For over five decades, Mahesh Bhatt has worn many hats — filmmaker, producer, mentor and one of Hindi cinema’s most fearless storytellers. As he turns producer for the play Wo Subah Hum Hi Se Aayegi, the filmmaker reflects on theatre feeling more truthful than cinema today, the need for artistes to resist playing safe, and Sadak 2 being his final directorial.

For a filmmaker who built his career on emotionally raw cinema, it is perhaps fitting that Bhatt now finds himself gravitating towards theatre. Producing Wo Subah Hum Hi Se Aayegi has reignited his belief in what he calls storytelling in its purest form.

“Theatre is the mother of all storytelling. At this stage of my life, I find myself drawn more to essentials, to the bare bones of truth. Theatre strips away all the machinery. There are no retakes, no visual effects, no AI. All that remains is a naked, trembling encounter between the performer and the audience. In this age, information floods us like a tsunami and truth is slipping out of our fingers. Everything is curated. Even our so-called wounds are curated and varnished. Theatre is one place you need to go to when you’ve lost your path,” Bhatt says.

When asked if filmmakers today are playing it safe creatively in the age of algorithms and box office pressures, Bhatt, known for films such as Arth (1982), Saaransh (1984) Naam (1986) and Aashiqii (1990), disagrees. “We did have Main Vaapas Aaunga. It’s stunning. It’s an act of rebellion by the filmmaker. I may have stopped making movies, but the thirst to make stories that listen to the beat of the human heart still exists in the industry,” he shares.

He is careful to clarify that his criticism is not directed at a younger generation of filmmakers. Instead, he believes they are often pressurized into chasing immediate success. “One of the greatest challenges of these times is how to avoid massification. Most of the young filmmakers I see have enormous fire in them, but they want to be successful like yesterday! So, you cut yourself. You prune yourself. I am not cynical about young people. The audience has the latitude and the bandwidth to oscillate between different kinds of cinema. Yes, some films may not move the needle immediately. But there are movies that are judged by how they survive the passage of time. Time is the only critic,” he explains.

Bhatt recalls a remark by acclaimed Hollywood filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola that has stayed with him. “‘If art doesn’t have the audacity to take risks, then it is not art.’ There is an entrenched belief in the marketplace, which they hurl at you every hour, that only tentpole movies — films that cater to the lowest common denominator and testosterone — will work. They have their place. But they cannot be the only stories we tell. I would say that, having played on both sides, having oscillated between intensely personal movies and hardcore commercial films, I found success on both sides,” he mentions.

Despite a career spanning over five decades, Bhatt says he has no desire to dictate how history remembers him. Recalling a recent event in Delhi centred around a retrospective on Indian cinema, he says, “I was invited because the organizers felt I was a force that spoke to India in the ’80s and ’90s, and India spoke to me. Then you discover there was Mehboob Khan before you, Guru Dutt, and so many filmmakers before Independence. You realize you’re just another brick in the wall. You are not a monument. You’re lucky if you make certain films that connect with the hearts of the people living in your time. Some endure; some sink. We like to believe our work becomes monumental, but memory is the first casualty. Just as I choose how I remember people, they will choose how they remember me. And how the world chooses to remember me is their privilege,” he ends.

Filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia doesn't like playing by the rules. While his second feature film Daddy chronicles the life of gangster-turned-politician Arun Gawli, his narrative style, the filmmaker insists, is not borrowed from Bollywood. He admits that stories about people who live on the fringes of society excite him. Also, he is happy that the Hindi film industry has got a new lease of life thanks to the independent filmmakers, who introduce new styles of storytelling. Excerpts from our conversation with him...

Your debut feature film Miss Lovely was about the soft-porn industry in Mumbai, while Daddy tells the story of a gangster-turned-politician. Both the movies delve into the underbelly of the city. Are you particularly drawn to these narratives?
I am drawn to characters who live on the margins of society. I feel that I am on the margins of the industry and so, I like characters who don't belong and are outsiders. Be it a gangster like Gawli, a C-grade actor or a producer making something in the middle of nowhere - when they don't belong is when they are free. You see them for who they because they don't conform. I like characters who don't play by the rules.

You don't play by the rules either, when it comes to your style of filmmaking. Which section of the audience are you targetting with a biopic on a gangster like Arun Gawli?
I think of people I know when I think of the audience. That could be my driver, who knows about Gawli. Or, it could be a friend who is a cinephile. It could even be somebody who is really into Bollywood and watches every single release. I don't think you can make a film keeping box-office collections as the primary objective. People who make a film keeping that in mind often fail. I have never felt that anything I have made has lost money. When a producer says, 'Get me a star and I will give you the money to make the film', it still doesn't guarantee box-office success. Films should engage emotionally and can't be made with a calculator. So, my logic is you are better off with me because you will make a cheaper film and get back your returns faster.

