Hansal Mehta, the National Award-winning director of movies like Shahid, Aligarh, CityLights, Omerta, Faraaz, and of course the now-iconic web series, Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story, is known best for his meticulous research and sensitive but daring portrayal of socio-political issues. He is presently working on a biographical series on Mahatma Gandhi while awaiting the release of his Kareena Kapoor-starrer crime thriller The Buckingham Murders—both have an international crew and are targeted towards a global audience.
You are working on a Mahatma Gandhi biopic. He is a person of international repute. How do you see our cinema reaching a global audience?
By telling our own stories. We need to focus on storytelling…we need to tell our stories in our own way without trying to ape a particular kind of cinema. The moment we have our own true-blue cinematic language and our stories we will find that audience. The Indian moment has been somewhere on the precipice for a while now, we had the Korean and Japanese movements, then we had cinema from Hong Kong and other Asian countries which have resonated with the world audience. Our documentaries are already very successful. I think we are on the verge of making it in the narrative space as well. If you look at this year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival, we had a very good representation and we also won the Grand Prix. But they had to get the money from outside India to tell an Indian story. We need to find that money within India as well. The Indian film industry has done nothing for these filmmakers; it is just fashionable to own them as ‘Indian cinema’ once they have made it big. When we claim ownership over someone like a Payal Kapadia and her work, we forget that not only had we done nothing to help her and her endeavor to make the movie, but we had filed an FIR against her. Let’s be apologetic about that instead of basking in her glory.
Should Indian cinema follow international grammar to go global or establish its own? Also, according to you, how much local is too much local?
All these can’t be designed. We should not be ticking boxes. We have our own grammar, and it is something that keeps evolving. What is important is to encourage the storytellers who are telling Indian stories. We need to fund their attempt to go global. We are so bogged down by the Friday numbers and the box office of mediocre films that we fail to look beyond them. We don’t look at cinema as art anymore; it has become pure commerce. The day we stop pimping our cinema and start to patronise it as an art form, our movies will travel.
Indian cinema has such a long history. It is not that we were not making good movies. Why do you think our cinema never reaches even close to that global acclaim that Iranian or Korien enjoys?
There is a whole generation that has no clue who Shyam Benegal is. I am making Gandhi, where the costumes are by Priya Benegal, Shyam Benegal’s daughter. It was astonishing to see the most members of the crew had zero to little knowledge about his cinema. I had to make them sit with me and watch his movies to understand his contribution to Indian cinema. There is a gap of about three decades, and that is why today we are having this conversation. During this time, apart from Anurag Kashyap we have not had a consistent global voice. But works of filmmakers like Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Mani Kaul have been celebrated world over; Shyambabu was a regular at the Berlin and Venice film festivals. They were all very well represented; it is just that we don’t know about these and we assume that their cinema was not celebrated. Our cinema had always had its masters and they were acknowledged and celebrated by the world. After them, in the next 30 years we got busy peddling mediocrity; our cinema got lost in a maze of mediocrity. And it is a mediocrity induced by the crass capitalism that we all are a part of.
When today we talk about global cinema, how Indian cinema can travel, if Indian cinema should have its own grammar, etc…let me tell you all these have already happened; Indian cinema has travelled. And it is not only Satyajit Ray’s cinema; we had Mrinal Sen and Bimal Roy. They were followed not only by Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani but also by Shaji N Karun, G Aravindan, and Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Ek toh we believe that films starring Shah Rukh Khan and Prabhas is Indian cinema—that is complete bullshit. There is larger universe, there is more to Indian cinema and Indian storytelling than the vulgarity propagated by the box office.
So, do you think it is only the smaller, independent cinema and not the tentpole movies that will eventually travel?
It is not about big or small. It is not about the budget. It can also be a completely audacious 300-crore movie. For me, independent movies are those that manage to free themselves from the shackles of box office numbers and are far removed from the mediocrity we breed in the name of commercial cinema.
Do you think OTTs are helping in breaking this cycle of box-office-induced mediocrity?
No, not at all. It is a myth. On the contrary, the OTTs are encouraging this mediocrity. They are buying films that have big stars, they only buy films that are mediocre. A film like Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple had to struggle to get an OTT release; the producer lost money on that movie. We have to get over the illusion that the OTTs are a messiah for independent films. They are not.
So, what according to you is the way forward then?
Currently, the forward is to get more global collaborations for there is obviously a greater respect for cinema as an art form outside our country. Unfortunately, in India we don’t respect artistes; we don’t consider cinema as art. What happens when you do so consistently is that your mediocrity falls on your face. You can feed shit to people and call it food for a while but eventually, they will find it out once they have access to proper food. Then they will start rejecting your shit. That day will come. But the problem is when the mediocrity of commerce-driven cinema starts failing, you don’t have any backup because you have not let the art evolve. Then they will have no choice but to support good cinema.
The probability of commercial success is anyway so low… people who fund these mindless movies might as well keep aside some amount of money for films that have the potential to travel outside India and propagate cinema as a form of art. Earlier, when Shyambabu was making his movies, we had NFDC backing artistic films, but now we don’t have any form of government backing. We have quasi-state funding but that is limited to propaganda movies. So, unfortunately, that avenue is closed.
As for private funding, there was a time when a company like UTV would support independent movies—today I am wherever I am because UTV Spotboy purchased a movie like Shahid. They released movies like The Lunchbox and Ship of Theseus, and they produced Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, Dev.D, Khosla Ka Ghosla!, Udaan, and the likes. Because of what they did, a lot of filmmakers are making films today; they are also the ones driving the long-format content. But we don’t have a studio like UTV, that model doesn’t exist anymore. Those studios were run by independent-minded entrepreneurs who had a genuine love for cinema; now the studios that are making movies are run by people who need basic education in cinema and cinematic language—today they are the ones who read/hear and approve scripts. And the result is this dismal deterioration. Only the other day I got a text from an OTT platform saying that they wanted to make an original film that is massy and commercial… these words have ruined the basic ethos of our films.
Do you think the problem is also that we are increasingly referencing cinema—it is cinema emulating cinema—and hence we get cookie-cutter versions of the same?
Even if you are emulating, the problem is that there is not enough to emulate from. After the success of The Lunchbox, everyone wanted to make another Lunchbox—it was an easy sell. The filmmakers are constantly selling their product—if I tell you that I am making something ‘like The Lunchbox’ instead of outlining a very unique concept, you will most likely put money into what is familiar and has already succeeded.
Then there are instances where people put money in the movie for the wrong reasons. Eros funded Aligarh because my Shahid had worked and because I was supposed to make another commercial film for them…so Aligarh was part of that bargain and was released in a rather apologetic manner. So, the entire ecosystem must come together; we need to rekindle the love for storytelling, and the love for filmmaking. And from that will emerge the cinema, which will resonate globally and be successful in our markets. A good film will work.
It seems today it is even more difficult for new filmmakers—filmmakers who still treat cinema as art—to get the money to put their vision on screen. Can a filmmaker like you turning a producer help the situation in any way?
As a producer, I am facilitating whatever I can make, but with the help of a studio. And for that, I try to leverage the goodwill and market credibility I have. But it is not easy for me to even make my films. I am bound by the system. I work on the diktat of the system—with that I try to inject the film with my sensibilities. The grass always seems greener on the other side, but I have to fight every day to tell my own stories. It is a daily struggle.
