Emraan Hashmi changes his stripes for role in Tigers
Actor’s stardom in South Asia came as surprise to director
When director Danis Tanovic cast Emraan Hashmi to star in the film Tigers, he had no idea of the actor’s Bollywood fame.
Tanovic’s Bosnian film No Man’s Land beat out India’s submission of the Bollywood film Lagaan to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2001, but Tanovic says Bollywood films are not on his radar.
“I actually saw (Hashmi’s) films after, and I had a laugh,” he said, a day after Tigers’ world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. “I am not a Bollywood watcher. We don’t even find these films in Europe, maybe in some specialty store in France.
On the other hand, Syed Aamir Raza Hussain was fully aware of Hashmi’s reputation. Hussain is the former Pakistani pharmaceutical repturned-whistleblower and now Mississauga cab driver whose life story is the inspiration for Tigers.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Hussain, who met Hashmi for the first time a day before attending the premiere. “How (Hashmi) was able to act like me, without even meeting me. How he could understand what emotions I was going through. He’s an amazing actor.”
The man in question, meanwhile, calls his work on Tigers a “welcome departure.”
The film tells the story of Ayan, a young Pakistani sales representative for a multinational corporation making baby formula, who turns into a whistleblower after realizing that the product he’s peddling is the inadvertent cause of death in infants born to poor and illiterate Pakistani families.
“I was able to stretch myself creatively,” Hashmi said. “The narrative of this film is very different from a Bollywood film, which is fairly episodic; there’s not much research in it. There’s a lot of song and dance. And kisses.”
Until recently, Hashmi was infamous in the Indian film industry as Bollywood’s serial kisser.
The moniker has stuck with him since his second movie Murder (2004), an erotic thriller in which he played an obsessive lover, because of its steamy scenes. A series of followup films produced by his uncles and Bollywood veterans Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt, with lurid plot lines and catchy soundtracks, cemented his reputation as a hero for India’s middle class.
Critics had always noted Hashmi’s ability to get into the skin of a character. But his turn as a paunchy videographer with a paan-stained grin, caught up in the political conspiracy in Shanghai, earned him rave reviews. Shanghai, which screened at TIFF in 2012, is a political satire by Dibakar Banerjee, who works within Bollywood but whose satirical sensibilities are more akin to Indian auteur Satyajit Ray.
When Indian indie filmmaker Anurag Kashyap found out about Tanovic’s struggles to find backers for a film that was challenging the infant formula industry, he suggested the names of some Indian producers. And Kashyap suggested that Tanovic watch Shanghai.
“I met Anurag at Venice in 2012, or maybe it was 2011, I don’t even remember. And he asked about this project,” Tanovic said. “I said we can’t find crazy people to finance the film. And he said I am going to help you, and he did.” Both characters in Shanghai and Tigers are relatable, and much different than the urban cool characters he usually plays, Hashmi said. “These films are a huge departure, and I do them for my own sanity,” he said. “I hope as an actor it keeps me out of complacency . . . (Bollywood) films keep my kitchen running. But it’s important for me to do these films. They bring back something, I don’t know quite what it is. But it makes me a better actor.” The idea of being part of a film with a larger message, which stays with the audience long after the credits have finished rolling, also intrigued him and he signed on to play Ayan’s part a day after he read the script. “It was such a human story, the story of a man in an extraordinary situation . . . who does what he feels is right,” he said. “The whole David and Goliath aspect, the fact that this man was in such turmoil but he keeps swimming against the tide.”
Tigers screens again Saturday at TIFF. There are plans to release the movie, an Indian/French/British coproduction, in India in the coming months, said Guneet Monga, one of the film’s producers.
“We hope the movie sparks a conversation and a debate,” she said, addressing a group of journalists, before adding that the “India cut will be different than what you have seen here at the festival.”
“Will there be songs in Indian version?” a question came back.
“I won’t be lip-synching to them,” replied Hashmi, with a grin.