Sit with Hitlist: Ab ki baar, Shoojit Sircar!

But yoursquore not like this as a personrdquo an assistant on the sets of Sardar Udham exclaimed to filmmaker Shoojit Sircar mdash observing him seated with two buckets full of fake blood getting constantly replenished on either side of his feetHe would dip into it with a mug splashing that blood to dry earth himself to get the colour right mdash all the while operating the camera filming the Jallianwala Bagh sequence in Sardar Udham 2021Itrsquos gory as hell But Sircar wanted to get April 13 1919 just right Martial law in Punjab Curfew in place No one allowed to help the injured and dead One man dealing with dead bodies after dead bodiesShoojit Sircar joins Hitlist editor Mayank Shekhar for the first inperson edition of Sit With Hitlist post the pandemicItrsquos a scene Sircar had been living with ever since he first visited the actual Jallianwala Bagh site in 1998 mdash much before hersquod even thought of becoming a filmmaker Hersquod been going back to that sequestered memorial park through a narrow passage to the entrance in Amritsar every year since Itrsquos a walk down from Golden TempleWatch the entire interview hereThis was his only chance to recreate what he believes was the turning point of Indiarsquos freedom movement mdash the massacre of thousands of people peacefully protesting the draconian Rowlatt Act that allowed the British government to incarcerate Indians without proper trial under the pretext of lsquonational securityrsquo ldquoIt gave birth to many unsung revolutionaries of which we only know about Bhagat Singh and now Sardar UdhamrdquoIt took Sircar four months to get the colour of blood right Real blood for shoots is usually imported They didnrsquot have the budgets Jallianwala Bagh is also kinda immortalised from Gandhi 1982 by Richard Attenborough who had resources to bring down train loads of people from Punjab to shoot the short scene in DelhiSircar had to shoot in Punjab itself to get the look of thousands of actorsextras right He hired locals Some of them were children trained in Gatka style of martial art Theyrsquod do freefalls and heavyduty acrobatics although theyrsquod never faced a camera beforeOn day one actor Vicky Kaushal was his usual enthusiastic self But as the shoot progressed with humans being carried like carcasses in wooden carts and the smell of fake blood and dust around the cast and crew started getting affectedOnce when the shooting had packed up for the day a young girl was still around that the assistants insisted they should shoot with anyway Sircar decided to casually pick the scene knowing they didnrsquot need more Soon as the girl started crying for her mother in the scene Kaushal began uncontrollably howling as well The girl was a little flummoxed They kept the camera rolling from a distance most of which made it to the final filmDeepika Padukone and Amitabh Bachchan in Piku 2015Every moment in the Jallianwala Bagh scene step by step Sircar says is mentioned in Hunter Commission and the Congress report besides survivor statements of ladies named Ratan Devi and Attar Kaur It lasts a lifetime in Sardar Udham ldquoI have not left any single shot in my edit room Everything is usedrdquoSome might dub this as an overindulgence of sorts It will remain etched as one of the most haunting sequences in Hindi cinema still Unsurprisingly we talk about it for a good portion in this conversation Only as a nod of sorts for the fact that Sircar filmed this one sequence over 21 days in PunjabSardar Udham is essentially a Londonbased period film for which Sircar extensively referenced series such as Peaky Blinders and The Crown to get the era rightSircar with Vicky Kaushal on set of Sardar UdhamAs for a wider inspiration while there is no direct connection Sircar calls Sardar Udham ldquoa tribute to Akira Kurosawarsquos relatively lesser known film The Hunters set in Siberia filmed as a JapaneseRussian collaborationrdquoWhich makes me segue into his film company Rising Sun Is that a reference to Japan ldquoWell we didnrsquot think about it My producer Ronnie Lahiri suggested Rising Sun It sounded positive I asked him to check if there is any other Rising Sun Films There wasnrsquot so went aheadrdquoI ask this because over a decade and half while the eclectic Sircar undoubtedly has belonged to commercial Bollywood he remains essentially an independent filmmaker which is an anomaly of sortsAnnu Kapoor and Ayushmann Khurrana in Vicky DonorThroughout he has teamed with the same producers Goabased Lahiri originally from Shillong and Biharborn Russian educated Sheel Kumar taking care of the finances Besides more or less the same crew of writers Shubhendu Bhattacharya Juhi Chaturvedi cinematographer Avik Mukhopadhyay editor Chandrashekhar Prajapati