You also don't want to adhere to the norms of filmmaking that are prevalent in Bollywood and yet, you are working with a mainstream actor like Arjun Rampal. Isn't that contradictory? Then, how would you slot a film like Daddy?
My films are difficult to slot. Miss Lovely went to the Cannes Film Festival, so technically, it was an art-house movie though the narrative was about the B-grade film industry. My first documentary was about call-centre about call-centre employees, but it was shot like a sci-fi movie. I take to these hybrid forms. I don't want to be slotted as a Bollywood director, an art-house director or an independent director. The best response I got for the Daddy trailer was, 'There is so much of you in this'. I take that as a huge compliment because I can retain 'me' in my films. Arjun knew what he was getting into, as we had shot a commercial together. I don't mince my words. I find filmmaking in Bollywood to be plain lazy. The industry assumes that since everybody is used to a certain format, one can continue doing that. While working on Daddy, my question to Arjun was, 'Will I have the freedom to direct it the way I want and will you back me up?' I told him that if he wants to protect this project and doesn't want to get typecast again, he needs to co-produce the film. I have a clear image about how a space, environment or a city looks. When you are making a movie like Daddy, you know that it has to be shot in central Mumbai. If I am making a film on Arun Gawli, I can't have him wearing branded clothes. Arjun agreed with me. It's not a normal gangster movie from Bollywood. I wanted to shoot with a 27-year old French Canadian female director of photography had, who never shot in India before. I was convinced that she was right for the movie. These decisions would have had other producer balking. Filmmaking is not my bread and butter, I do commercials for that. When I am making a film, I want it to be my take.



Though you don't want to be slotted, your films are essentially seen as off-beat. How do you respond to the mainstream industry calling independent films pretentious?
Well, it's an invalidated statement for me. Independent cinema is the reason why Bollywood has become more interesting, it was dying otherwise. An actor like Nawazuddin Siddiqui has infused new life into Bollywood. Many of the current directors have also come from the independent space. There is a certain synergy between the two spaces, it's not a case of one versus the other. Christopher Nolan's first project was a black and white film, which premiered at Sundance. He is now making the Batman series; he is mainstream Hollywood now.

Where do you go from here? Clearly, you won't be helming a Bollywood fantasy drama anytime soon?
The concept of Bollywood itself is undergoing change. I hated the films of the 1990s not because they were bad films, but because they didn't allow me to make the kind of films that I wanted to make. But times are slowly changing and even the most traditional producer might call you today and say, 'I want something different'.

Ram Gopal Varma is like the 'Godfather' of the gangster sagas in Hindi cinema. What is your take on his style of filmmaking when it comes to this particular genre?
I am not even a fan of The Godfather or Ram Gopal Varma. I prefer the Italian mafia films from the 1970s, which is what Francis Ford Coppola ripped off. We are obsessed with The Godfather, and I have never understood why because that's not the only film made in that genre. Satya was an interesting film because the environment and the actors were real and that was very refreshing. That is closer to the kind of cinema I love. Though it's very filmy, it was radical in what it did for the genre within the paradigms of Hindi cinema.

When Vishal Bhardwaj and Mira Nair set out to work on a Broadway adaptation of her 2001 release Monsoon Wedding, little did Vishal know that this experience will finally lead him to start writing plays ­ something that has been in the pipeline for long, especially after he directed the opera A Flowering Tree, which premiered in Paris in 2014. Vishal tells us that composing for the musical, that is currently running housefull at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California, was more liberating than composing for a film.

THEATRE HAS INSPIRED ME TO WRITE MORE PLAYS'
Sharing with us his theatre experience, Vishal says, “Even before directing the opera, I had written lyrics for a play by Naseeruddin Shah in Mumbai. I have done backstage work at the National School of Drama too, when my friends used to work there, so I was acquainted with theatre. But I didn't know the joy of doing theatre until I worked on this musical.“

Vishal says the experience was different from that of making films. “When I directed an opera, I realised the difference between theatre and films. In theatre, you have limited space to create a scene, so one has to be more creative and imaginative. The theatre audience is more accepting and they believe in what you put out there. You also get more liberty to express yourself in theatre than in films. After doing an opera, mera bahut man tha ki main aage bhi stage direction karun. After doing the Monsoon Wedding musical, I feel that more strongly. I also want to write plays. There are so many stories, social, political issues and subjects on which you can't make films. Making films on such topics puts you under a lot of pressure, you need big money and a star to justify that money. All these ideas come to me when I am out of Mumbai, but when I go back to Mumbai, I get busy with the usual things. But this time, I am making a conscious effort to work on it.“


