the inside story....sudhir mishra..!

i don't know about you...but i consider hazaaron khwaahishein aisi to be the best indian movie in last 15 years...and yes...i know what i am saying at this moment....

here the director\screenplay writer of the movie ....sudhir mishra..the man who gave us Dharavi,yeh woh manzil to nahin n of course Hazaaron....himself shares his views on the society,indian cinema and parallel culture.....as u read this u will be amazed by depth of his thoughts...

PERSONALLY SPEAKING......


1.Popular Cinema

I personally think that most film makers in India are children and most films in India are childrens’ film and rather bad childrens’ films. Their notion of love is that of a fourteen year old. In all popular entertainment the notion of life is going retarded.
It’s an illusion which you make people buy into and you get rather hurt when they realize life is not like that. There’s very little difference between selling a fake notion of life and selling a fake product. It’s like advertising. You fall in love and you live happily ever after, is as stupid a notion as you use a fairness cream and you become fair. All are very idiotic notions, sold to the naive and people make a lot of money out of that.
If everything is about profit in its most crass sense and if the world is to be like that – then, great! But, I don’t think it is.
Don’t I sense a craving for popular cinema in the audiences?
Yes, I do see a craving for hope. There’s a craving for some kind of an illusionary world, because, to live with the real is very difficult. I might sound that I am very dismissive, but actually, they may be performing … and that’s why I am saying, I am trying not to bullshit and I am speaking as I think often.
When you bullshit, you also admit the possibility of being wrong. And I admit the possibility of being wrong.
And maybe popular cinema is helping them live their lives and to help pass another day and that may be a great service. It’s like religion. It’s like Sri Sri Ravishankar. I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time. Apparently he makes a lot of people happy, especially the guilty rich and who am I to say it’s wrong, when people find some solace there and find some reprieve there and find a way of life.
People, film makers or artists who probe uncomfortable truths – will never be popular.

2. Indian writing in English…

Everything is fine as long as you are truthful to your experience. I mean, for example Upamanyu Chatterjee’s book English August is the most arrogant piece of good writing that I’ve ever seen/read. The man is an absolute arrogant snoot who has no idea of anything else but his own life, but he writes it so well that the book becomes something. Because, he’s not pretending. In the end of the book, Upamanyu starts pretending- he starts thinking – ‘Oh how should I end my book, how should I make it socially relevant’ – he starts pretending and then he makes a hash out of it. Till he stays the arrogant, snooty man without any idea of the country he has lived in it’s a great book because he’s so truthful to who he is and he’s not pretending. Then from the second, third book he starts pretending.
The good think about Arundhati Roy, for instance, is that she’s not writing the second book. She knows what she could have told. And of course she got very lucky. And the same West that she barks against all the time is what is responsible for her success and it’s just that the dollars she makes are much bigger than O.P Vijayan, for instance, who is a Kerela writer. It’s the Booker prize. If she didn’t get the booker prize, who would know of Arundhati Roy!
She is bigger to a lot of illiterates than Phanishwar Nath Renu because she got the Booker prize, because she wrote in the language that colonized the world. The same colonization that she talks about, she a product of and she prospered because of. If she didn’t write in English, and wrote like Phanishwar Nath Renu who would know of her and call her to conferences to speak about the state of the world.
But again, that’s the contradiction – she’s brilliant. I am not saying that she’s not good.
That is the problem again about conversations today. I always have to talk in an either/or
I think she’s brilliant, but I think, she’s not the only person who is. There are many.
There is Shrilal Shukla who wrote Raag Darbari and Uday Prakash, who I feel is one of the great writers of our times.

3.Politics…

A lot of people misunderstand politics. Sometimes people misunderstand that to be political, you have to join a political party. Being political is just being aware of how you are being controlled - whether it is for a woman, whether it is for a man, whether it is for anyone. If you have the knowledge of how you are being controlled, then you will be freer. And you should know how to escape. To be relatively free is the aspiration of mankind. You are never absolutely free. At all times, people want to be free, to be independent and to live their own lives. The tragedy with the human race is that when they become free they enslave others. They don’t understand that for everyone to be relatively free, every one has to make some sacrifice.
Whether you are controlled by the politburo, or you are controlled by the multinational, or you are controlled by religious system. All three are ways of enslavement. There are some people who use you for their own ends. And to be political is to understand that.

4.Art..

Do I think, generally speaking, that the Indian audience understands the experience of art?
I think the Indian audiences, for instance, when Kabir was born, understood art. Because art then was not some halo-ed notion, art then was about their own lives. Kabir’s art, the Indian audiences understood. And I don’t think today’s audiences understand films as well as Kabir’s audiences understood him.
Otherwise, if you don’t agree with what I say, then you are saying Kabir was not an artist.
So, at many times they have.
The Indian audiences, for example have understood the oral traditions very well.
Today they are being manipulated into saying, this is art and this is not. And I think, audiences should be left alone to their own notion of art. Everybody doesn’t have to appreciate everything. And today, also, I think the taste of a few is being imposed. To that set, bad art is very titillatory, just as inciting of communal passions is very easy.
Because human beings are not that evolved yet, I think to incite their basic passions is very easy and all manipulative art does that. Bad art, bad music, bad films, bad literature will always be more popular than things which are slightly more difficult and which ask of an audience to sit up and watch/listen with attention. And I think, if it was not for the vested interests, they would have evolved a lot more.
So, in between Indian cinema audiences of the 50s and now - came the gangster, the builder with his black money, and now comes the multinational with his dream of controlling the tastes of the world. In between all of that, came all those people who determined what was made.
And that is why I don’t think the State or the government needs to get into film making. What they need to ensure is democracy. What they need to ensure is that anyone can make a film. Then 90 percent of it will be crap. Or 95 percent will be crap. Just as 95 percent poetry is crap. Anybody, can write a book. But, five percent will be quite outstanding. And at any point, it’s only that five percent. Any point in history, its only 5 percent. If it’s five percent, it’s outstanding. It may even be one percent. 100 percent will never be. These are all notions. But, I think the government or people themselves, by becoming political have to ensure that for themselves.
Maybe the internet now will be the basis of that. Where you can deliver anything for everyone who is interested and technology which is now being used to, sometime enslave then will be a liberator as well. Who knows! I don’t have all the answers. I grapple with the same questions everyday. And I really think, the young should keep doing that and I seriously think it is the job of every, one young fortunate Indian who has access to all these things, to take 2-3 not so fortunate Indians and introduce and expose them to that and, who knows where the genius lies. I seriously think, since governments will fail, the new politics is that where people themselves take control of their lives and do what they can and not try and do what is ideal but do what they can.
And to all creative people who say that – ‘oh you are not joining the revolution’, screw the revolution…
Just do what you can!