and the likeHe says ldquoBy independence you mean to do a film on your own terms Of course we compromise sometimes And I have been compromising as well But film after film I have reduced thatAlso Read Sit With Hitlist How not to be the lsquominimum guysrsquoCrafting your own path is a lesson I have learnt from the city Bombay itself and its film industry Otherwise nobody will let you be what you are mdash forcing on to you what works And in cinema there is nothing like lsquowhat worksrsquo mdash it is an expression You do what you are compelled to from the inside mdash what you feel like you do thatrdquoWhich explains how the money being thrown at him to script a sequel to Vicky Donor 2012 is pretty much the budget of an entire film mdash he doesnrsquot reveal the number mdash but he wonrsquot click that bait simply because Vicky Donor is behind him and hersquos ldquonot that filmmaker anymorerdquoThe auction is only natural given that a Rs 45 crore Vicky Donor mdash a sliceoflife comedy on sperm donation that even Sircar hadnrsquot imagined would capture an audience beyond those interested in quirky movies mdash picked up close to R80 crore at the boxoffice This equals lsquofamily audiencersquo in Bollywood speakDebutant Ayushmann Khurrana was the star Which also opened up a minor film industry for Khurrana headlining a series of comedies on similarly taboo subjects mdash balding old mother pregnant gay love etcWith Sircar these benefits can be a challenge ldquoI am actually very scared of the wrong audience and unnecessary hope I am openly telling you mdash with Gulabo Sitabo 2020 I faced so much of that I was doing a film with Amitabh Bachchan and Ayushmann Khurrana So people think it is Vicky Donor and Piku coming togetherI faced so much flak after Gulabo Sitabo came out mdash this film is so slow nothing happenshellip But that is what I had made I wasnrsquot thinking Vicky Donor and Piku in my head Donrsquot expect it Yet how do I convey that It is so difficult So sometimes wrong audiences can really harm your filmrdquoTo be fair Sircar has dabbled in multiple genres without getting overwhelmed by the success of his previous work In fact if you notice he consciously shifts from lighthearted to serious subjectstreatments mdash say a political thriller Madras Cafeacute after Vicky Donor a strikingly sombre October after Piku Itrsquos something he describes as mere coincidence Rather than an effort to alter his mind spaceShoojit Sircar wielding the camera during shootldquoA movie is not like a mask that you take off after itrsquos over and put on another It stays inside you forever I am Sardar Udham I strongly feel about it I strongly feel about greed in Gulabo Sitabo I feel for October because I have been in ICU for three months with my mother And I know exactly what happens being around a comatose patient I cannot just throw it awayrdquoSircar debuted as a feature filmmaker with Yahaan 2005 set in Kashmir about a local girl and an Army officer during the height of insurgencymilitancy One of the aspects that stood out in that film was its coolly lit bluish tint lending a surreal touch to the screen although the film was shot on actual locationsAlso Read Sit with Hitlist Farhan from the madding crowdI am wondering of this level of visual sophistry had much to do with his work in advertising which is how he first got into films Sircar says if anything his works are often more informed by documentary filmmaking which is also what he dabbled in for close to five years beforeBanita Sandhu and Varun Dhawan in October 2018Yahaan was also the debut feature film of Swedish cinematographer Jakob Ihre Whatrsquos Ihre best known now for Shooting the stunning HBO series Chernobyl Yup ldquoJakob was once in Delhi to shoot a documentary for BBC4 A friend of mine was the sound person for the film who introduced us Of course I knew of the Polish film school he was from which is really good I did a commercial with him which was also done on my own terms The ad was for toughened glassBut the film for around three minutes unheard of at the time was all about reflections With Yahaan I was wondering if I would get Kashmir right mdash I had done a documentary there and knew what CharariSharief or Habba Kadal Bridge will look likeI needed a different perspective The first thing Jakob told me when I took him to Kashmir is it looks like Bosnia which also had problems going on at the time In winters Kashmir like Bosnia is brown and silver Jakob got onboard and shot YahaanrdquoTheyrsquove been friends since The script of Yahaan ldquobounced like a ping pong ballrdquo between all the corporate studios in Mumbai until Sircar first went ahead with it himself with Jimmy Sheirgill and Minissha Lamba in the lead rolesAd films have also allowed Sircar