“The youth is really looking for inspiration.” There is a twinge of sadness in Ketan Mehta’s voice as we sit down and discuss his latest biopic “Manjhi – The Mountain Man”. The genre is not new to him. Be it Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, Mangal Pandey or more recently Raja Ravi Varma, Mehta has reflected light on heroes which the nation either forgot or chose to see from a distorted prism. This week he is bringing to life a man who made news only when he was about to die and then was consigned to the footnotes of history like yesterday’s newspaper. Hardly anybody knew that Dashrath Manjhi broke a mountain for love till Mehta decided to tell his story. “We tend to recognise our heroes only when they are dead. We live in cynical times and there is a need for inspiration at the grass root level. This is the response that I got wherever I have gone to promote Maanjhi.”
Looking back, Mehta says when Manjhi died in 2007 all the newspaper articles talked about two things. That he broke the mountain and that he did it for love. It was the crux of the story. When I went to Ghalour for research, I couldn’t believe that somebody can even think of it. And here was a man who devoted 22 years of his life doing it. He came from the most backward regions of the country and belonged to the poorest of the poor. It questions the stereotypes we live with. Now who can say only rich can love. For me it is not just a poor man’s, this is the story of triumph of the human being. He is India’s answer to Superman except for the fact that he is real.”
A product of the so called new wave of cinema, Mehta is different from his contemporaries in the sense that he tried different genres and never lost sight of the commercial aspect of the cinema. “This sort of Berlin Wall between art and commerce is artificially created by the media. I think a film is a product and an art form at the same time. While there is money to be made, the film should appeal to the senses.”
Right from “Bhavani Bhavai”, humour has been an important element in his works and here we will see the irony of the situation when Maanjhi talks to the mountain. These days independent filmmakers rely on humour, Mehta has been doing it for years. “A filmmaker derives his inspiration from life and life has so many colours. If you bring it down to just a few in the name of serious art then you are embracing poverty of thought.” But he doesn’t run down those who want the audience to reach their level. “That part of eliticism is also part of the society. There are all kinds of filmmakers and all kind of audiences and India is large enough to absorb all of them,” he observes.
The trilogy After “Manjhi”, Mehta will return to history books to set right the perception about Rani Lakshmi Bai, the pet project of wife and producer Deepa Sahi. “‘The Rising’ was planned as a trilogy. ‘Lakshmi Bai’ and ‘Bahadur Shah Zafar’ were to follow but things did not go the way we expected.” For such subjects you need a big scale and big scale demands known faces. “There is no harm in accepting that raising money is part of filmmaking.” Ten years back he saw Aishwarya Rai as Rani but the market was driven by heroes then. Now he has signed Kangana Ranaut, the reigning queen of the box office. “Lakshmi Bai is the most fascinating female character in the history of the world. If Majhi broke the mountain, she took on an Empire. And she continues to be relevant.”
But working with stars is a whole different ball game and he has learnt it while working with Aamir Khan. “Obviously the equations change. But I believe actors are actors and when they agree to do such a role they want to give their best. Otherwise they can stay in their safety net. It is not about the star entering my zone or me shifting to his zone. The idea is to let a new zone emerge.”
(Also read writer-producer Deepa Sahi's take on Rani Lakshmi Bai)
