By Hindustan Times
Political thrillers don't seem to be that common in Bollywood but then director and producer Dibakar Banerjee rarely chooses conventional subjects for his films.
Banerjee, 42, explored sexual attitudes in small-town India with Love Sex aur Dhokha, Love, Sex and Betrayal, in 2010. His latest film puts
the spotlight at the dark underbelly of urban development in rapidly modernising India.
The filmmaker spoke to Reuters about his new project, the political film Shanghai concerning the mysterious death of a social activist and the bureaucrat investigating it.
Q: What would you assert is the core theme of Shanghai?
A: "Shanghai is set the strength of the person, because unless and until the individual stands up, there'll be no public. The general public could be very fickle. They modify their leaders. Even Gandhi did not have a following forever. By the point he finished telling everyone to not partition the country, the partition had happened. The rustic just wanted a quick-fix solution and so they steamrolled all over the place him.
"Collective will can change - Shanghai also shows that - the ability of the mob. How the mob can be utilized to mention anything and let or not it's construed to be in national interest ... I've spoken to and skim such a lot of accounts of these who've been in mobs and robbed and pillaged, and they're as defeated and as forgotten because the victims. Shanghai talks about how our lives, more often than not, are controlled by powers that we do not recognise."
Q: What's within the name Shanghai?
A: "The core of Shanghai is that this belief by educated Indians that we've got to be like China or we need to beat China or that China is best than us or that China is stronger than us. It is a pet peeve that the educated middle-class has, and it shows how we're looking to define ourselves by someone else's yardstick. It is simple as it will give you a quick-fix solution that we have got to be like China, or we do not have to be like China. But I'VE travelled extensively in China, and that i know that they've their very own problems and they're sorting them out of their own way."
Q: Is it difficult to bring these types of ideas and thoughts right into a film?
A: "IT IS NOT difficult, it's impossible. What you are saying a film is, is totally different from what the movie is. The entire ideas that you just think the film is about, it can't be about them - the film is ready the characters within the film and whatever they discover, the audience discovers. So a few of it's discovered in a large way, a few of it in a small way and a few of it on no account. But it's important to have those ideas to make the film. It's like a boxer who, before a bout, also runs or skips. The audience won't see it, but you must do it...
"Then you hope that the audience gets it. I DO KNOW for a incontrovertible fact that Michael Bay has a far larger audience than Woody Allen or the Coen brothers, but that hasn't ever stopped the Coen brothers or Allen from making films. I THINK that all of us have our place within the world, so long as there is a budget for us."
Q: Are you able to segregate the producer personality from the director personality?
A: "IT'S A MUST TO. As a director, as an inventive person, I'M making the film for myself; as a producer, I WOULD LIKE it to succeed. To make a successful film, you need to segregate these two personalities. If this one doesn't work, I COULD not get the cash to make my next film."
Q: Do you think that there will be a time while you shouldn't have to consider budgets and profits and just make what you want?
A: "I WILL BE scared. I DO KNOW there is no free lunch. If someone will provide you with money and says do what you want, it signifies that he doesn't know what he's doing and tomorrow it will come again and bite you. I'm more than pleased if someone tells me that there's little or no money, but market forces inform you that you simply can't go wrong."
Q: What's your next project?
A: "My next one is with none social subtext."
Q: Really? How is that possible?
A: "(Laughs) It's creeping in, as we write it. It is a detective whodunit thriller set in Kolkata of the 1940s. It's about good versus evil -- good man and bad man and epic struggle between them."
