For Hindi film buffs, Govind Nihalani needs no introduction. With Aakrosh (1980), he joined the ranks of serious filmmakers in India. Since then he has not looked back. After directing more than a dozen thought-provoking features, he is known as a director who portrays the grim social reality without any compromises. However, his Thakshak (1999), laced with popular stars and the masala of the mainstream fares, was seen as a departure, a move away from the past. Has the angry auteur given in to the demands of the market? Has the pendulum swung to the other side completely in his case? In a private conversation held in New Delhi in 2003, Nihalani shares with Zafar Anjum his ideas on films and filmmaking.
Very little is known about your early days and your initiation into cinema. How did you get interested in films?
My interest in cinema dates back to my childhood. I saw films and fell in love with them. (Pause) See, I come from a traditional Hindu family. My family, rather my father, was very religious. So, I used to be taken to films, which were only mythologicals. Children were supposed to be taken to only mythological films and not any other films. My first memory of cinema as I saw it was a film called Narsi Bhagat. It was a very famous film in the 40s. I still remember the thrill I felt when I saw a small boy feeding pigeons, and then I remember, the camera goes on to the pigeons. There is a dissolve to another set of pigeons. And as you track back, there was an elderly man, a grown up man feeding the pigeons. And I understood it was the boy who grew up. See, as a child suddenly I understood what had happened. The thrill of realizing what is happening in front of you, I remember that. That was the beginning of my getting the thrill from cinema. That thrill and pleasure continued. But as I told you since my father was very strict about these things, I saw very few films.
Then when I was near high school, I used to go to a cinema hall very near to my school. There I discovered the English films. I never bunked school to see films. I used to find time to go and see them. That is when the whole excitement started. Then of course Hindi films also.
In spite of the fact that I was exposed to literature, Hindi literature, Geeta Press Gorakhpur se Kalyan nikalta tha (Geeta Press, Gorakhpur, used to bring out the Kalyan magazine). Abhi bhi nikalta hai (It still comes out). Us me pamphlets nikalte the: “Cinema—Manoranjan ya Vinaash ka saadhan” (They used to carry pamphlets: “Cinema: Entertainment or the Means of Destruction”). Aisa literature padh ke (after reading such literature), I became a great fan of cinema. (Laughs)
Then after high school, my father told me to take some vocational course. Because, you see, my family had migrated from Pakistan and had struggled for survival. My father was very keen that his children got some skill so that they could survive in life. So I was looking for a career in civil and radio engineering. I came across an advertisement, which said “cinematography”.
Now this word did magic to me. It was a combination of cinema and photography. Photography I was already interested in. In art, I had joined drawing classes. One of my cousins was a still photographer, a professional. He had a shop. So I got very much interested in photography. The combination of cinema and photography in one word—cinematography—I felt like electric current passing through me. My father was very much against this. I discovered that that school was actually a very small kind of a school in Bombay whose address I could not trace. But the thing set in my mind that I had got to do this. Then I started looking for institutes that offered these courses, and at that time, there was one institute in Bangalore and another was in Madras. I chose Bangalore and much against my father’s wishes, I joined that. Because one of the guru’s of my family (he) looked at my horoscope and said he is bound to do something, which is connected with arts as well as machinery, so let him go. My father said that whatever the guru says, I’d do. So my father said that if he said this, O.K., you go. And that’s how I joined the institute in Bangalore, and…
… the rest we know. Please tell us something about your last film Deham. Where does this film fit in you body of work? Can we see it in the continuity of your earlier probing films, starting with Aakrosh?
Well, you see, in a way there’s (a) continuity. The continuity is in the … in the sense that (I have) my films have always been related to some issue that I feel at that time (when I made the choice of the story somewhere I feel) that that issue is relevant to us. To find an answer to the issue is relevant to us. My films may not give you all the answers. But the fact is my films take a stand. They say this is the problem and as far as I think as a director this is the way out, a possible way out. Now you can agree with me, you can disagree with me. A debate can start and that is the positive outcome of any film that deals with any issue with certain degree of seriousness. Because the form is a different matter: how I make a film, the way the script is written, basically to hold your attention, also to give you pleasure while you are watching, and at the same time to stimulate your mind also. So most of my stories have been selected according to my response to the situation around me at that particular moment. So in that sense, Deham is in the same line, in the same format, which deals with questions, which I think, are very relevant to us for our near future. The film is not taking place today. It is taking place twenty years from now. So 20 years from now with the kind of technological advances we are getting in all fields. In this case, the story concentrates on the technological advances in genetics and in transplants of body parts, you know. So, a body also becomes a kind of commodity. And the relationship between the societies who are not very resourceful, who don’t have advanced technology and their relationship with the societies which have lot of resources and very advanced technology—what is the relationship between the two, because that is what is going to develop very soon. The technological gap between the third world societies and the first world societies is going to widen at an alarming rate. So suddenly, in two years’ time you become so much advanced that the third world society, which was getting technologically advanced, is even left more behind. So in that case what is going to be the relationship between these kinds of societies and where does a human being stand there irrespective of the political ideologies, irrespective of your cultural identity? The thing is you as a human being means a person with a body of your own. You call yourself this is my body. Who does really own your body? These are the kind of very basic questions that are going to decide the relationship between societies, which are on very different degrees of development.
