After Gorakhpur in Ishqiya , Lucknow in Dedh Ishqiya and Punjab in Udta Punjab , filmmaker Abhishek Chaubey takes the viewers into the heart of darkness of the Chambal ravines in his forthcoming Sonchiriya . He talks expansively about the place, its people and what he wants to do in the “dacoit” genre of filmmaking, the specificity of locale in his films and their contemporaneity. Edited excerpts from an interview…
Dacoits, Emergency, Western… These are the buzzwords one has been hearing around Sonchiriya… How do they come together? Or don’t they?
They do, sort of. I am going to be a bit roundabout about it. What amazed me when I went to the Chambal for the first time [with] Sudip [Sharma, the co-writer] saw the place, although I had seen Bandit Queen and Paan Singh Tomar and did extensive reading and met a lot of people, I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that such a culture existed for decades and decades in the 20th century in a place which looks so gobsmackingly beautiful.
And we had hardly ever made movies about it. Any other country and we would have had hundreds of films set around this. If you look at Paan Singh… or even Bandit… they are biopics. They are based on people who actually existed. But we were not doing that. Some of the issues that were addressed specially in Bandit… it was a revelation to me that caste issues were very important to them. Some of the gangs were of mixed castes but [were] primarily caste-led. It was as though they were performing some sort of a caste duty. That was fascinating. So some of the issues are common with Bandit… but having moved away from the biopic space, we wanted to invent the genre.
Although it has elements of the Western, it is not the conventional Western. It’s very Indian, it’s very local. Although fictional, the characters are based on research and the people we have met. The big story arc is very Western, it is very larger than life, very existential but the making or telling of it is very modern. We have not made a Western circa 1968, it’s how you’d do it in 2018 if you were living in Versova. In that sense it’s a hybrid of many things.
From what it seems an easy hybrid, not a difficult one…
We didn’t have to think our way though. I am [saying] this in hindsight. We did things unconsciously. But a few things we did discuss. The setting sun shot, with the hero in the silhouette, walking away. I didn’t want to do that. It’s been done to death. How would we do a modern thriller here? Just the way I have shot it is very contemporary, in terms of my aesthetic and language. I haven’t used the classic Western tropes, I have shot it like a modern thriller. I have not fallen into the visual trap of a Western. Blue skies and ochre landscape and all that. Our sky is grey because Indian skies are grey.
Where does the Emergency fit in?
I don’t want to spoil it for you but the idea is more [like] an internal Emergency. We are talking about the backwaters and the boondocks that were relatively untouched by the political upheavals in Delhi. We are not even in the villages but the ravines. In the outer world something is going on and in this [world] another one is on. [The] tricky thing about Chambal is that it’s in three states, MP, UP and Rajasthan. So the bandits used to make their way across the three states and not get apprehended. [During the Emergency] the local police had been given more powers. A Special Task Force was formed that could move between the three states. It happened during that era.
Dacoit films have occupied a certain mindspace for us— Sholay or Mera Gaon Mera Desh … Then there is Bandit Queen and Paan Singh Tomar that offer a different take on the bandits. Where does Sonchiriya stand?
The Indian bandit film of the 70s was ultimately inspired by the American Westerns although some filmmakers did a terrific job of localising it and making it their own. But after seeing Bandit Queen and Paan Sigh Tomar I felt that the Indian Western should have been here, the places they were set in. This is where it happened. You had rural militias. We may have shown gangs with 30-40 people but there were gangs with 200-300 people. They had very sophisticated weaponry; till very late they had better weaponry than the police. They had these highfaluting ideas about what they were doing. They were fighting for their honour, their caste. In that sense it is inspired more from Bandit Queen than the dacoit films of the 70s.
Is it a period story or does it still have contemporary relevance?
Why would you do a film set in the past if it didn’t have a resonance for the present? Both of us went into the research thinking we know everything. We did not. Some of the issues the film talks about are very contemporary issues—gender, social exploitation and social discrimination on the basis of caste.
