Looking at Titli, Binnu and this, It’s almost like you feel sorry for them.
Any artistic expression with a larger goal is [rooted in] empathy. I think I should empathise even with something I dislike the most. That’s my only chance to have a nuanced conversation with anyone – how can I hope to understand myself if I don’t try and engage with the other? I think empathy is a key ingredient for any artist, or for someone with any hope to create something out of thin air. People acting out even in the most dastardly manner around us – the journey they’re on – it makes complete sense to them. They’re doing something out of reason, because they’re made of some collective experiences till that point. For them those collective experiences are playing out in a certain manner, and it’s probably justifiable for them. It might seem like a bad reaction to us, but everyone is on their own journey. Not just Binnu, Titli or Guru – each and every character in the films has their own reasons for doing what they are doing. And I try to look at all of them with empathy, and try to showcase their own individual truths. Not my take on them, because who are we to judge anyone? Hopefully the attempt is to have these characters and their truths to start a conversation about what’s really going on around us.
I like how you depict masculinity at its most unattractive, diseased version. I remember watching the scene where Guru is masturbating, and it left me with an icky feeling…
I think the icky feeling that we get seeing Guru masturbate in his bathroom is a feeling that’s repressed within us. It has more to do with how we feel about our own sexuality. For example, the act of masturbating is not spoken of in an open way. When you’re in your own company – when you’re engaged in a solo sexual act – you’re probably playing out your sexual desires in their most unhinged, raw forms. There’s no holding back. Those are moments when we’re like that only in specific moments. We push that version back into the secret hole as soon as we’re done with the act. I think the fact that someone might feel icky about these scenes says a lot about how we view our own sexuality, whereas a character like Guru is desperately trying to make a connection. I think it’s somewhere that desperation that unsettles many of us, that desperation to reach out to literally anyone. He’s doing so because he doesn’t know there’s a gaze on him. What we’re witnessing is him at a very private, lonely moment. We, as human beings, are probably not ready to engage with our primal sexual urges being played out on screen. We all have public, private and a secret life, right? What we’re witnessing in Guru’s masturbation scene is his secret life, and not all of us are comfortable being found out. I’ve personally never found that scene icky, because it seemed like a desperate call for help.
I’ve been hearing about the film for more than three years. Has it been ready for a while?
Actually, no. We’ve been editing the film very slowly. It’s a fragile, difficult film to edit, operating on a very thin line. And we have a very difficult character at the centre of our film. So we’ve been fine-tuning it. Just making sure there was a string of VFX, and colours, there are parts where we’re inside the protagonist’s head. We were just slowly going through post-production.
Surely, the Cannes premiere adds a whole lot of prestige to the title. But it also brings with it the baggage of a ‘festival film’.
I have a different take on this. I think this has more to do with the gatekeepers and the structural environment – where there is no real, feasible outlet left for a certain kind of content. I think the kind of films I make, or some of my contemporaries make, has nothing to do with “arthouse cinema”. I think they’re all pretty comprehensible, deeply felt, emotional films. They’re for the common man. Some of the best reactions I’ve got for both Binnu and Titli are from the so-called ‘working class’ – often bracketed as someone who ‘don’t want’ sophisticated films. An auto driver told me about Titli, “Yeh aapne banaayi hai? Kitni sacchi film hai, sir! Aise hi toh hota hai, aise hi toh jeete hai hum! (You made that film? It’s such a truthful film, sir! This is usually what happens, and this is how we survive!)” And this might just be a one-off example, but even when I’ve travelled with the films, the so-called “normal” audience are the ones that connect the most with the films. I don’t really care too much about the tag of arthouse cinema, but these are fairly easy, comprehensible and deeply emotional films for everyone. The gatekeepers don’t feel the necessity to push the envelope, and facilitate content that engages with the audience – not by infantilising them – or put you to sleep under the guise of educating you. Films like Agra tell the audience “I respect the fact that you’ve taken out two hours from your life to spend on me, and I’m going to engage with you at every level. I want to have a conversation with you.”