Connected to your remark that you select films on the basis of what you see happening around you, do you read a lot of literature, books, and stories?
Well as much as I can. At one stage, I had lot of time because I had less work. So (laughs) I used to read a fair amount of books. But as the work schedule becomes tighter and tighter, then the reading is lesser. So I become choosier and a little more impatient. If the book doesn’t hold me in the first 25-50 pages, I drop it because there are three other books waiting (laughs). I always tell my friends (when they come to my house and find a lot of books) that I have perhaps the town’s largest library of unread books! (Laughs vigorously) Because I buy them hoping that at some stage I’ll read them. Then I read them till I don’t find them very interesting. Then I put them aside and read another one. So… (laughs)
Watching your films I observed, and most others also must have felt the same, that your protagonists always face a moral dilemma. Why is it so? Also, how do you see your hero vis a vis the conventional hero of Bollywood?
I think the moment you see the way you have observed my films, you know that that is the basic difference. (Long pause) And why shouldn’t my hero be faced with a dilemma, whether it is moral or not? I’ll say he is always faced with the dilemma of choice and the choice decides the quality of life he will lead from that point onward till the crisis is resolved. And when I say quality of life I mean whether he will be able to see his face in the mirror proudly or with lowered eyes. There is a certain sense of dignity to my protagonist’s existence who is very much involved in finding the solution to the crisis that he is facing. That is a very important point. You very rightly noted that.
The other thing is that the difference between my protagonist and any other Hindi film protagonist is I’d say mine is more near to reality than the popular films’ protagonist because popular films function on the model of a fairy tale. There also, good always wins over the evil. But there is a certain amount of simplification in the whole thing. See, the questions or the dilemmas are extremely simplified in the sense that the villain wants the property of the heroine and therefore he is after her, wants to kill her. And since the hero is in love with the heroine, he wants to save her. It becomes that simple. And perhaps for the folklorish or the fairy tale kind of a model, that is appropriate. Certain amount of simplicity is appropriate. But for the kind of cinema that I have been trying to attempt, that element is lessened or almost eliminated. One tries to look at the finer shades of the crisis. The complexity involved is not the simple issue of yes or no, there are four five other issues involved which are in some ways contributing to it. They may not be very major issues. But you cannot ignore them. They are there and you have to deal with them. So it is the difference of complexity and simplicity; simplicity in a more popular kind of production. And in my kind of production one wants to attempt finer shades.
In literature, we have this debate about the role and place of art in society (art for art’s sake or art for society’s sake). Transposing this question to cinema, how do you see your concern as a filmmaker? Do you see yourself as a conscience keeper of society or as a pure artist?
I don’t look at myself as some kind of a messiah or a person who is out to reform society. As an artist I’d say that I express myself on the issues the way I feel. I hope I’m not alone in the society. There will be several people who’ll share my views. So there may be a certain amount of connection with the audience from that sense. Otherwise, I don’t look at myself as any kind of reformer. The fact is choice in art about whether you want to do what you might call a socially relevant work or purely artistic work—which means purely aesthetic, the pleasure has to be purely aesthetic—that choice is the prerogative of the artist. I don’t think that in art we can function with very narrow and absolute kind of definitions. If you do this, this is art. If you don’t do this, this is not.
You know, that kind of a thing. Art is a very vast kind of a thing and in that every artist has the right to (make) his or her own choice and I think no body has the right to pass value judgment at him whether he is right or wrong or is good or bad. You know, you’ve to let the artist choose his own themes and treatment.
Why do you seem to be stuck with a particular format of filmmaking? Your films always have dark themes. Giving latitude to your talent, would you ever attempt to make a comedy, or a film different from what you generally make?
I have always said that and I find this kind of question rather strange. In a way it is also a compliment because people think that maybe I have talent for other films also. I feel happy that people think that (laughs). But the fact is if a person is doing some good work in a particular area, I think he should be allowed to do that. You don’t ask a dental surgeon that why don’t you operate on heart! That is his specialization. Well, art me aisa hota hai ki log badalte hai (in art, it so happens that people change), according to the times. If I am alive to my times, according to my sensibility, I’ll also grow. I’ll also change. Now all along you see the themes were connected with the society around me immediately, and institutions—our institutions of governance—how they were affecting individuals. You know my films have been connected with that: communalism, police, trade unions, with that kind of world. So, only with Deham I’m taking a break, rather a leap and I’m trying to visualize the future. Now in this case again, you were talking to me about literature. Deham is based on a play by Manjula Padmanabhan. The play is called Harvest.
