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Shyam Benegal has been making highly-acclaimed films since the early seventies. In those days he had to struggle to find a footing since his themes were completely different from those of Bollywood. Over the years, he has continued to make movies with serious themes but found wide acceptance too. In an interaction with Express staff, moderated by Consulting Editor Shailaja Bajpai, Benegal spoke about recent trends in film making, film makers he admires, and how the village, the theme of many of his early films, has fallen off the map.

Shailaja Bajpai: I would request Mr Benegal to comment on his personal grouse about the period where he changed really his approach to cinema

Shyam Benegal: Well, when I started making films i.e. fiction films in the early 1970s, it took me a very long time really because most young people today make their very first feature films by the time they are in their mid 20s or early 30s. But when I made my first feature film in my late 30s, it had taken me 13 years of taking my script around to various producers, hoping that they would pick up the subjects on which I could make a film. Now that was a long journey and difficult simply because I was wanting to make films that were different from what was the prevailing form of films. And the prevailing form is what I now called as the traditional Indian cinema and I was very impatient with that kind of cinema at that time. I had to qualify because my views have changed somewhat because if something like entertainment, which the people of the entire country seem to enjoy most. When you are young, you can take a very strong position and say that you disagree with this kind of form, but there must be some reason why people enjoy certain films, which if you look at them at their face value you might say they are naive but they are not as naive as they seem. And all that you discover much later. But at that time it was important for me to say that I was not going to make films of that nature and I had to make a film that would clearly be my own expression in the cinema and also creatively speaking. I used to think that the traditional form of the Indian cinema was in many ways was simply a pedestrian paint. And anything you had, say you had a number of ideas but once you made a film, it exactly looked like the one made before. Everything came from the same kind of sausage machine, so you get identical sausages at the end of the day. Now that is a position I don’t agree with and later changed my stand also because I believe that there were tremendous possibilities in the traditional format of filmmaking. But of course, when I started making films, I had a different perception. I felt it was very important to make films that were socially engaged, your concern should be the concern of the environment and the community in which you live and it should reflect in the ideas you decide to deal with. Now those ideas have not really changed for me since then because I continue to believe that films have a role and have to be in many ways forms of expressions, which have some social engagement. Now that is not to say that films must essentially have a message to carry but be in some ways a kind of response to the world around, that is an important aspect of cinema. Whatever kind of films you make, be it a documentary or a fiction film, you ought to have to have a connection of that kind. In the last couple of years I have discovered that the cinema has become particularly interesting sort of space in which people have all kinds of political views can come in and use that as platform for making themselves seen and heard. Films like Jodha Akbar, what happened to that or one other film where you had the fact that somebody used a traditional idiom suddenly becomes a bone of contention in a song and the film gets banned. So when you say there has to be some engagement, you have to be apparently very careful because we are such a diverse community and one part of the country may not necessarily find some kind of sympathetic response whereas the same expression might have different meanings. But you don’t worry about these things when you start making a film, because if you worry about them from the beginning then you are really engaging yourself in self-censorship. And self-censorship is the worst kind of thing to start off with when it comes to any kind of creative functioning.

Shailaja Bajpai: And what is your take on the corporatisation of Indian cinema.