financial independence and some flex to make only the features he wants It also turned him into a patron of the arts early on in the early rsquo90s while he worked in an amateur theatre group Act One in Delhi ldquoI was a mole from my theatre group in the advertising industry Irsquod make money from ads and whatever Irsquod earn Irsquod put into theatre That is what my job with the group was mdash you make the money bring it to us and we will do playsrdquoAct One had performers like Manoj Bajpayee Gajraj Rao Piyush Mishra among others who later moved to movies and Mumbai Sircar continued in advertising mitigating the struggle that involves in hindsight romanticised notions of stepping into showbiz city with few rupees in wallet friends with culinary benefits and sleepless nights in railway platforms Sircar has none of those heartbreaking stories of following a personal passionIn fact strangely enough for a Bengali the arts cinema and literature were totally external to his growing up years Football was his lifersquos primary goal something he actively pursues at 53 stillGraduating in commerce from Delhirsquos Bhagat Singh College Sircar was quite comfortably placed as an accountant in one of the cityrsquos top hotels Le Meridien Which is a longish walk down from the Capitalrsquos cultural district that houses National School of Drama and several theatre performance spacesAlmost like a turning point of a movie script a moment of epiphany as it were Sircarrsquos friend his writer now Shubhendu Bhattacharya asked him once to step out to watch a play after lunch during work hoursThat was Satyadev Dubeyrsquos production Andha Yug written by Dharamvir Bharti starring Naseeruddin Shah Amrish Puri Rohini Hattangadi He says something happened to him once he watched that 3 pm show There were no tickets available for the following 6 pm show but he bribed the guard to enter again By 9 pm when he walked back to his office he had ldquoturned into a zombierdquoFollowing week he watched Satyajit Rayrsquos Pather Panchali at India International Film Festival in Delhirsquos Siri Fort auditorium A film he had repeatedly slept through during growing up years The penny had dropped ldquoThen I started reading and watching with a different eyerdquo He joined theatre then ads thinking little of the debit and credit accounting of such a callWhich takes us back a little to the film October 2018 one of his most personal works since as he said it came from the experience of nursing his mother in an ICU ward But its setting mdash the full expanse with doors that demarcate the contrasting inside and outside world of a fivestar hotel is clearly from his time from Le MeridienldquoWhen writer Juhi bounced off the structure character and idea about how the film would be it clicked lsquoOkay hotel mdash I know hotel so I will go into thisrsquo I had no problem in understanding the hotel My art team said we will create it I said no you cannot create this It has to be realrdquoAs is the story mdash emotive seeping through the pores at every level Even if therersquos a touch and feel of Sircar in the lead character Dan the fact is if you rewind to when the film was being planned the last person yoursquore likely to imagine in the lead role is the boisterous Varun Dhawan mdash of lsquotera dhyan kidhar hai tera hero idhar hairsquo fame There has to be a story behind Dhawan breaching a likely mentalcasting block There isSircar recalls ldquoVarun had been calling to meet me for quite some time I live in Kolkata and would be in Mumbai for two days and leave so I wasnrsquot getting time Once when I had a flight to catch I saw his text ldquoDada when is your nextrdquo I told him that I was in town but leaving in a bitHe said his house was close by I asked him to quickly drop in He said hersquoll take a shower and come and that hersquod just woken up I told him nobody will see him lsquoJust walk in as you arersquoI still have his picture from that day mdash he was clumsy holding a bottle that fell He said lsquoSorry Dada sorryrsquo While talking he zoned out completely I donrsquot know what he was talking to me aboutAs an actor he wasnrsquot on my radar at all I looked at his torn jeans He said please donrsquot look there He just sat there said lsquoTheek hai Dadarsquo And left In the flight I kept thinking about him As I landed I called up writer Juhi and producer Ronnie This is what the clueless Dan is you know mdash he doesnrsquot know what hersquos doing saying where he ishelliprdquoThe unlearning of the Bollywood star started before shoot For script Sircar only shared the first half of the film For prep Sircar passed on a piece of meditation music to Dhawan and asked him to simply stare at a houseplant every morning with itldquoOn the first day we shot the