Exclusive on the sets of upcoming DEVDAS
Exclusive on the sets of upcoming DEVDAS
Devdas, the year’s most eagerly awaited film, is very close to completion. Rajeev Masand gets an exclusive glimpse of the opulent sets and into the mind of director Sanjay Leela Bhansali
IT’S A precious moment in time for Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Devdas, perhaps the most awaited film in recent Bollywood history, is almost entirely in the cans. But the hype machine is yet to crank into gear; the media blitz is still some distance away. Post-Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, the industry has shifted the spotlight to the Sooraj Barjatyas, the Adi Chopras and the Karan Johars.
Not that Bhansali minds. He says, ‘‘They’re far more talked about and successful than me.’’ But then he adds pointedly, ‘‘They’re more cautious as filmmakers, while I’m brash, impetuous and impulsive.’’
He has a point. While Barjatya, Chopra and Johar chose safer subjects (read: a love story set amidst a lavish family drama) for their respective debuts, Bhansali opted for a sensitive, sombre piece like Khamoshi.
‘‘I can’t insert a comedy track in my film, I can’t have a desh bhakti angle, or a family that’s saccharine sweet. I’m not a businessman and I can’t treat filmmaking like a business’’, he says vehemently. ‘‘Filmmaking is an art. I have to be accessible to all kinds of vultures, and eventually I have to find my power and my strength in that.’’

The director’s strength, then, lies in telling intimate stories about real characters, and more importantly, in bringing back the lyrical, almost poetic quality of pain and suffering, something that died with Guru Dutt for Hindi cinema. Whether it’s Annie in Khamoshi or Vanraj in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Bhansali’s protagonists stand at the crossroads, scarred by their experiences, yet with so much love to give, characters the audience want to take home with them. Will Devdas, Paro and Chandramukhi have the same impact?
On the sets of DEVDAS
As Bhansali wraps principal photography on his latest film, he has his fingers crossed. Because the film, he believes, was destined to happen. It was while he was on a short sabbatical after the release of Hum Dil... that he read the Sarat Chandra Chatterjee classic and became baffled by the ending. ‘‘I was ready for a very mature love story, a complete graph, an epic film’’, he says. Then, three close acquaintances suggested separately to him that he should consider adapting the classic, completely oblivious to the fact that Bhansali had been considering the idea anyway.
On the sets of DEVDAS..
Sanjay Leela Bansali with Shahrukh and Madhuri
The problem, however, was that the novel had been filmed at least twice in Hindi and was still fresh in people’s minds. ‘‘But I hadn’t seen either the P C Barua film or the Bimal Roy version until then’’, he says. When he sat down to study the earlier films, Bhansali decided he wanted to do his version differently. So, in addition to the fact that his movie is on a much larger scale, the filmmaker says ‘‘it’s Devdas in another form and structure, in my own sense of music and dance, my sense of colours, my sense of anguish, my understanding of love and pain.’’ And though he has taken some liberties with the story, Bhansali says the emotional core of the novel is the same.
Obsessed with the idea of presenting key scenes differently, Bhansali has reworked crucial portions of the novel — the moment when Devdas and Paro meet after many years, the incident of Paro rushing to Devdas’s house in the middle of the night to propose marriage, Devdas’s first meeting with Chandramukhi at her kotha — besides, of course, introducing the dance jugalbandi between Paro and Chandramukhi. This is the biggest deviation from the book, where the female protagonists never meet.
Sanjay, Madhuri and Aishwarya on the sets of DEVDAS.
But more than liberties with the storyline, Bhansali’s film is determined by his approach to tragedy and his handling of the inherent distress in every character’s life. ‘‘Pain is always a principal character in my stories. Pain is something you cannot cultivate or lie about. You are born to it’’, the director explains. ‘‘It’s the way I look at things, the way I look at a face and see the sadness in the eyes, the sadness in the smile.’’

Bhansali’s passion for his art stems also from the fact that ‘‘except for tea and films, I don’t know how to make anything’’. He says he can’t operate a computer, he can’t drive a car, and he has no friends. ‘‘My assistants are always bearing the brunt of my temper. When I’m making a film, I’m possessed. I talk like a mad man, but that’s how I am. Every frame is very valuable to me’’.