Shyam Benegal: Corporatisation has happened in the last few years and there are good things and there are bad things attached to it. Now good thing is that opportunities have opened up for filmmakers like never before, as filmmaking has always been a difficult profession and it meant a great deal of struggle for a lot of people who wanted to make films. Today all that to some extent has disappeared and young people can come and make films if they have interesting subjects, that has started to happen, which is a good part of it. And the bad part of it... I would not exactly call it the bad part of it. But by corporatisation what has happened is that the corporate production companies have started looking at the business bottom line of the projects the film means that you access the film as a product, as a commodity. And to access it as a commodity even before you’ve made it, you put certain things into the film, which make it financially viable and financially successful. Now, that is a kind of thing, which most creative people do not like. They would say “O my God! I were to make a film which I thought would make a wonderful picture, a film which is artistic in nature and has some social value. There would be some kind of insight into life itself, which is the ambition of any creative person. But when it comes to filmmaking, it starts with the fact that whether it has some value as a product and when assessment is based on that a certain preconditions come into the process. And the preconditions usually are that what makes a film valuable, in the sense that it will do well in the market place. It means that you have to be particular about the star talent that goes into it to make it commercially viable. So there is a tremendous pressure because you have to balance the cost that goes into it. You can make films that cost less money or more money and so on. But there is an optimum cost for any film. Some subjects, for instance, you like it or not, you cannot make it on small budgets say an epic or a film that involves historical reconstruction. Now in the said cases you know that you can’t do it in a limited budget. And if you are spending so much money you need to make sure that it has got all the ingredients, which are likely to make it successful even before you start making the film. For a simple reason, like, for instance, you announce a film with Shah Rukh khan, one of the biggest stars we have, automatically it means that you will be able to raise a fair amount of money and then you really don’t have to worry because there is Shah Rukh Khan in the film, which would mark its success. There are a few stars like that who have proved themselves time after time and film after film. Now, for instance, there is Akshay Kumar whose all film have been hugely successful. So he is considered as a brilliantly bankable huge star. Now all that is being looked at today in a very different way, than it used to be in the past.

Shailaja Bajpai: But you have not really made films with big stars. Even if so, very few. There were people like Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil and Naseeruddin Shah who you did help, but...

Shyam Benegal: They became stars eventually. But in the beginning it wasn’t possible but at that time I did want a star but couldn’t get one. Firstly at that time the subject seemed to be one that was so radical in nature and most stars wouldn’t want to be seen doing parts like this because after all when you are a star due to a certain public image, you’ve created for yourself and you cannot wear away from that particular image because if you do that you lose the very thing that makes you a star. Because the public image you have is larger than reality and if you work against that image, you had it, you know. The film might probably fail and damage the star’s reputation. So when you cast stars, you have to be very conscious of these aspects because you cannot do things that go against the image of the star. They also don’t have the kind of areas to manoeuvre as you might imagine. When you become a huge star, its very difficult to live up to the image you have created and you cant afford to do something totally different from what you are known for. It’s very rare and only few of them can do it. We do have some like Saif Ali Khan in Omkara, completely against his set image, you have cases like that but stars usually stay away from the parts that present them in a completely different light. But Amitabh can now do whatever he desires. He is at a stage in his career where he can do any kind of part. Probably all the challenges in his role, he is accepting today, he might have not been able to accept them 20 years back.

Coming back to my films. I couldnt get stars and when I failed to get them, I did the next best thing--choose really good actors. And luckily I managed to find excellent talent. All of them in their own right are brilliant actors. Some have star status; others have reputation for being brilliant actors. Now that was the route for me. It was later. Largely when Shashi Kapoor was producing and felt that we could work together. And I made two films with him. That time he was a star. Then of course we had others too. Rekha, for instance, was a reigning star when we made Kalyug. So I have used stars. And much later when I made Zubeida, for instance, Karishma was there in it. It is not that I haven’t used stars. Its just that it happened that way.

Leher Kala: What would you do differently, if you were to make Bose: The Forgotten Hero once again? Why do you think it didnt work?

Shyam Benegal: I would not make that film differently for the simple reason that I had chosen to make the film in that way and its also just three years back. I was simply interested in the five years 1940-45, when it escaped. I think it would have worked had it been promoted properly. It went absolutely cold into the cinema. No body ever knew that the film was ever released. That was number one. Secondly, was what I had done with the film i.e. I made three and a half hours long. And today such long films don’t get easy releases, especially in today’s age of multiplexes where they want to make money with frequent screenings. And a three and a half hour film in this case would mean that they are going to lose two shows in a given day in that particular hall. SO that is also why it didn’t do well on cinemas, although it seems to be coming on televisions every now and then. It has been that way for some time now.

