THE BLIND WITNESS
Noir specialist SRIRAM RAGHAVAN’S upcoming crime thriller AndhaDhun has elements of black comedy
FILMMAKER SRIRAM Raghavan’s office is a cinephile’s haven. The walls are adorned with many posters and film stills. But it’s the poster for Saraswatichandra (1968) that stands out. The classic romance is not the film you’d expect Bollywood’s noir specialist to like. “I am closer to the [crime] genre than others,” says Raghavan. “I love a film like Piku, but I wouldn’t have thought of it as a subject.”
Raghavan’s fifth film, AndhaDhun, is also a crime thriller, this time about a blind pianist (Ayushmann Khurrana) who is the sole witness to a murder.
Like his earlier Johnny Gaddaar, AndhaDhun is funny but, based on the trailer, the dry humour in his latest is reminiscent of the Coen Brothers’ dark comedies. Raghavan acknowledges their influence. “I love Fargo,” he says. “Their films are in real space and, yet, you can’t believe this is happening.” Also featuring Tabu and Radhika Apte, AndhaDhun is “wicked” with an ending that “will sort of divide people”, he says.
A graduate of Pune’s Film & Television Institute of India, Raghavan was in the same batch as Rajkumar Hirani and Sanjay Leela Bhansali. It was Hirani who edited Raghavan’s awardwinning student short, The Eight Column Affair. “We used to discuss films longer than the duration of the film itself,” says Raghavan. Bollywood’s creative environment in the 1990s Mumbai didn’t inspire Raghavan. So to make ends meet he turned to television, writing a few episodes of popular detective show CID and horror show Aahat.
Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma gave him his first break with Ek Hasina Thi (2004) and also introduced him to Pooja Ladha Suri, one of AndhaDhun’s four writers and editor of Raghavan’s films since Johnny Gaddaar.
It was their work in Badlapur (2015) that led to Raghavan’s first hit. Those who doubted Raghavan’s tendency to challenge viewers’ perception of what constitutes a hero—infallible, vulnerable and unsure— now supported his vision. Khurrana was one of the actors who called Raghavan to say he was keen to work with him.
Even before AndhaDhun hits cinemas, Raghavan knows what he wants to do next: a biopic on Arun Khetarpal, the youngest soldier to have been awarded the Param Vir Chakra. Unlike Hirani, Raghavan doesn’t intend to wait four years to push it out. “A lot of people say I look like Woody Allen, so I should make films as fast as him,” he says.
—Suhani Singh
‘‘I am closer to the crime genre than others,” says Raghavan