Toasting to life, the Bhandarkar way
Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
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Madhur Bhandarkar
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Chandigarh, January 5
Madhur Bhandarkar’s story is no less than a film’s script. Sprinkled with multiple flavours of life, it comes closest to a delicious drama - set in days when the now-famous filmmaker used to wipe the floor beneath actors’ feet, chalk mark sets, and even stand guard as costume designers draped the cast. In better times, he worked as a video cassette delivery boy for clients like Mithun
Chakravarty.
“It was this job that fired my passion for films,” says the experimental director, who was promising enough to enter the Ram Gopal Verma camp, where he got enough chances to stoke the fires within. Soon, Bhandarkar’s hearth was lit with creative flames as he delivered one meaningful film after the other in Chandni Bar, Satta, Page 3, and more recently Traffic Signal. The filmmaker’s fling with realistic cinema is now ready to enter a new phase with his next - “Fashion”.
In Chandigarh to scout for the film’s locations, Bhandarkar spoke with conviction of depravity, which he so sensitively portrays in his films. “I like being known as a topical filmmaker, one who can experiment with themes rather than succumb to them for commercial gains,” he says, referring to the cynicism with which his style is greeted in
Bollywood.
Not too many people remember “Trishakti”, Bhandarkar’s first film, which bombed at the box office. “It had to be disaster; it never came from the heart. I had laced it with all it takes to make a commercial film - a bikini-clad girl, a hunk of a hero and all that stuff. But ultimately, its the film’s sensibility, not superficiality, that stays with you” says Bhandarkar, recalling his tough journeys through the alleyways of Mumbai.
One such journey took him to a ladies bar, where he saw men rejoicing in women’s compulsions. “Right there I knew what film to make. That’s how “Chandni Bar” happened,” says the director, known for his middle-of-the-road cinema that hits you in the face. “Not that my films are all fact and no fiction. The pill can’t be all bitter if it has to be administered for right effects,” he says, promising that “Fashion”, his next, will be out of the box.
“Most of my films have been about the system as the suppressor. “Fashion” will however work within the fashion world to take the viewers behind the ramp. Priyanka Chopra, Kangana Ranaut and Arbaaz Khan are playing the leads. Priyanka is the central character and she hails from Chandigarh,” says Bhandarkar, explaining why he is here to look for locales. Already at work, the filmmaker has shot some sequences on the city roads and identified bungalows for shooting, to begin in end of February.
Till then, he will be researching the film, which will feature some real-life designers like Wendell Roddicks. He will also be learning to grapple with sensitivities of the fashion world; homosexuality included. “That’s true; I can’t enter the fashion world without encountering homosexuality. That’s the reality of our times and we must face it,” says Bhandarkar, who recently declined UTV’s offer to direct a film on Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen. The filmmaker’s life of total commitment to realism has no place for controversy, not yet.