Coomi Kapoor: Because of circumstances you had to work with unknown actors and actresses. But people you chose have gone on to become stars like Shabana and Smita Patil. So how you managed to spot their talent? There were whole lot of actors but how did you manage to say spot Shabana, for instance.

Well some came from the NSD and some from the Film and Television Institute, which used to run acting courses. But many of them emerged from the FTII. Shatrugan Sinha, for instance. As for Shabana, I was looking for actors for Ankur. I even asked Aparna sen for the role but she said it would be difficult to master the accent, as I wanted the film to be shot in Dakhini. So you had all those kind of problems. One day, this cousin of mine asked me if I had seen Kaifi Azmi’s daughter? I said “No”, as I didnt even know that kaifi had a daughter at that time. So my assistant told me, “she has just passed out of the Film Institute and is a very talented girl. Would you like to see her”? and I said “yes”. And as she walked into my office, I knew that I had my Lakhsmi, the main character in the film. There was something about her confidence, relaxed and totally unpretentious outlook. I didnt even audition her and told her that she is going to be in my film. And as she walked out, I told her that she will be even doing my second film. She went back and told her mother then and said that “there is this fraud who says he is going to make his first film with me and also his second film. I do not believe a word that he said.” But she actually did those films and other films too later.

I first saw Smita Patil on TV as a Doordarshan Marathi newsreader. A friend of mine knew her sister and sent her to me. I thought she represented a very Indian look. When she met me, the first thing she said is I don't want to act, so don't offer me a role. I offered her one, nonetheless which she declined. It was her mother who persuaded her to accept. Thorughout our first film she would ring up her mother every day and complain that she hated the work and couldn't understand what we were upto. It is only after she saw the film, that she understood and appreciated what we had done. However, until she acted in Bhumika and won a National Award, she didn't want an acting career. After that she took to it seriously

Pallavi Jassi: As a director, when you cast actors from the younger lot, what is it that you look for? Are you still looking for actors and not stars? And does choosing a star limit your creative insticts?

I am looking for actors and if I get a star, my work gets easier. But yes, like others, I am looking for talent to figure in the films as actors. Plus you are also looking for other talents in terms of technical support. So casting can be at times easy and some times tough.

As for creativity, you chose a star as per the part you think is in the ambit of what the star represents. So the kind of roles they have been doing in the past, you may extend it but then casting them in a new light absolutely is not all that easy. It can be dicey. But it depends but some people manage to do that. There are people who are stars because they can do all kinds of parts. Aamir Khan for instance is a huge star but at the same time does different roles brilliantly. But then we do not have too many such stars in the industry.

Aditi Das Nigam: In the past ten years, we have hardly seen a movie with a rural background. It is primarily urbanised. Do you think multiplexes and corporatisation has removed rural India from the mindscape of Bollywood filmmakers?

Shyam Benegal: Aspirations I think, people’s aspirations are responsible for the same. The whole liberalisation of the economy and the kind of urban options that people have today and also the process of urbanization itself has made the aspirations of the young are totally within the urban format. Even if you look at aspirations of the young people in the village, they are also very urban. And the entertainment media generally tend to reflect the aspirations of the young and in that space rural India seems to have fallen off the map over a period of time. I feel very sad that this has happened because half of our world is there but now in a sort of darkness, which I find very saddening. But what I have done now is my latest film Mahadev ka Sajjanpur, actually revisits a village. I want to bring the village back in and include it in our urban lives once again and not think that it does not exist anymore or goes completely out of consciousness. So the film that I have just done is set in a village but is a comic satire. It deals with today and seems as a comedy though the situation in Indian village is quite grim because the village in fact has got neglected.

Neha Sharma Bahl: You are the pioneer of the parallel cinema. What is your take on the present status of the so-called parallel cinema is it there at all?

