SUMMER VIEWS
Just in case the cricket gets to you, playing in a theatre near you…
Five months into 2019 and Uri: The Surgical Strike is the only blockbuster. The josh in Bollywood failed to match the excitement of the Indian general election. Gully Boy’s success was restricted to Mumbai and the metros and Kesari failed to live up to the hype. It was the grand finale of Avengers that saved the day at the box office. The rest of the Indian summer won’t be a breeze either. The few Hindi releases will be vying with the
ODI World Cup in England for eyeballs.
But if there’s one star who can put bums on seats, it is Salman Khan. Bhai teams up with Ali Abbas Zafar for the big-budget drama, Bharat. Anubhav Sinha follows up last year’s acclaimed drama, Mulk, with another punch of reality in Article 15. Telugu hit Arjun Reddy will be served up for the Bollywood audience as Kabir Singh. And Dhanush’s first international film, The Extraordinary Journey of Fakir, will finally make its way into Indian theatres a year after its release in France.
“It is a continuous struggle for me when I write for Salman. The character has to be bigger than his persona. Also, you may have known him for 20 years, but he can still throw you off every day” Ali Abbas Zafar, Director, Bharat
LOVE THY NATION, LOVE THY FAMILY
More than laughs and whistles, Salman Khan intends to make his fans tear up with Eid release, Bharat (June 5). A remake of the Korean family drama, Ode to My Father, the film follows the tragedy-packed life of its lead, played by Salman. The actor and his brother-in-law and producer Atul Agnihotri were keen that Ali Abbas Zafar, who has delivered back-to-back hits with Salman in Sultan and Tiger Zinda Hai, adapted the film for an Indian setting. “I was very reluctant because, as a writer-director, till I own the material, I am not very confident of it,” says Zafar. Luckily for him, the subject and the message made an instant impact. “I told Sir [Khan] I like it, but if I am to make it, I will have to rewrite it completely, which could make it very different from Ode to My Father.” Bhai gave his blessings and the money.
Bharat, says Zafar, stays true to the “emotional core” of the original. Also starring Jackie Shroff as Bharat’s father, Katrina Kaif as his wife Kumud and Sunil Grover as his best friend, the film spans six decades, starting from Partition. So we have Salman in six different get-ups—as a bike stuntman in a 1960s’ circus, a worker in the Gulf during the oil boom, a navy officer later and, finally, a businessman in the liberalisation years of the 1990s.
Like Sultan, Bharat expects a lot from Salman, playing a devoted family man whose life is hinged on a promise he made to his father. “It has been a continuous struggle for me when I write for Salman, his character needs to be bigger than his persona,” says Zafar. “I can’t make a film any other way.”
Expectations from Bharat are high given that it’s coming from Zafar who has earned the distinction of being Salman’s favourite director. “It’s a lot of pressure I don’t want,” said Zafar. Even after having worked with him on three big-budget films, Zafar says the superstar’s “unpredictable” ways mean one can never ever be thoroughly prepared. “With Salman, you have to understand one thing— you can have a good or bad day even if you have known him for 20 years. It’s why I like him and like working with him. He throws you off every day and that keeps you alive.”
Whether Zafar scores a hat-trick at the box office with Salman remains to be seen, but if it does, it will catapult him into the A-league of Bollywood directors. “I am fortunate that I have been doing films with Salman Khan,” says Zafar. Or is Salman fortunate to have Zafar by his side?
A FUN RIDE
In 2014, Romain Puértolas, a former French border guard, tasked with investigating illegal immigration networks in Paris, made his debut as an author with The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe. Written on a mobile phone while at work, the novel was a superhit in France where it sold six million copies. Puertolas’ uplifting story of an immigrant’s whirlwind trip across Europe and empathetic take on refugees was translated in 30 languages. Four years later, it got the big-screen treatment. Director Ken Scott’s adaptation features popular Kollywood actor Dhanush as Ajatashatru Oghash Rathod aka Aja who pretends to be a fakir with special powers and heads to Paris in search of his father. Things don’t go according to plan and Aja ends up trapped in a wardrobe being transported in a lorry full of illegal immigrants to England. So begins a journey of self-discovery that takes him to Spain, Libya and Italy, before returning to Paris. The film, which also stars Berenice Bejo (The Artist) and Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips), will release in India on June 21. With the French and English language film, Dhanush joins the exclusive club of Indian actors to headline an international film. Going by the reviews, he appears to have made a good first impression. Jordan Mintzer in the Hollywood Reporter said the film largely worked because of “Dhanush’s radiant charm, with the actor adding humour and sincerity to a project that can feel too overstuffed and wacky for its own good—mixing magical realism, deadpan comedy, musical numbers and moments of tear-jerking drama”.
