These are difficult times for artistes: Vishal Bhardwaj

Nonika Singh

“As a filmmaker and storyteller, you are obsessed with the idea of telling a story, and you are compelled to tell it. Sure, in retrospect you can analyse why it didn’t connect with the audience…. I do get disturbed, especially when criticism gets personal. So I overlook and ignore it. I only read reviews that are appreciative of my work.”

A brilliant filmmaker, man with some degree of vanity and an innate sense of humour — that’s Vishal Bhardwaj for you. In the news for rousing anti-CAA protesters with his sterling piece of poetry at Mumbai recently, the National Award-winning director admits, “Indeed these are difficult times for artistes.” “But everything has a flip side”, he says adding, “out of darkness comes light. Creativity is nurtured in such times.”

On Bollywood being a divided house, he senses nothing new. “It always was.” The war of words between Anupam Kher and Naseeruddin Shah, too, he dismisses more as a personal spat. On the cleavage between for and anti-establishment set of actors, he makes a pertinent point, “Politics needs the glamour of film industry.” He has nothing against the spate of movies on nationalism and patriotism, “in line with the national mood and sentiment.”

He admits he enjoyed Uri: The Surgical Strike, especially its dramatic level of engagement and the craft of filmmaking. On the politics of it, he might have a different point of view, but he says, “Every filmmaker has the freedom to choose his politics.” However, what he doesn’t like is the insinuation of ‘the other side.” So he may have made Haider, which brought forth the predicament of a young Kashmiri Muslim in times of terrorism, he says he would have loved to make a movie on Kashmiri Pandits, too, if Vidhu Vinod Chopra hadn’t made one. “For one, tragedy does not diminish or demean the import of its counterpart. The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits is a tragedy of enormous proportions.”

Invariably drawn to literary might of greats like Shakespeare, he reasons, “When you realise you can’t create as many layers as these men such as Shakespeare or Ruskin Bond or Charan Singh Pathik have, you involuntarily turn towards the beauty of their writing and make them your own.”

On the Bard of Avon, he says, “Who am I to say anything about him, but yes, his timelessness does appeal to me. He goes beyond culture, region, borders and can be adapted anytime anywhere; past, present, future.” Adaptation, undeniably, is not merely a challenge but “a task in itself, an independent work of creativity and art.”

So Haider, based on Hamlet, is as much his own creation as an adapted work. A critics’ darling, often his movies open to critical acclaim, but every once in a while, there is criticism too. So how does he respond to censure? He smiles, “I do get disturbed, especially when criticism gets personal. So I overlook and ignore it. I only read reviews that are appreciative of my work.”

On a more serious note, the success and failure of his films does not perturb him. His recent venture Pataakha failed to create fireworks at the boxoffice but he was not affected by the tepid response. “As a filmmaker and storyteller, you are obsessed with the idea of telling a story, and you are compelled to tell it. Sure, in retrospect you can analyse why it didn’t connect with the audience.”

But that wouldn’t stop him from making what he wants to. Long time ago, he learnt the all important lesson from Javed Akhtar; never make films to appease or please others.

“I am responsible for myself and I am my own audience.” Of course, when an ambitious project, the much-anticipated Midnight’s Children, which was to be adapted as Netflix web-series, gets stalled, it does rankle. He had devoted a whole lot of time on Salman Rushdie’s tome and “time sure is money.”

Working on several projects currently, he won’t divulge any details about which authors are on his watch-list right now. He laughs, “You will have to pay me for that.” Well, information may or may not be money, Bhardwaj’s reflections on cinema, art and life certainly carry a wealth of meaning.