This play got the top award in world competition organized by Onasis Foundation in 1997. I read that and I liked the content of the play, and acquired the rights to do this. So the source can be either literature, or it can be a news item in the newspaper, or a short story. I have no prejudice that a play cannot be cinema or that a short story cannot be turned into a big film. Aisa kuchh nahin hai (There’s nothing like this). The source can be anywhere. Ultimately what matters is how the film is realized.
Thakshak had a different format compared to your earlier films—it had songs, dances, and all the typical mainstream film elements. Was it a digression or was it taking a new direction?
No. It was my attempt to also connect with the popular cinema audience. Reasons are two. Number one, the resources for making the kind of films I was making so far are drying up very fast. The commercial viability of such projects is receding because the commercialization, the glamour and the hype are taking over. I have to survive. So I must do the kind of work that will get me resources to make the film, because that’s the only thing I know. So if we have the stars the resources become available.
Now I was trying to create a situation where I had the resources, had the stars, but I had total control over my material. I was prepared to take that risk. The film did not do particularly well at the box office. That’s a different thing. But in that film also, if you see, my concerns had not been given up. It’s only the format. I’ve always said that the commercial format is very near to our own folk traditions. It’s a question of how we have used that form to project modern ethos through the medium and I will continue to do so. The effort was to increase the audience base and to have some resources for making a film so that you have some strength to choose your own subjects, and not give in to the market completely.
You made Thakshak. Your colleague Shyam Benegal made Zubieda. These films used the elements of the mainstream cinema. Do you think the narrative structure of the mainstream Hindi cinema has gained legitimacy?
See, there is no question of legitimacy and non-legitimacy. There is nothing wrong with the form. The form has survived in terms of folk theatre for centuries and in cinema for the last hundred years. So somewhere the form is connecting with our own people. So there’s nothing wrong with that. Form is just a strategy to put your content in front of the audience so that you can share your experiences with them. Now the real battle in not on the form. The important thing is what you are telling. What is the stand that you are taking? What are the values that you are supporting? That is more important. Your sensibility that comes through the form is more important because after all Bimal Roy, Shantaram, and even Mehboob used the same form. Mehboob made Mother India in the same form. But you won’t call it a commercial or an art film. It’s a great film. Why? Not because it had songs in it. Not because there were stars in it. But what are the values the film stood for? Do Bigha Zameen was dealing with famine and it has songs, and it has stars of that day, did not take away from the reality of the famine or the reality of the issue. So what is important is what you are putting through. The shape of the bottle is not important. What is important is the wine in it. (Laughs).
Would you ever want to make an epic where you have all the rasas in balance?
Every artist wants to do that. Certainly, hopefully, one day one will find the subject and the talent to match it and create something, which has all the rasas in balance, create the work that will be remembered for generations. It is a dream I always strive for. (Laughs)
How do you envisage the future of independent, non-mainstream filmmakers? Will they go digital and will their films to be restricted to an eclectic audience?
For the people who are attempting works away from the popular format, away from the mainstream format, it is very important that they or we keep up with the technology because survival is there. You cannot say that sound is very good only in analog and I’ll not use digital. See, you cannot fight technology because technology is advancing regardless of whether you like it or not. The best thing is to make use of that technology. In parallel cinema or in the independent cinema what is important is that your products should be made as economically as possible. If they are expensive, a, you may not get money to make them and, b, you may not be able to recover the cost. Unfortunately, cinema is not like painting.
Painting ko bhi bechana padta hai survival ke liye (Even paintings have to be sold for survival). Lekin cinema me to without selling the film you have no survival (However, in cinema, without selling the film you have no survival). Because the important thing is that you should be able to make your next film and that you can make even if you don’t make great profits. At least your investment should come back. Otherwise where will you get the money to play with? You can’t depend upon organizations and governments for their schemes to support this kind of cinema forever. So the thing is, make use of the technology, digital or otherwise; reduce the cost, and find a form in which you make your point strongly, without incurring too much expense. That’s the only way.
Thank you very much Mr. Nihalani for sharing your thoughts with us.
Welcome.
Chowk.com, 2003
Look at some of the Hollywood releases in the recent past: A-Team, Losers, Salt and if you go a little back in time, Green Zone, Traitor, and Body of Lies. What do these films have in common? On the surface, they are action movies, about characters from the US military or intelligence agencies. But beneath the surface reality, there is even a deeper reality: the good guys and the bad guys in all these movies come from the same institutions, parts of the US military or intelligence establishment. Is this a Freudian slip on the part of Hollywood? Or is this deliberate?