'COMPOSING MUSIC FOR BROADWAY WAS MORE LIBERATING THAN COMPOSING FOR MY OWN FILMS'
Vishal composed around 40 songs for the musical, of which 21 are part of the final production. He tells us that working with Mira, “not as a composer, but as a partner to the musical“, was a great experience. “It was a great experience working with Mira and the medium is new for both of us. We became good friends while exploring it together. In our industry, we do not make musicals like Chicago. So as a composer, I got a chance to do something which I was not doing even in my films, so it was great fun. When we create music for Bollywood films, there is so much pressure to create hit songs ­ they should be popular and hit irrespective of the film. It doesn't matter if the song fits the story or not, it should just work with the audience. That sometimes deviates you from real music. You feel much more liberated when working on a musical.“

About how he adapted to writing music for English lyrics, Vishal says, “Sometimes, when I was composing, the lyricist, Susan Birkenhead, who is also a senior poet, would write an English poem, then I would change my music's expression as per those lyrics. Initially it was difficult for me as I had not composed for English lyrics, but as I got the hang of it, my Indian musical expression combined with English lyrics, creating an unique experience. Gale ki harkatein Indian hai, par language English hai. It had the risk of sounding funny, so I had to be very careful. Also, whenever there was an emotional situation or a conflict in the story, we had to musicalize it, and that was very interesting. In the Broadway language, a script is called a book, so whenever there were two pages of dialogues in the book, we needed a song. We also wrote a song to explain Shefali Shah's character in the film, who was subject to abuse in her childhood. This is the kind of music you don't usually get to make.“

Vishal adds, “I was not working as a director after a long time. Usually the director has the last ally the director has the last word, and here I was not the director, woh bhi bada maza aaya mujhe, I got to observe another director. I also now know what people talk about backstage (laughs). The other good thing of a Broadway musical is that the author has the same powers as the director, which is rare. So, there are three authors for a musical ­ lyricist, composer and the book writer, and they have the equal amount of say, power and creative liberty. This was actually very exciting to me that I am not a hired person, I am a partner to the project.“

Vishal says the only experience that comes close to this was composing Bismil from Haider. “I have been saying this that I became a director so that I can employ myself as a composer, jis tarah ke gaane mai banana chah raha tha woh kahin nahi thay. Jaise Haider ka woh gaana hai Bismil Bismil, us tarah ka situation milna impossible hai kisi film mein. That song has the feel of a Broadway musical, where a song explains the story, the plot,“ says Vishal.

'WE WANT TO BRING THE MONSOON WEDDING MUSICAL TO INDIA'
Before a musical hits Broadway, it is staged at another high-end venue, so that improvisations can be made to it. During its run at Berkley, Vishal had a special guest, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, who wanted to come and watch the Musical. “He lives in California, where the Berkeley Repertoire theatre is. Berkeley is most prestigious in California and I got a mail that it has broken all records. Francis Coppola contacted the theatre and watched the musical and he loved it. I have a prior connection with him ­ 10 years back, he had to shoot something in Mumbai, we have a common friend and he contacted me. We (his company) shot for him since he was unable to come to Mumbai, so when I met him I told him that we had worked together. He was very happy after watching the musical and said, 'Bring more Indianness to America, this is so unique to Americans.' He also gave some suggestions to Mira and told her that something like Monsoon Wedding is an unseen and unheard scenario in America, so do it as much as possible,“ Vishal tells us. After the musical hits Broadway , the plan is to bring it to India. “We want to create this musical in Hindi and everything will be live on stage, something that the audience here hasn't seen in musicals, it is usually recorded music.“

Richa Chadha, one of the international jury members at the ongoing 15th Marrakech International Film Festival, took time off judging duties to strike up a conversation with fellow panellist Francis Ford Coppola. “The Godfather is a cult film even in India,“ she gushed to him. She also made sure to tell Bill Murray that Ghostbusters was one of her favourite movies as a kid. Meanwhile, another Coppola fan, Anurag Kashyap, was kicked about bumping into Murray as well. “He's the funniest man alive,“ the filmmaker exclaimed.

Richa is seen above with fellow jury (left to right) Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Sami Bouajila (France), Naomi Kawase (Japan), Anton Corbijn (Belgium), Francis Ford Coppola (America), Olga Kurylenko (Ukraine), Sergio Castellitto (Italy) and Amal Ayouch (Morocco) at the festival's opening ceremony on December 4