Alarm bells: Bollywood must up its game says Mehra

‘Rang De Basanti’ director says Hindi cinema has to compete at the highest level, make quality films.

NEW DELHI: Bollywood needs to focus on making better movies to tackle competition from quality films from Hollywood, said film-maker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra.

In recent times, the Indian box office has seen movies such as The Jungle Book, Captain America: Civil War and X-Men: Apocalypse fare better than Hindi films released on the same day.

Asked to comment on the success of Hollywood films in India, Mehra said, “They must be better films. We need to make better films. It’s laissez-faire. It’s an open market system.”

The Rang De Basanti director said the only way to protect Hindi cinema is to make quality films. “We have to make quality movies. And why should we do business here [in India only]? We should go out [of India] and do more business and tell Indian stories to the world.”

Mehra, best known for directing films such as Delhi-6 and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, is looking forward to the release of his next project Mirzya.



Talking about it, he said: “I saw the play [Mirza Sahiban] during college around 30 years ago and its story stayed with me. It’s a very unique story. Sahiban is a very strong protagonist, and that attracted me a lot to the folklore. This is a unique one. It’s a tragedy. It’s closest to a musical. So you can call it a Shakespearean musical tragedy, written by Gulzar. His writing is extremely layered. So to understand his writing, you need to go deep within and to reinterpret it and make his work yours. Mirzya is a contemporary story altogether,” he added.

Earlier, Mehra has mostly directed popular actors such as Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan and Farhan Akhtar in his films. But for Mirzya, he roped in newcomers Harshvardhan Kapoor and Saiyami Kher.



Asked why, Mehra said: “It was the requirement of the story that I get newcomers. I wanted a fresh feel to it as it’s a fresh take on love. I wanted the audience to experience the freshness. I had to be true to my story. If the movie works, then the [issue of big] budget is solved. If the story will not work, nothing will work. You can take the biggest star and still it [a film] will not work.”

Made on a budget of around INR350 million, Mirzya has been extensively shot in 83 days across various locations in Rajasthan such as Jodhpur, Udaipur, Jaisalmer and Mandawa as well as in Ladakh. The film is currently in post-production.

As seen in his works, Mehra has an inclination towards stories based on real events other than fiction. “For me, it is the same thing. Technically they might be different, but as a storyteller, I must have something to say from my point of view. When I made Rang De Basanti, I took Bhagat Singh, Azad, Rajguru and Sukhdev. But I reinterpreted their spirits in today’s times,” he said.

Citing the example of Bhaag Milkha Bhaag which was based on the story of athlete Milkha Singh, he added, “With Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, I reinterpreted the story of Milkha Singh not as a biopic or an athlete but as a kid who had lost his parents during partition. So it was a story of lost childhood, hatred and forgiveness. Similarly in Mirzya, I have shared what I feel about love,” he added. The film is slated to release on October 7.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 22^nd, 2016.

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