Shyam Benegal: I don’t like, rather never liked that term “parallel cinema”. Some people did it for sake of convenience that you can neatly sideline certain films in that fashion. But it does not help. I don’t think it helps. I can only say that films since they are made as per individual sensibilities and if your sensibility work in a certain way, you surely end up making those kinds of film. At different times young people come into the film business and they start making films thinking that may be they can make films and express themselves better by not using the existent forms and also come with ideas that are different and original as compared to what is being constantly done. Because a lot of what is being constantly done is based on previous successes. When you look at the business end of it, it has always been like that. Say, for instance, if something has worked in the market as a product you bound to have people imitating the same product or you work on that model and create something else. Those who are conditioned to work as per the convention of filmmaking, then they will function very much in the mainstream areas. And those who are not may be on the margins. So that is what it was. When people used the term parallel cinema, it was not as if there was some kind of movement but what did happened was that when the Film Institute had the first batch of graduates coming into the film business, they came with certain background of the cinema and those who were from within the industry came with a certain other background of the cinema. Therefore, the films started looking different from one another. And somebody started calling these sorts of films as parallel cinema.

Surabhi: You said that you try to have a social message but since the time you started, a number of other mediums of communication have come in so do you think that cinema is playing the kind of role, it used to at one point of time?

Shyam Benegal: It does reflect a great deal of what is happening in the world today in some tangential way, if not directly and certainly in many cases films can even determine fashions and has an impact in a way a language evolves. You know all this happens. Cinema in someways is a larger than life medium, whereas television is not a larger than life medium. Television is on same plain as we are because television is much more familiar and is a part of our household, an element in the home, it is a voice there just as somebody else’s voice around you. So it’s different in that sense. Cinema on the other hand is something that you go to see. So it will not lose that stature whatever happens. It will remain that way. Although we have home theatres and other such gadgets but nothing can really replace the big screen where everybody goes into the hall and there is darkness, focus is on the screen and the experience of other people. So in that sense it is quite a unique kind of experience. So that is there. But what you say is somehow true where social engagement is concerned. Less of it is visible. The primary function of cinema is to entertain but it need not be its total function. However, entertainment is gradually becoming its total function and much of social engagement in the media is moving into television and documentary films and so on so forth. Documentary films today, you must have noticed, are extremely socially engaging that too in a way they have never been in the past. And much of this has moved from the films to other mediums.

Coomi Kapoor: And what about films like Munnabhai or Parzania?

Shyam Benegal: They are interesting and had a social undercurrent. These films were hugely popular. Part of it is also because of the multiplexes where you have many more screens and you can have a diverse kind of affair. So you can make a choice, when it comes to the kind of films that you wish to see, something which didn’t exist before. That is a good part of the change and arrival of multiplexes.

Sharon Fernandes: I just wanted to ask you about Trikaal, which was such a hauntingly beautiful movie. Do you think it could work now if anybody had to make it now? Back then it was looked at as parallel cinema and was appreciated in that niche circuit. Do you think it can do well probably now?

Shyam Benegal: Had it been made now, even with the same group of people, it would be much successful as compared to what it was back then. Its very funny you know, since multiplexes have brought back the kind of audiences who had given it up at one point of time. They have started to come back because there is a huge choice of films. When I made Trikaal, that’s 23 years ago one of the things that happened that when after completing the film, I showed it in Delhi there were some critics who asked me at press conferences that why did I chose to make a foreign film, whereas it was a film about Goa. So you know these things happen. We don’t recognize ourselves in our country frequently. It was a funny thing. The film was a success and did particularly well in places like Bangalore and Mumbai but in Delhi it was scene as a foreign film.

Surabhi: Remakes are the flavour of the season, what would be your reaction if someone approaches you to remake one of your films.

Shyam Benegal: I don’t feel possessive about any of my films. One its done, its done. It has got its own life. I don’t have to do anything with it. I cut the umbilical chord, the day my film gets a censor certificate. After that it has to have its own life because I do not wish that connection to continue. And if someone wishes to remake them, good luck to them. I personally don’t have any feelings to make them one way or the other.

Shailaja Bajpai: You are Guru Dutt’s cousin but you never worked with him. You were not convinced with his kind of traditional cinema, as you call it. But now you have changed your perception. So if you could take us through that period and comment on how things were?