filmrsquos last dayrsquos conversation with the girl mdash itrsquos an important scene I thought Irsquoll catch him raw the way I had caught him in the office that day He said lsquoDada I am not doing anything in the scenersquo We rolled the cameras in the rehearsal take and used it in the filmrdquoItrsquos a little like how Sircar got Ayushmann Khurrana into the infamous sperm donation scene in Vicky Donor Khurrana had to go to a private room to donate spermExcept there were no instructions on paper about what hersquos supposed to do There were CCTV cameras placed in the room Khurrana was clueless He got out of the room and said ldquoAise thodi hota hai What am I supposed to do this is not how it happensrdquo The cameras captured that actual lineIn Dhawanrsquos case of course the idea was to keep him slightly clueless all through the shoot instead mdash something the camera captures convincingly in OctoberAs for another unlikely casting the one that comes to mind is John Abraham Abraham incidentally won the National Award for Vicky Donormdashas the filmrsquos coproducer No knock on Abraham But he isnrsquot quite the first actor one might have in mind for Sircarrsquos reasonably intellectual political thriller Madras Cafeacute It was a deeply researched procedural on the plot to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi called ldquothe PMrdquo in the pictureSircar admits ldquoYou can say Madras Cafeacute was one film that I just quickly wanted to make By 2010 the entire Tamil group LTTE had been wiped off The assassination case was completely shutI just thought I must go ahead and make this before itrsquos too late I didnrsquot wait too long The research and script were quite good In terms of my craft around making the film I would do it completely differently now and with an absolutely fresh mind It could have been much more powerful Thatrsquos one film I would really want to go back and remakerdquoWhat would he do differently in particular ldquoOf course I will take real names of characters as I did with Sardar Udham Irsquoll go with a completely new set of cast There are many places where I have compromised in terms of dialogue Then there is the heroism part of the film My idea of heroism has changed from then and now For me heroism is not about being a hero type For me heroism is doing the right thing mdash rather than not That is what it isrdquoThatrsquos of course a film yet to be seen but from what we have of Madras Cafeacute as it exists it is by no means even vaguely a low point in Sircarrsquos career mdash wonderfully farmed from the Jain Commission Report it survives as an important albeit slightly overthetop document detailing the assassination of PM Rajiv GandhiIf at all the cursory low point in Sircarrsquos career might well be a film of his that we havenrsquot seen And thatrsquos because it never got releasedmdashShoebite the directorrsquos first collaboration with Amitabh Bachchan From my memory of what went wrong with the film was a dispute between two companies Percept and UTV The former were first producing the filmThere was a hitch over Bachchanrsquos remuneration reportedly Percept brought on board Anil Kapoor for the lead part instead Sircar and Bachchan jumped ship together bringing in UTV to produce the film instead Copyright issues followed I needlessly jog my memory for Sircar who is understandably not so forthcoming on thisldquoWell itrsquos a long story But I can tell you where we are now I think So finally the film is with Disney And Disney is also Fox and Disney is also UTV They can actually release the film They are still figuring it out Whatrsquos happened in the past is overrdquoThe Fox angle in the story could have to do with the original concept of Shoebite being Hollywood filmmaker M Night Shyamalanrsquos Is that true ldquoSo the script was adapted by Rensil DrsquoSilva who had just done Rang De Basanti Later we found out that this was an idea by Manoj Night Shyamalan I stepped back Then Ronnie Screwvala UTV boss then was doing a film with Shyamalan and our project restarted Since the basic idea was written by Shyamalan for a Hollywood film we requested for a regional version It was messy But it is quite sad that the film still in the cans It should releaserdquoThe other messy stuff thatrsquos made it to print in the past so far as Sircar is concerned are cases registered by writers against two of his films Gulabo Sitabo and October over copyright infringement Much talked about before release allegations hurled press lapping upldquoIt is distressing When it happened with October a Marathi filmmaker alleging ripoff I was completely shaken up We thought we were creating something absolutely fresh and new and everything had come out from my own deepest experiences and Juhirsquos as