For Uri: The Surgical Strike, Yami Gautam draws references from Jessica Chastain's performance in Zero Dark Thirty
Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; December 21, 2018)

Set to feature as an intelligence officer in Aditya Dhar's Uri: The Surgical Strike, Yami Gautam drew inspiration from American actor Jessica Chastain, who essayed a similar role in Zero Dark Thirty (2012).

The actor, who counts the Kathryn Bigelow-directed thriller — which chronicled the story of the CIA's decade-long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden — among her most revered films, tells mid-day, "Jessica was at her best in the movie. So, watching it and noticing the nuances that the role demands, [was a learning experience]. Physical factors, such as the voice and body language, matter when playing an intelligence officer. Her character was truly inspirational. Watching her helped me before I began shooting for Uri."

Based on the 2016 surgical strikes by the Indian Army in retaliation to the attacks by Pakistan on unarmed Indian military persons, the film features Vicky Kaushal in the lead. Gautam chopped off her long tresses to adopt a serious look, in keeping with her character.

Hiren Kotwani (BOMBAY TIMES; May 22, 2018)

Six years ago, Diana Penty won over audiences with her convincing portrayal of the shy and meek Meera in the Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone-starrer Cocktail. But much to everyone’s surprise, she didn’t do films back to back. Speculations were rife was that she was tying the knot with her diamond businessman beau Harsh Sagar. Finally, in 2016, she had her second release, Happy Bhag Jayegi (HBJ). Last year, she was seen in Lucknow Central. As the lissome lass gears up for her fourth cinema outing, Parmanu: The Story Of Pokhran, we catch up with her for a chat. Excerpts… 

Many newcomers would make the most of a hit debut. But you’ve had just three releases in five years...
There are multiple reasons. After Cocktail, I took my time trying to find my next project. I was unsure of which films I wanted to do. Also, I didn’t know how my life was going to change after my debut film. There were a few things that took me time to get used to. After that, I started reading scripts and came across HBJ. I thought it would be a nice challenge to break away from my earlier character of Meera. I wondered to myself if I could play Happy in HBJ who was the complete opposite of my real-life persona. She was a loud, moohfat girl. I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off. I saw it as a challenge. But director Mudassar Aziz had faith in me. It took me a while to find that second film which was perfect for me. After that, I signed a few more movies. Now, I’ve got my momentum (smiles).

Were you also being choosy?
I don’t wish to be too choosy. I want to do cinema that interests me, not something that I’m not passionate about. Why do it and waste other people’s time? Some people say a few films are good for visibility, but it’s better to do work that you genuinely believe in and are passionate enough to want to be a part of. I took that route which I’m 100 per cent sure of. I guess it’s a personal choice.

What appealed to you about Parmanu: The Story Of Pokhran?
The script is tight and pacy. It engrossed me so much that I was turning pages at a great speed. I thought that the thriller is so good at the script level, it would get only better on screen. I play a strong female character in the male-dominated film. I was getting an opportunity to tell people a chapter that changed our history. I’m a proud Indian and after reading the script, I knew I had to be a part of it.

Is your character based on any real-life person?
If you ask director Abhishek Sharma, how much is fact and how much is fiction, he’d tell you that he’s stuck to facts as much possible. However, most characters are fictitious due to security and other reasons. Telling anyone anything at this point would be giving away the spoilers.

What kind of prep did you have to do?
I have some action scenes in the movie. It took a while to prepare for them as I had to train in kickboxing. As for the other aspects, Abhishek had done so much research that he knew the subject inside out. The nuclear tests were classified and had to be conducted when the CIA was not watching. The common knowledge was that the tests took place and sanctions were imposed on India. I got to know a lot more during the making of the film. When I asked Abhishek for a reference point, he suggested I should watch movies like Zero Dark Thirty, as it was not only a great reference, but also had the woman playing a central character. I made a list of women playing action leads in other movies and observed their body language.

How was it working with John as an actor and a producer?
This was the first time I actually met him. He’s great to work with as an actor but I also realised that he’s one of the best out there as a producer, too. He knows exactly what he wants and will give his 200 per cent to everything. If he takes up a movie, he’ll make sure nothing passes till it’s absolutely right. As an actor, you feel you’re in safe hands. John has his credibility about being particular about content and you’re assured that it will be a quality product. He really knows what he is doing as a producer.

You have Happy Phir Bhaag Jayegi lined up next with Sonakshi Sinha. Why would you do a two-heroine sequel after you’ve been the leading lady of HBJ?
At the end of the day, it all boils down to the story. The plot demanded it. It’s bigger and better. It makes me feel proud that I’m passing the baton to Sonakshi. Mudassar has outdone himself. Very few family films are romcoms; Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi is a family comedy for the entire audience. I couldn’t stop laughing during the shoot.

What kind of films do you see yourself doing in the coming years? Do you have a career strategy?
For me, it’s all about the story. I feel that is the heart and soul of a film. Performance is important, yes; but you have to set the story in place for the performance to come into the picture. You can’t give the audience a mediocre film. The story has to be riveting for viewers to go and watch it in theatres.

When you weren’t doing films after Cocktail, reports were rife that you were getting married to your beau — diamond businessman, Harsh Sagar.
I never disappeared. People presumed and I never bothered to clarify as I didn’t pay attention to such news. When my second film released, they realised they were wrong. There is no point justifying because people will say whatever they want to.

But there were also rumours that you had broken up till you were spotted again with Harsh earlier this year.
I don’t see why we need to discuss that. I’m an extremely private person and so is he. I feel it’s not right to drag someone into this. What we do in our spare time is of no consequence. What I do in my workspace is what matters.

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?

Anshul Chaturvedi (BOMBAY TIMES; September 26, 2017)

Ankur Pathak (MUMBAI MIRROR; May 28, 2015)