God is in the details for Shashank
This Friday will see one of the most talked about Bollywood debutantes arriving at a theatre near you. While thousands of words are being spent on Janhvi Kapoor, the director of her first film, Dhadak, has remained relatively low-key.
Not only that, filmmaker Shashank Khaitan is a slow and steady learner. He started his directorial career with Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (2014); followed it up with Badrinath Ki Dulhania (2017); and now has Dhadak coming out. With each venture, he has paid as much attention to the nuts and bolts as to the art.
“I have worked as an assistant for years and I made a film that never released before Humpty... I lost a lot of money in that. It taught me what are the things one should not do while making a film,” says Khaitan. “Perhaps that’s why I don’t rush into a film, and rather spend more time writing the film.
He adds, “I try to ensure that my producer doesn’t lose money on the film I’m directing. I budget a film in such a manner so that it does not fail. I work on every detail, so that when I’m going on the film set, it’s just about execution.”
Both his earlier films are set in a small town, centred round a boy-girl love story, and it seems the director is trying to find a space in this genre. Dhadak is a first for Khaitan, this being the story of a successful Marathi film, Sairat. “The fact is,” he says, “I’m trying to contemporise the genre of love stories with my original writing. I’ve done that in two films. But when I watched Sairat, I realised the film that I was planning to write has a similarity with this story. So I thought of making it as an official adaptation.” Audiences, he adds, will find a striking similarity between Sairat and Dhadak, but also a sense of newness.
HE HAS DIRECTED THE DEBUT FILM OF JANHVI KAPOOR, BUT SHASHANK KHAITAN KEEPS A LOW PROFILE AND HIS FEET FIRMLY ON THE GROUND