Shyam Benegal: Well, I think Guru Dutt was a hugely inspirational figure. Especially for me as his success meant that even I could make a film because where I came from, Hyderabad, there was no film industry. Nothing was there at all. And anybody with the kind of ambition I had would be seen with a great deal of suspicion thinking that there was actually something wrong in my head.

I come from a very large family –10 siblings and I was the last of the sons. My father was a Gandhian, very strict and authoritarian but he was very emancipated too: he decided that he would educate all his daughters, and told us, boys that if we wanted to go to university we would have to fund ourselves. I was lucky enough to go through all my education on scholarships – that meant I always had to be at the top.

Guru Dutt, my cousin, in his mid 20s was, however, already a huge success when I was in my teens. He made Baazi, a very successful film. He inspired me a lot and I thought that even I should make fims and be successful like him. The film that he was making one after the other, with the exception of Pyaasa, which I liked very much and Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam later. But what I didn’t like was the excess of melodrama in traditional Indian cinema and Guru Dutt to me represented the best of that tradition. But for me because when you very young, you are a fanatical and at least I thought that I was not going to make the kind of films. But when I started, he did approach me and said that why don’t I join him but I didn’t because I never wanted to get infected. Which I don’t know whether good or bad, I never questioned that. And now when I reassess the work people did back the, I do realize that they had a lot to offer. They created a whole aesthetic which is an abiding aesthetic as far as Indian cinema is concerned. But in my old days, I recognize that but in those days I didn’t.

Neelima: Do you take film critics seriously?

Shyam Benegal: I have a complaint that newspapers don’t take critics seriously. National newspapers are not serious about them. They simply look out for reviewers who can tell you that see this film and don’t see that film. I think that is not the way it should be. You have to be a critic like what you have for say New York Times. We don’t have even a single person who is paid that kind of attention. We don’t have any body. In international dailies like The Guardian, The Financial Times or The Washington Post, critics are taken very seriously both by the audience and the filmmakers. They feel what they are doing is worthwhile. But here my fear is that people who write on films are not taken seriously by the newspapers, forget about the public at large. For years, I know of national newspapers who had given up writing reviews altogether. Like they had given up book reviews and the situation of music reviews is even worse. They are hardly seen. You see art has been neglected in that sense. So you when you talk about criticism, any kind of criticism to flourish, you should know the source from where it is originating. People you are writing for must appreciate you before the public. Now it has become fashionable to write criticism in a strange fashion. There was a time when everybody was exceedingly polite; the idea was not to hurt anybody’s feelings. And now what they do is to hurt everybody’s feelings. Even for television film critics it has become fashionable to say that it is awful. Please do not go and see it. We have criticisms but they are not very serious

Raghavendra: Any subject which is close to your heart and you have still not been able to make? And if you can name them, say if there are any stories which producers are not willing to sponsor?

Shyam Benegal: There are many such themes but I can’t name them until I make a film. As for not getting producers there are a number of plots in my mind. For instance, I wanted to make a film on Begum Samroo because I thought that she had a great historical importance. I wanted to capture that period of Indian history, particularly towards the end of great Mughals. It was an unsettled time in Northern India. But it also was a time when so much poetry flourished. Extraordinary things were happening in the field of art. It was to be an international production and in my mind at that time I had mentally caste Jaya Bachchan to play Begum Samroo because she had the perfect built for Samroo. I spoke about this project to Columbias in Los Angeles but nothing came out of it but then I did have a project like that. And it would have been a wonderful film, which I am sure is a possibility now than it was then. I am talking about 20 odd years ago. It was also very interesting time because a lot of these Hollywood companies who were showing films in India could not repatriate the money. They had to spend it here and some of them decided to put their money into production. So that is how that project and others like that came up. Some work was done on many of them but they never reached any where. And you just gave it up.

Raghavendra: Any film that you regret making.

Shyam Benegal: I do not regret making any film. None at all because one thing that I do not like is looking back. I don’t look back at any of them and continue to believe that all my films are flawed. None of them is totally flawless, that is an attempt to make a film that is flawless until I make them I am totally enthusiastic about them. But once I make them, I simply forget about them. That is the only way to function because I don’t feel the need to burden myself by looking back into where what went wrong.

