Behind the Making of a Monster
Filmmaker Deepa Mehta, explores the level of inhumanity among men in her latest movie Anatomy of Violence
Filmmaker Deepa Mehta on her latest film Anatomy of Violence.
She says that it is hard not to spot a report in newspapers pertaining to violence against women. Every day. She also says that it is hard to fathom the source of anger and how can men be completely devoid of any sympathy for women who are victims of their violent acts. And this is what led her to explore the subject in her latest film Anatomy of Violence.
Filmmaker Deepa Mehta, 66, thinks aloud, “I then began a process of exploration as to what in our culture, what in our society, what in our circumstances brings about this level and frequency of violence. Rape exists in every society but not at the level that we see here. This would suggest that there is a degree of complicity within the entire society as we are creating the environment and culture in which these men are permitted to express their savagery. What makes us different from Japan, for example, where this kind of violence exists but not anywhere close to the level in India?”
Talk to her about the larger discourse from some quarters which points out the society’s responsibility for the rapists’ behaviour, and Mehta feels that it is important to understand that patriarchy, misogyny and gender inequality—all contribute to the way the female gender is perceived by males. “Though I feel society is complicit in contributing to the making of a monster, in no way do I feel that the molesters/rapists are not accountable for their act.” Her film, which reimagines the life of the rapists with a desire to grasp and infer the making of a monster, does not depict the actual rape.
Talking about her collaboration for the film with Chandigarh-based theatre director Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry, 65, the filmmaker insists that the movie would not have been possible without the latter. Mehta held an elaborate workshop with actors from Chowdhry’s repertory – The Company. “We recorded the imagined lives of the actors on film as part of creating the screenplay. On day two, I ended up directing the camera, perhaps subconsciously realising that what was unfolding before us was so organic in its honesty and brutality that to re-film it in the future with stars and the whole machinery of a large crew and huge locations would be a travesty,” she says.
The Indo-Canadian director, who has worked on several literary texts and adapted them into films, including Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Bapsi Sidwai’s Cracking India (the film was called Earth 1947), says collaborating with the authors and adapting them into a screenplay is always about close conversations with the writer. “The challenge is to condense say 400 or 600 pages of a book into a screenplay of a 100 pages without losing the narrative arc, the essential plot and the in-depth look at the characters that inhabit the novel but can’t be contained in a script,” she says.
When asked about patriarchy being the reoccurring theme in her works, Mehta feels that as a woman brought up in India, it is hard not to be affected by the society we live in. “Remember, patriarchy and its fallout permeate the female existence in India. I saw a film that blew me away years ago—Manish Jha’s Matrabhoomi. It affected me as deeply as did Satyajit Ray’s Charulata. Both stayed with me and have had a great influence on my work.”
And Bollywood/Hollywood, a comedy must have been quite a surprise for those who have been following her work. “Believe me, I really loved doing Bollywood/Hollywood. It came as a reaction to a particularly dark time after Water was shut down in Varanasi. Bollywood/Hollywood is in hindsight quite a subversive film. I just didn’t know it then.” she says .