much to get right. It’s a huge challenge but I think Vishal’s up to it. Also, Vishal... he is moved by music, by art, by literature, by film. He’s surrounded by books and photographs. And I’m also passionate about these mediums, and I am trying new things all the time, and do them in ways that are different, as Vishal is.
How did you two first meet?
Vishal: I contacted him through my friend Basharat (Peer)...
That’s right, after The Meadow, you’ve mentioned that.
Adrian: We’ve been wanting to work for years, and just somehow, the pieces didn’t fall together for complicated reasons that happen in this world sometimes, and we couldn’t find the right time and the right project and the right lawyers (laughs)! I decided to come and have a cup of tea with someone I admire greatly, and I came and had a cup of tea, and we realised that there was a really good project we could work on together, that was not yet published, that was still burning a hole in Cathy’s (Cathy Scott-Clark, co-author) computer. And that’s how it came about. And actually this thing where we’re sitting today in Vishal’s office, we kind of wanted just to see how far we could go with it and how we could do it. And here we are!
When somebody like you invests 15-20 years in a story like this, which is not on behalf of a state system, what is your driving force? Are you like the free rebel searching for truth in this system, or do you have an ideological line when you begin to look for a story?
Adrian: I don’t have an ideological line. I like to understand what makes things work, and we’re operating at the moment, in an age where so much is fake, and so much is produced by vested interests, and so much of the media is owned, and so many books and films are owned. Like Zero Dark Thirty projected the views of The White House and the CIA, and didn’t tell the truth, and then re-patched it as truth. And the same thing is happening in India, in different guises, in newspapers, particularly in TV culture in India. And I think that reconstructing truth from multiple sources is the right thing to do right now. Go back to primary sources, find the truth. And if, for example, you’re in a situation where a disaster happens, like in The Seige, then find 10 of the 20 people in the room when the gunmen came, and ask all ten of them what happened, and then you get a truth that’s like a — we describe it as a smashed dinner plate. We put the plate back together — we look at everyone’s text messages, we look at who was texting who, readjust the timeline, we look at their cellphone photos, we go into all of the metadata to try and work out what the timeline is for an event and reconstruct it. And nearly always, these truths are much more disturbing than the ones that are packaged by the authorities when they sell the first account of the story.
Is the view that ‘states are enemies, not people’, popular as of today?
Adrian: I think we’re swimming against the tide, I think you know that. At the moment, communities, the world over, are divided by popularism. It happened in India, it happened in Britain, by the Brexit and immigration, happened in America with Donald Trump, happened in Hungary, it’s happening in Spain right now, in Catalonia. The world at the moment is feeling pulled in different directions. I’m not a populist, I do not believe in it. I believe in the goodness of people, in human values, and you have to find those things out by getting to know people.
Recently, when a judge made a comment on Talvar, he said, somebody acted in a ‘filmi’ manner while passing a judgment. So we have this perception that cinema is meant to be exaggerated, flamboyant, not necessarily very accurate. Is that a challenge which comes when you come to a cinematic medium to tell a story like this? As opposed to a documentary, which is seen as true-blue accurate, factual reportage?
Adrian: This film, like any other, will be as accurate as the writers and producers and directors want it to be, and given the fact that it’s based on source material that’s universally accepted and has been warmly received, I believe that it will not only be accurate but it will be insightful. We want to show human relationships there, and reduce it to a beating heart, a thrilling story, for a wide audience. It may not necessarily be attractive even to world events, but we’ll want to be drawn into these relationships. And I think Vishal can do that better than anyone, and I think this writing team and production team are conscious of this. When Cathy Scott-Clark will be on board — she has been through it on the inside, has worked for 20 years inside Islamist circles, and really represents very powerfully a female, a woman’s viewpoint. And I think Vishal’s sensitivities mean that we see many viewpoints in this film.
Vishal: And the new thing in this would be to see the other side of history. Whatever we have been seeing in films has been the western point of view. And this is going to be totally the opposite side’s point of view. History should have both points of view.
Adrian: I totally agree. It’s a cliché that history is told by the victors. We have only been given versions by basically all FBI and CIA sources. With the exception of two books — The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, and Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars — the rest are police procedurals, and we’re not making a police procedural. We’re doing what they did in The Wire. We’re going to go to Al Qaeda’s corner, and we’re gonna tell the story from the people from the corner up.
