Aparna directs Konkona on the sets

There’s a buzz that Iti Mrinalini is your most personal film...

My most personal film is not Iti Mrinalini. It’s 15 Park Avenue; it was about somebody very close to me... a relative. I drew upon my experiences for Iti Mrinalini, of course, but not historically. I have taken situations from many people’s lives. Iti Mrinalini is personal in the way that Mrinalini’s mental make-up is like mine. She goes to Presidency College, loves literature, loves good cinema, she never really thought she would get into mainstream films, like me. Some experiences were of course mine. Like, I was replaced by someone in a film in the earlier part of my career.

Mrinalini is a sensitive, artistic person, very vulnerable in many ways but appears to be strong... those things are similar to me. But she is obsessive compulsive. Ranjan Ghosh (co-scriptwriter) and I decided to give her OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Mrinalini wants to control everything, but in a caring sort of a way. She wants to control the lives of the people around her. This is the philosophical aspect that comes up in the film — whether you can actually control anything…. Actually, the film is about the loves in Mrinalini’s life, the different kinds of love.

Can you take us through the men in her life…

There is her first love, her college classmate (played by Shaheb Bhattacharya). Then there’s this director who launches her in films and is much older than her — played by Rajat (Kapoor). Then comes Chintan Nair, an author who she meets through Siddhartha (Rajat) and they remain friends for life. Chintan and Mrinalini share a common love for literature. Koushik (Sen) has played Chintan and he is wonderful! It’s a new Koushik you’ll see.

And then, when Mrinalini becomes me, that is when I play her, at a much later stage when she has given up acting, a much younger director comes into her life. I needed someone very attractive for this role and so I chose Priyanshu (Chatterjee).

Are these characters inspired by men you have loved?

They have shades of people I have known, not really people I have fallen for. Of them, Chintan is a very idealised character.

You would have fallen for him?

(Laughs.) Oh yes, I would have! He’s a dream!

Aparna with Priyanshu in Iti Mrinalini

Does it bother you that people may take Mrinalini’s experiences to be your personal experiences?

People who know me know that it’s not my life. The audience too knows my background. That I didn’t have a child out of wedlock (laughs). I was launched by (Satyajit) Ray, Mrinalini was launched by a mainstream director. But the way she reacts to situations is like me. See, it is not my biography. I don’t want to name anyone but I have known actresses of my generation who have been through such situations.

Apparently, the script was written at Subhash Ghai’s film institute in Mumbai...

No, no. What happened is that Ranjan, who I had met during Antaheen, was very keen on collaborating with me. I had the germ of the idea of Iti Mrinalini for a long, long time but I went on to do other things. When I finished The Japanese Wife and I realised that I wouldn’t be able to make Goynar Baksho, I started hunting around. And I thought why not explore this idea. I had considerable exposure to mainstream films. So Ranjan and I wrote the script together and then he later used it for his academic thing.

How is Konkona as your younger version in the film?

Konkona is awesome in Iti Mrinalini! When she is there, you don’t have to worry at all. It’s such a relief when you have people like Konkona and Anjan Dutt around. We had to work on Konkona’s diction as it was of the Seventies. So we all read poetry together as part of the preparation. Keeping the continuity of Mrinalini’s voice was important. At one point, I thought of using Konkona’s voice for my part too. Mrinalini is in her early-50s when the film ends…

It must have been nostalgic for you to see that period coming alive...

Oh yes, it was very nostalgic. Going to Presidency College… but it’s not exactly like what we used to do, you know. Here Mrinalini has a boyfriend while I was engaged to my first husband then (laughs). It’s a mixture of experiences, of what you have seen and your imagination.

For one flashback scene, Konkona has worn a sari that I had worn in the film Rag Anurag... in the song Tomader ashore aaj. It was my own sari — a sequinned, very Seventies sari — and I had kept it. It’s falling into pieces now. We also gave her the bouffant, the blouse knotted at the back, the cigarette smoking… It was exciting and enjoyable to do these things.

In the film within the film, Karna Kunti Sambad which Priyanshu’s character is supposed to direct, we did costumes that were kind of inspired by Peter Brook’s Mahabharata. It was hard work but very enjoyable. We had an art director but I did the production design. Chintan’s home is in Auroville in Pondicherry. We couldn’t go there and so we had to have interiors that evoked Auroville. I will tell you where we shot it after the film releases! And Mrinalini’s house… from the first apartment she buys, her house keeps changing over the next 30 years. Recreating the Seventies was difficult.

What kind of music did you conceive for this film?

Music has played a very important part in all my films but I have not used songs other than Rabindrasangeet in my other films. Here I have used mainstream Bengali songs because we had to recreate the Seventies and Debu (Debojyoti Mishra) was a natural choice for it. He had closely collaborated with Salil Chowdhury for a long time.... We chose a poem called Smritir Sohor, which Sunil Gangopadhyay had written in the Seventies when he was a young man, because all of Mrinalini’s memories are of Calcutta. I wanted a ballad-like composition for it and I loved what Debu created. For the back-up music, we didn’t want to be restricted to any period.

You had once said that acting in other people’s films doesn’t give you as much fulfilment as directing films. Do you still feel the same?

What I had meant is that I prefer direction to acting. When I am directing a film it is my vision, but when I am acting in other people’s films I am a part of somebody else’s vision and I may or may not have agreed with his vision. Of course, I did agree to a certain extent because I did so many films.

