Rajiv vijayakar speaks to one of the most offbeat talents of tinsel town, critically acclaimed director Anurag Kashyap, on the unconventional manner of his cinema, his mode of operation, and more.
You may like his brand of cinema or loathe it, but you cannot ignore Anurag Kashyap. The maverick who has outdone his mentor-of-sorts Ram Gopal Varma (Kashyap began his film career writing Varma's Satya 14 years ago) has been deified by the media since his debut film Paanch, banned by the censors for its unapologetic violence, and his first release, the critically-acclaimed Black Friday.
Kashyap has gone full steam ahead breaking Hindi cinema norms — his inspirations are clearly noir cinema and its searing and dark realism. Though Hanuman Returns, No Smoking and Gulaal did not really reach great heights, Dev D must easily be among the most hyped films in the last decade. As a producer alone, he has also made films like Aamir, Udaan and Shaitan. A darling of the media, he has also been a festival favourite, even as family audiences abhor his cinema and detractors point out with some evidence that not only is his grammar inspired by European and non-Hollywood cinema, but even the content is surreptitiously taken and Indianised from there.
Kashyap scoffs at the theory that his cinema puts off family audiences. "Pehli baat to yeh hai that I am not making cinema for what is called universal viewing. But the interesting part is that among adult members of a family, everyone watches my films on their own. So why can't they watch it together? It is because of this andar ki sharam. This is hypocrisy and I firmly believe that such fake values should be eliminated. My films have violence and expletives and conventionally outrageous content because that's what is all around us in our country and society. What is wrong in presenting stories that are real, about real people, depicting the reality around us? We have to reflect this in our cinema, spotlight it, expose it and not hide from the truth," he says.
Kashyap does not feel that he has the capacity to make mainstream masala films. "There is so much of life to show. I do not think I would like to make that kind of cinema," says the filmmaker, who has always been inspired by real-life incidents as well as foreign cinema — he has self-admittedly played a child abuser in I AM because he himself had been sexually abused as a child!
Parts of whole
Coming to his latest film, Gangs Of Wasseypur, the first part did well and its low budget assured a profit. At the success party, Kashyap had joked that he had never imagined one of his films making that kind of money. The second part of his story, Gangs Of Wasseypur 2, is set for release this month. Kashyap has a simple explanation for making the film in two parts. "I wanted to tell the entire story and not cut it or shorten it in any fashion. That's why I decided to make it in two parts, as one long film would not have been appreciated," he explains.
Is the film based on a real story? Not in a specific sense, he reveals, but it is a mirror of incidents that have happened in the regions shown in the film. "What happens in these parts of India is much worse than the violence people are criticising," he says.
The newbies in his films usually outnumber the known faces. How does he choose them? "They have to fit the characters. We always have auditions," he replies. And yet, Kashyap has an interestingly unusual reason for casting newcomers and lesser-known actors on the one hand, and stars on the other. "When my budgets are modest, which is most of the time, I prefer casting new or relatively lesser-known faces, as in Gangs Of Wasseypur or Shaitan. I also shoot mainly on real locations where crowds can be a problem. When a lot of the shoots are on sets, I am okay with stars. Sonakshi Sinha and Ranveer Singh are now doing my co-production Lootera, which is complete."
This brings us to another aspect of his cinema — how does he decide which films to direct from among his own productions, and which to only produce?
"I am always fired by the subject that I want to make. But the availability of time dictates what I direct, as also the passion of the person who has brought the script to me. When I decided to produce Udaan, I was hoping and wishing that Vikramaditya Motwane would ask me to direct the film, because I had time and I wanted to direct it. But he wanted to direct it too!" he laughs.
Do directors make good actors? After all, even Kashyap has done over half a dozen films in that capacity, notably Luck By Chance and Dhulia's Shagird, besides I AM. "Yes, directors always make for good actors. But I am quite a bad actor," he says self-deprecatingly as he adds, "Tigmanshu is superb. He is a trained actor too."
We finally come to his music, and his unusual use of it. "Oh, I love music and I want lots of it in my films. I think my films without their music would be meaningless! But as I said, I cannot use music in the conventional way as it is not in sync with my sensibilities. I cannot have my hero suddenly bursting into a song," Kashyap reveals.
The music of Gangs Of Wasseypur has also been a talking point. Khanwalkar, acting as a music curator, researched and presented music from regions the film focuses on."You cannot say that she is just a curator," Kashyap counters. "She went there and was in the area for months, picking up poetry, lyrics, music and even artistes. She offered a choice to me and I selected what was appropriate for my film. After that, we worked on the songs, and in most cases, we reworked, modified and re-composed them."
Kashyap is now directing Bombay Velvet with Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma and has also written the Rani Mukherji-film Aiyya, which will release later this year. After this, Kashyap will venture into a new terrain with Doga, a film based on an indigenous comic-strip superhero, with Kunal Kapoor in the lead.
Clearly, within his brand of cinema, Kashyap does aim for variety.