well Same with Gulabo Sitabo This is no way Tons of stories can stem out of landlords and tenants But after the film releases there is nothing After the film is gone therersquos nothingThe entire panel of writersrsquo association has seen the film and given us a clean chit What else you can do I was telling Ronnie the other day I hope with Sardar Udham nothing comes up Ronnie told me I should get used to it It will come so itrsquos okay be ready for it It is distressing sometimes We could not enjoy the release of October because of this Normally I go to the theatre and watch the film with the audience We didnrsquotrdquoThankfully none of the above this has impacted his works consequently Bachchan for instance was happy to sign up with Sircar despite their first film together having been a nonstarter The released movie is Piku 2015 of course The brief he gave to his writer Chaturvedi for it was long scenes ldquosometimes 20 pages longrdquoSircar wanted to stage Piku as a play first mdash ldquoexperience from theatre really helpedrdquo mdash and then cut at the editing stage The driving force being to test the acting styles of three really diverse performersmdashbesides Bachchan Irrfan and Deepika Padukone whose subtly expressive eyes were really the leads as wellSircar reasons ldquoMr Bachchan as a person is all methodmdashhe will rehearse and be so particular mdash you canrsquot use lefthand on the rehearsal and righthand on the take You canrsquot On the other hand Irrfan is someone who just lets go And he can go on Deepika is natural You have to tap into her internally as an artisteMy instruction was that in this film nothing is happening nothing is moving Itrsquos in the drawing room of a Bengali household If you notice there are a lot of silences in the film And I want audiences to hate this Bengali familyIrrfan though had just convinced himself that there will be a love angle to the story eventually lsquoYoursquove cast me with Deepika there will be conversations of course wersquoll get romanticrsquo I had to constantly explain to him thatrsquos not going to happen People will define this relationship in theirown wayrdquoItrsquos not like the actors didnrsquot have other apprehensions Bachchan for one did Until Sircar practically convinced him by actually enacting his part over a narration mdash after Big B had read the script with long notes on side margins sent as feedback While it doesnrsquot show the softspoken Sircar does have a stubborn streak Itrsquos that same indie cinema spirit about working on onersquos own termsWhen Piku released Sircar says it was being deemed as an altogether Bengali movie ldquoI said no itrsquos a Hindi filmrdquo Unsure why he had to be defensive because Piku is indeed a Bengali film mdash so specific that itrsquos universal enoughWith the added bonus that most Bengalis Irsquove met have so identified with this family mdash of a cranky daughter whorsquos had it with a loud unselfconscious childlike dad obsessed with his bowel movements mdash that they repeatedly watch Piku as if it was their home videoAn air force officerrsquos son Sircar grew up across defence establishments given his fatherrsquos transferrable job He spent a lot of time in Delhi For home he chose Calcutta still mdash far from Mumbairsquos maddening movie crowd that he occasionally returns to for work and disappears into the ldquo17 football fieldsrdquo around his Salt Lake Kolkata address He says this is also to root his two daughters into a localBengali culture mdash a privilege he didnrsquot enjoy himselfBut speaking to him for an hour and some before a live audience I sense this could be because Sircar an ardent devotee of Satyajit Ray is as genially Bengali as it gets When it comes to the most special skill the community enjoys no matter where they are in the world mdash lsquoaddarsquo that long warm conversation on things from here and there that can carry on even when the cameras are switched off As was the case with this edition of Sit with HitlistShoojit Da would tell us a thing or two about good health mdash the importance of walking Not brisk walk just walking And the right posture to hold a phone which is not to hold it at all mdash 20 minutes of cellphone on palm plus wrist equals 17 kg burden on the shoulder Irsquoll take that advice from a footballer who can be quite the Dada on a field dribbling much younger men like Ranbir Kapoor and Abhishek Bachchan into exhaustionHersquos also happy to heckle on the field Which isnrsquot my mental image of him given the gentle demeanour Equally unsurprised that his assistant was flummoxed looking at him going absolutely berserk with blood and gore shooting the iconic Jallianwala Bagh sequence in Sardar UdhamAlso Read Anurag Basu Ranbir and I never fought on Jagga Jasoos