More than anything else, Devdas is special to Bhansali because the anguish comes from his own life. ‘‘The seed of this film comes from the day my father died’’, he reveals. ‘‘I remember my father extending his hand to my mother, when he was in a semi-comatose state. It’s an image that has stayed with me. In the 22 years that I’d lived with my father, this was the only time I saw him reach out to my mother. Never before had I seen any expression of love between them.’’
Like his father, Devdas died with unfulfilled dreams. Like his mother, Seema Biswas’ Flavy in Khamoshi faced the humiliation of having doors slammed in her face when she tried to earn a living selling soap. ‘‘Everyone lives in pain, but few people get a chance to express it’’, Bhansali says. ‘‘Few people are fortunate to be born to those circumstances.’’
Bhansali, of course, counts himself among them. And to some degree, he confesses, he’s influenced by the way his idol Ritwik Ghatak expressed anguish on celluloid. ‘‘There were bold strokes of pain in his films, he never held back. His women cried with complete abandon’’, Bhansali points out.

The film may have been pre-ordained for Bhansali, but the making wasn’t easy. ‘‘Perhaps I couldn’t have made this film if I wasn’t facing all that turbulence’’, he says. ‘‘You have to be in a certain frame of mind.’’

Devdas, which is in its third year now, has been dogged by controversy and mishaps from the moment those lavish sets first went up in Film City. Just a few weeks after the film went into production, financier Bharat Shah was arrested for his alleged links with the underworld, throwing the entire project into doubt. Kareena Kapoor cried foul at being dumped in favour of Aishwarya Rai, while Madhuri Dixit tied the knot a few weeks before filming commenced. Accidents on the set claimed the lives of two unit workers, and Bhansali himself was given police protection because of alleged underworld threats. All he says, ‘‘Filmmaking is like walking a tightrope. You have to balance yourself and your team with the whole world watching. It’s like going to war. You have to lose many battles to win the war.’’
Not that he’s won the war; in fact, Bhansali is aware that even the battles are far from over. He knows that comparisons between Shah Rukh Khan and Dilip Kumar are inevitable, but insists that Shah Rukh’s approach to the role is different from the way the thespian handled it.And although Bollywood is sceptical about the period romance’s success, Bhansali is confident that Devdas is not a story people can ignore. ‘‘Love can never be dated. And Devdas is a story every Indian is aware of — very much like the story of Radha, Krishna and Meera — because every man dreams of loving a woman with that kind of sincerity, and every woman desires to be loved with that passion’’, he says.

It is a similar passion Bhansali brings to his work, a passion born when he, as a four-year-old, visited a studio with his father. ‘‘It was some cheesy B-grade film, and they were shooting a cabaret song. But just while watching them work, trying to get the shot perfect, I lost my heart to the job’’, he says. Now, as he puts the finishing touches to the year’s biggest film, Bhansali feels he has returned to claim his heart.


SOURCE: "FLAIR" {http://www.indian-express.com}
‘‘Filmmaking is like walking a tightrope. You have to balance yourself and your team with the whole world watching. It’s like going to war. You have to lose many battles to win the war.’’
-Bhansali
He knows that comparisons between Shah Rukh Khan and Dilip Kumar are inevitable, but insists that Shah Rukh’s approach to the role is different from the way the thespian handled it.
‘‘I remember my father extending his hand to my mother, when he was in a semi-comatose state. It’s an image that has stayed with me."
-Bhansali
Like his father, Devdas died with unfulfilled dreams.
‘‘Pain is always a principal character in my stories. Pain is something you cannot cultivate or lie about. You are born to it’’
-Bhansali
When I’m making a film, I’m possessed. I talk like a mad man, but that’s how I am. Every frame is very valuable to me’
-Bhansali
‘‘It was some cheesy B-grade film, and they were shooting a cabaret song. But just while watching them work, trying to get the shot perfect, I lost my heart to the job’’
-Bhansali
Bharat Shah was arrested for his alleged links with the underworld, throwing the entire project into doubt. Kareena Kapoor cried foul at being dumped in favour of Aishwarya Rai, while Madhuri Dixit tied the knot a few weeks before filming commenced. Accidents on the set claimed the lives of two unit workers, and Bhansali himself was given police protection because of alleged underworld threats.
Photos courtesy Sanjay Leela Bhansali
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