I don’t enjoy acting in films nowadays because I don’t get the benefit of my supervision. You know, I keep running around on the sets, switching from director mode to actor mode and actor mode to director mode. There are three thousand and one things that you need to take care of. You have to look around and see if everything is okay. It’s very difficult. Very difficult to come out of the director mode and be an actor. This was a glamorous role and I had to look glamorous.... Also because I am a very hands-on director, I am very involved with the production design, with the shot divisions. So it’s a very strenuous job. I don’t enjoy it (doing both together).

But I thought of doing Iti Mrinalini because Konkona and I together in a film is a casting coup of sorts. Instead of playing mother and daughter, which would have been much more predictable, I thought let’s play the same character. Also because of the fact that Konkona looks so similar to me. When she walks into a room, people say this is Aparna when she was younger. This was the upside. Otherwise, I would have had to look for an actress who’s a Konkona lookalike and then extract a performance from her, while here I knew the script inside out.

The downside is that I allowed myself to be very unglamorous in a scene where Mrinalini is writing a letter [Hence the title ‘Iti Mrinalini’]. I look really awful!

Do you now get offers to act?

Oh, I keep getting offers which I usually refuse.

None of these has interested you?

There’s a film that Anjan (Dutt) wants to make with me. He has asked me to play a mad director! It’s very funny. She’s completely mad. Completely passionate about films and I identify with her. I want to do that film.

You lost your director of photography, Somak Mukherjee, in an accident this April...

I was so upset when Somak went the way he went. He was so keen on this film. He designed many scenes when I was acting; I would say, ‘Somak, now you have to take over, you have to do the shot divisions’. I was thrilled with his hand-held and close shots, and black and white photographs. It’s too late to put his name in the title credits and dedicate the film to him. But I am going to dedicate the film to him at the premiere.

Reshmi Sengupta
Will you watch Iti Mrinalini for Aparna or Konkona? Tell t2@abp.in

Konkona in Iti Mrinalini; (below) in the Seventies’ look

It’s been almost five years since we last saw you in a Bengali film (Dosar). Do you get offers from Tollywood?

I don’t get any offers, honestly! There are interesting films being made now but I don’t get too many offers. There are many directors that I would love to work with...

Would you like to name a few?

Well, I’d like to work with Goutam Ghose, Buddhadeb Dasgupta... they are all stalwarts and they are alive and they are doing films in my language! There’s Srijit (Mukherjee), who I know very well, and I have heard many good things about Birsa (Dasgupta) from my mother.... I would love to work with Rituda (Rituparno Ghosh) again! It’s so lovely and easy to work with him. I have known him since childhood. Also Anjan Dutt... I love his sensibilities.

You’ve always maintained that your mother brings out your best performance. Was it the same in the case of Iti Mrinalini?

During Mr & Mrs Iyer, I had hardly done other films. I didn’t know what it meant to be working for my mother’s films or for other people’s films. Today I can appreciate working with my mother much more. Every time I have worked with her, it has been very rewarding and I look forward to working with her again. The kind of roles I get, the kind of attention to detail, the fact that she brings out the best in me... all this works to my advantage. I have been working with her off and on for the past 10 years, and essentially the relationship has remained the same. Even the process is the same.

Was there any kind of internal pressure to perform better than your mother in the film?

This I don’t feel when I am working with other actors, so forget my mother. Even with my contemporaries, I have never felt like, ‘Oh, I have to hold my own!’ It’s not a
competition.

Is there a bit of your mother in Mrinalini?

No, I don’t think so. I think it is a fictional character, apart from the basic similarity that Mrinalini was an actress of the Seventies like many other actresses, including my mother, who worked in the Seventies.

Was it difficult to relate to Mrinalini, considering that she is from a different era?

A little bit.... There are certain choices that she made as a character in the film, and how she went about her life is not necessarily how I would live my life, for example. She is obviously not me. She is also coming from a different time. At times it was a little difficult for me to relate to her. Once or twice in the beginning I had asked my mother why Mrinalini was doing it like this and how come she is criticising certain things, and my mother would say that you have to remember that she is coming from a different context. It was 40 years ago. Circumstances were different, opportunities were different.

What did you do as homework, apart from watching your mother’s old films?

With Ma’s films, there is always preparation required. This is very good because it pays off, it really helps. So we did script readings, improvisations and we rehearsed the scenes from the script — things that we also did for 15 Park Avenue. If I was not her daughter I might have had to watch more. In any case, I have seen many of her films, not all. I haven’t been specifically on the lookout for other films. It is not something Ma told me to do. I have seen my mother all my life. I know her mannerisms, her way of talking and subconsciously I have been influenced by it and have picked that up as well. Now suppose it was Sharmila Tagore instead of my mother, I would have sought out her films.

Since you as a person do not like dressing up much, how did you find the process of getting into bouffants and the make-up?

I was very excited about playing this role because it was almost like a period film for me... with the look and feel. I would really love to do a period film. I love the Seventies, in terms of fashion and aesthetic sensibility. And you have go through the process of hair, make-up and costume for films. I loved it because it was a period film and I enjoy the Seventies era.

How have your priorities changed after becoming a mother?

I have taken a bit of a break. I plan to get back to work some time but I can’t predict when, you know. I will start going through scripts soon, so that I can start shooting by next year. Initially I will shoot only in Bombay. I will have to see how (son) Haroun is taking it, how comfortable I am leaving him at home... He is all of four months. I am very excited about coming to Calcutta this time because Haroun is travelling with me to Calcutta for the first time! He’s too small to make any plans (laughs). I am just excited that he will be meeting my friends and relatives.