In the context of history being written by the victors, are there any victors in this battle so far? Has anybody won, decisively, any round?
Vishal: I think everybody has been a loser in this war. Everyone has lost something, no one has won, no one is the victorious side in this. So I don’t think anyone has won. Everyone has lost.
Adrian: And the truth has especially been lost. Every great conflict produces great films and books. For example, the Nazi era produced extraordinary cinema in Germany, in Russia, and in the rest of Europe. And great literature and great non-fiction. And the Russian Revolution did the same, and the war against fascism in Spain is just beginning to do the same with amazing work coming out of Spain. But that work has not happened from the Epoch of Terror. We’ve been living in an Epoch of Terror, an age caused by George W Bush in 2002. And yet where is the work that’s actually showing all sides of it?
Vishal: And I think not a single film has been made on the other person’s point of view. We have only seen the American point of view — how they found Osama, how they reached and how they destroyed the enemy. But we have not seen what the other side has been doing, and what has been happening on the other side.
Vishal, you faced this when you made Haider. With this too, do you foresee questions about patriotism, affiliation, loyalty, when you make a neutral movie?
Vishal: First thing is, I think the artist has no country or religion. An artist should go beyond religion and his country. He should, wherever he sees pain — and he doesn’t take sides — his work, his job is to underline the pain and the causes of the pain. Not taking sides but bringing it out as it is. This is what I think. In Haider also, I tried to do that. I didn’t take sides, and I was criticized for that.
Neutrality isn’t really respected today, is it?
Vishal: Yeah, because you have to take some side, and that’s where I think the artiste dies, if he takes a side. He has to be neutral and he has to go beyond his own self also.
Adrian: One thing that’s happening in this very politicized environment is that people are mistaking telling the truth, for taking a side — you know, you can be balanced and tell the truth. And I will not stand for that. I believe it’s our right to ask difficult questions of all kinds of people. When we knew 10 people in a boat tried to capture Mumbai, we found the mothers and fathers of those boys, and we asked them about the process of recruiting. It’s about getting into the deep truth.
Vishal, if you had to ask Adrian a question as a journalist, what would you ask him?
Vishal: I would ask him, tell me the secret of how to penetrate so deeply into these territories. It’s amazing. And I really envy this part of writing — the journalism.I really envy their courage and their commitment. So I would really like to know, how do they do that?
Why Kashmir-based Haider is bound to run into controversy
8:10 AM
DNA (July 31, 2014)
Vishal Bhardwaj is all set to release Haider — the
Shahid Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor starrer on October 2. Word is that the
desi version of Shakespeare’s longest, most performed play will
undoubtedly court controversy. Here’s the lowdown...
The setting: Haider is set in conflict-weary Kashmir in the 90s, It was a time when the conflict was at its
peak. Shahid plays a philosophy student from Kashmir, who returns and learns of his father’s death and of his mother’s new relationship with his uncle.
The problem: Kashmir was, and remains, a touchy subject to tackle. Everything from Roja to Mission Kashmir took a jab with varying levels of success. Haider includes graphic scenes of torture in Indian army camps and other human rights abuses by Indian officials. Haider’s father is slain by paramilitaries recruited by the Indian authorities and run by his uncle. The two spies Hamlet is wary of are played here by local men who are paid informants for police intelligence. Also, the militancy and separatist movement is still at a volatile stage and both Pakistan and India are sensitive to the issue. Showing Indian troops in a bad light is bound to cause a backlash from the armed forces and from right-wing organisations that routinely targets films of such a controversial nature, some even deeming it as being “against national interest”. Also the way the play is constructed, it is bound to arch eyebrows.
Write way: Haider has been written by Basharat Peer, a Kashmir-born author and journalist. Peer has said that he hopes the film would challenge previous mainstream cinema depictions about the Kashmir conflict. “Kashmiris have always been portrayed as crazy fanatics or Kashmir simply seen as a picturesque tourist destination. This is a very different view,” he said.
Everybody hurts: “What happened in Kashmir is a very human tragedy, but no one is talking about it. But once you talk of it, you are released from it. What I am saying is the truth. It should be like a balm on a wound,” said Bhardwaj, who is known for his hard-hitting films, in a newspaper interview.
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