In your films the sense of place is very important. There is a locational specificity in every film…
It’s a necessary crutch I need for making a film. I will not be able to do a film unless it is the story about a certain place. Only if I am going to go completely local, am I going to be able to say anything that has a global meaning. It’s also a reaction to the kind of cinema I grew up watching that was set in this Bollywood Neverland that I was never convinced by. I realised early, that the film should have a great sense of place and geography. Where do the characters come from? What society do they belong to? It’s very difficult for me to imagine a film that is not rooted strongly in a milieu or space. People are essentially the same everywhere, societies are different. If you try and explore the society of the place where your film is set, chances are that it will resonate with everybody across the world. If my film is about social discrimination then there is no society in the world that has not faced it.
Doesn’t the specificity call upon more from you as a filmmaker?
Hindi cinema has been the vehicle of entertainment for a society that is deeply divided. Not just in terms of beliefs but culture, the language they speak. Filmmakers from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bengal have a distinct advantage because they can be truer to their culture. Hindi cinema is like Rajasthan mein bhi dekho , Kolkata mein bhi dekho , Guwahati mein bhi . They have to become so generic. I’d rather think of myself as a regional Hindi filmmaker than a pan India Bollywood filmmaker. Then it becomes easier for me because I can be specific. At least, I am going to Chambal and shooting. This is your country. This is how people in your country speak. Make some effort to understand [this]. I will not have a locus standi on this unless I make the film.
You like exploring new zones?
That’s why I say that every film is a new job. It’s not the same job I had two years ago. You go to a new place and completely do a new thing. That’s one of the joys of being a filmmaker.
This whole grassroots engagement, for the lack of a better phrase… Is it because you grew up all over India?
I am a Tier 2 town kid. I have practically grown up everywhere—UP, Bihar, what is now Jharkhand, Hyderabad, Delhi. I can actually speak Hindi in many dialects. These are places that I haven’t visited but lived in. When I first came here I was asked where I was from. I said my parents live in Ranchi to which I was asked if there’s Star TV there. This crazy kind of ignorance in big cities, we have come a long way from it. My heritage has a strong part to play in it but it’s not that I wouldn’t be able to make a film set in Colaba. I have had access to that kind of life, have met people from that world. There are filmmakers doing that already. We have some scripts set in tony neighbourhoods of Delhi-Mumbai but I am not terribly [keen] to make that film now.
Hindi cinema is now venturing into hitherto unexplored zones…
The change is positive but now it’s going to get boring if just keep doing that. Back then there were Omkara, Khosla Ka Ghosla . I am sure it’s that UP film, that Delhi film that opened the doors. Ultimately it’s about how you choose to tell your story, what content you plan to make. Yes, we are going to Rajinder Nagar from Golf Links. Stree and Sui Dhaga were shot in Chanderi. Our hero-heroine are coming from Chanderi in MP. That’s great but ultimately what’s important is the kind of story you are telling. The change I feel has been mostly a positive one.
Sonchiriya is a multi-starrer in its own way with so many good actor. What were the highs and the pitfalls?
There five primaries but there is a gang of 30-40 of which eight are speaking parts and then there is the police contingent and all three-four people are important there. It has 15-20 major characters and then several secondary characters. We had 18-19 speaking parts. Lot of them local ones, a lot we took from Mumbai. I have become very comfortable doing it simply because I have had some experience of doing it in Udta Punjab , Omkara on which I had worked. It’s not nerve-wracking at all. If the logistics of it is not complex enough I somehow get bored. Although physically and logistically it was my hardest film, making it was the easiest.
Where do women fit in?
This is my most male film. I have managed to create women with a lot of courage in all my films. It was difficult in this film to do so because of the world it was set in. You can count the number of women in the film on one finger. It is intensely male but women in the film are at the core of it. The kind of people these are, the situation they are facing. They hardly have any chance to do anything. But with what little they have at their disposal what they manage to pull off is extraordinary.