STAR CASTE
Andhadhun and Badhai Ho (2018) had already earned Ayushmann Khurrana his spurs in Bollywood. In Article 15 (June 28), the first of his four releases in 2019, he plays a police officer for the first time. But his khaki avatar is nothing like Rohit Shetty’s machismo-high Singham. In the Anubhav Sinha-directed investigative social drama inspired by the 2014
Badaun gang rape case, Khurrana plays Ayan, a higher-caste officer who, while solving the murder case of two girls from marginalised communities, unearths the messy caste politics in the Uttar Pradesh village. “It’s always the subject that attracts me,” says Khurrana. “It’s a realistic cop role, not a film laced with slow-motion shots.”
The title of the film draws from Article 15 of the Constitution, which prohibits the state from discriminating against any citizen on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. “I feel very strongly about the issue,” says Khurrana. He has already watched the hard-hitting documentary, India Untouched, on the Brahmin-Dalit power imbalance, and is reading Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan, in which the author documents his life as a Dalit who grew up on leftovers discarded in garbage.
Caste is the elephant in the room that Bollywood rarely acknowledges in commercial film led by a star; Marathi cinema has given us Sairat and Tamil cinema Kabali. Article 15 should change that. It will also help Khurrana shed the man-child hero image he has been typecast into. Sinha had offered him a rom-com to begin with, but the actor was keen on an issue-based drama akin to Sinha’s previous film, Mulk. It was then that Sinha suggested the film. “It’s my first serious, hardhitting film,” says Khurrana. He drew inspiration from IPS officer Manoj Malviya in Delhi whom he has known for five years. “I have imbibed his mannerisms and look,” says the actor, who sports a moustache in the film.
CRAZY IN LOVE
In Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Telugu film Arjun Reddy (2017), the dishy, angry young lover is defined by his vices: smoking, drinking, doping. Naturally, his girlfriend’s parents reject him, leading Arjun to go into self-destructive mode. The part-college romance, part-break-up meltdown revisits the regressive tropes of 1980s-90s’ cinema. Vijay Devarkonda earned heart-throb status and won accolades for his Arjun Reddy. In its Hindi avatar Kabir Singh (June 21), also written and directed by Vanga, Shahid Kapoor has the tough task of filling his giant shoes.
“We tend to do superhero cinema and generally make our heroes good, but we are all flawed,” says Vanga, who grew up in Warangal. There he was exposed to Hindi films in theatres as well as Hindi in school (he can both read and write the language). He attended medical school before heading to the International Film School Sydney for a three-year specialised course in screenwriting and editing. One of his biggest takeaways was that there’s no language in cinema.
For the remake, Vanga says he has deployed less English than the original. “I’ve also tried to retain the colloquial quality in the Hindi dialogue.” While he retains the name of the leading lady and the hero’s pet Labrador (both named Preeti), Arjun becomes Kabir. “There’s a lot of melancholy in the name Kabir and a poetic side too,” says Vanga. Like the original, the Hindi version too begins with a voiceover from the hero’s dadi. Only this time she’s reciting a Kabir doha.
The change in geography has dictated changes in the remake too. The action shifts to Delhi and Mumbai and, instead of caste conflict, Preeti’s father takes offence to Kabir smoking and not being a turban-wearing Sikh. Comparisons with the original are inevitable, but Vanga assures a faithful recreation of his popular film. Audiences in his homeland, he says, are keen to see his Bollywood debut, even if it is a film they have seen before.