Anushree: Is your forthcoming film on Noor Inayat Khan, your most ambitious project yet in terms of production and recreating Second World War?

Shyam Benegal: This story has been fascinating from past 13 years when I came to know of her at the tome of the 50th anniversary of the Second World War in Britain. There everybody was talking about the great heroes of the War and things were being published there. And the Indian community in London was doing there own little compilation of people of Indian origin who were also warriors but remained unacknowledged in Britain. Among the many stories was the story of Noor Inayat Khan, which I read and it struck to me as a great subject for the film and subsequently a novel came and then Sharbani Basu wrote her biography with great deal of research. The moment the book came, I read it immediately and wanted to get the rights of that book. But the rights had already been taken by Lord Meghnad Desai and Ishwar (please confirm name) so I sent a message asking them for the script and they asked me if I would like to direct the film on a condition that they would write the script and I agreed. And at the moment we are just putting it all together, the script is more or less in a shape.

Coomi Kapoor: Initially you had to struggle a lot and even keep your job while you made your first movie.

Shyam Benegal: Making fiction films for me was always seen by myself as a kind of vocation. It amy or may not be my profession but surely was a vocation in life. When I started making features, I wasn’t holding a job at that time. I got an opportunity to come out of my job because I was married and afraid of taking this risk of making a feature film which may or may not work. So I was holding on to a lucrative job as creative head in an ad agency, which was very good. But what happened was that I got the Homi Bhaba fellowship and those two years convinced me that there was no way I could do without making films. So when I came back, I was running a small advertising-film company with a friend of mine, where we made commercials. And that’s where I made my first feature film which was successful but my producer said to me that forget about money, just go on making films. You become famous and I become rich. That is what happened. A chap called Mohan Bijlani in partnership ran a company called the Blaze advertising, which were at that time the largest distributors of advertisements to be shown in cinemas in the country. And Mohan Bijlani was the person who offered me to put money into my picture but he askd me not to accept money out of it. But it did work and then they went on to produce my five more films.

Neha Sharma Bahl: There was a very funny controversy surrounding Jodha Akbar and within no time it was all gone. So do you think the fanatics got it wrong or the director?

Shyam Benegal: I don’t think that the director got it wrong. As I said, it is a very interesting phase, when I say interesting I mean it in a negative sense because you can pick on anything in a film and it automatically gets so much publicity. I could never understand what it was in Jodha Akbar, which was supposed to be distorted. Because the filmmaker mentioned clearly in the beginning that where it is fiction and where it is fact. When you have already done that and that too when the film was not that unresearched. Now Ashutosh didn’t invent Jodha Bai. I go to Fateh Pur Sikri almost every year and the guy there says, “Ye Jodha Bai ka mahal, ye mandir”. All this has been going on for so long. Why didn’t they object to it then?

Shailaja Bajpai: But can you imagine history to the extent of portraying that certain things never happened.

It isn’t like that. By fictionalizing it is meant that say…the fact that two people were married there is nothing wrong in that. The fact that they were romancing is your imagination. No one can tell you whether Akbar sang songs to her or she sang them to him. But I can imagine that. The fact is that if I were actually to be totally away from history, which Ashutosh was not. As in there were many event in Akbar’s life, which Ashutosh dealt with and have been written by historians. Say if tomorrow someone goes on to say that Jodha didn’t look like Aishwarya and Akbar like Hritik Roshan. All that is fiction. Its basically the idea to make it all the more interesting. I don’t see anything wrong in that. Sometimes even historically right things are considered to be wrong. For instance, when I made the film on Bose there was a case in Kolkata High Court saying that he didn’t die in a crash. And someone in a letter had objected to the fact that Netaji wasn’t married. Then what about her daughter Anita Bose? She very much exists. She had a mother who was officially invited by our government but then people objected. It’s very odd but these things do happen.

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