When you make a film about filmmakers you admire, do you try and visually recreate the style? Old-school cuts, lighting techniques, and so on?
The film within the film, yes. My protagonist is shooting a film in my film, so in that film there is the visual of that time. But when I'm making a film, I'm not governed by that time. I'm not trying to make a film like the films of the 1950s. But what I'm trying to do is tell a 1950s story. So you take an idea like that, a people like that, and then you extend them.
A filmmaker of that time was governed by the morality. Guru Dutt could not cut inside the carriage in the last scene where Meena Kumari and he were leaving, and the eldest brother sees them from the balcony and obviously orders the killing of chhoti bahu (in Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam). There was supposedly a scene that they felt offended people, or made them lose sympathy for her. But I'm not governed by that morality. I'm going further inside. I can go inside the bedroom, talk about private lives in a way which is now.
Moralities aside, let's talk of the visuals. Were you tempted to try some of that style?
No, because you can't mimic it. You have to be a Guru Dutt to make a Guru Dutt film, right? It's like remaking Kaagaz Ke Phool. How can I remake Kaagaz Ke Phool, because it's a very trashy story? But it's made by a great, very talented filmmaker and sometimes he rises above it, making it a story of lament. And the idea of it works very well.
'Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam' is a song you remember by itself, but you put it in the context of the film and you don't know why it's there. Why is the Johnnie Walker character there? What about the protagonist's father-in-law and mother-in-law? And that wife, so cliched, so badly conceived actually. The central problem of the filmmaker... but in certain scenes, certain moments it rises above that.
Yes, you end up making all the concessions, which seem very minor...
Exactly, you make all the concessions because of the way it's done, because of the sheer visuals and sheer poetry. And it rises above that. And I'm not Guru Dutt, and it would be futile to try and mimic it. That's why I'm not trying to mimic anyone: it's impossible and it'd be very boring.
In the picture: A still from Kaagaz Ke Phool
Also Read: The man who couldn't digest failure
Advertisement
