The Venice International Film Festival with Songs of Forgotten Trees. The Toronto International Film Festival with Bandar. Nishaanchi, his first directorial in two years, is up for release in cinemas today. It has been a couple of whirlwind weeks for Anurag Kashyap, who, after a break and a change of cities (the director-actor lives in Bengaluru now but travels the world), is back in the thick of things.
Nischaanchi, which Anurag says is a film closest to the kind of cinema he grew up with, introduces Aaishvary Thackeray (Bal Thackeray’s grandson) as a leading man and marks a return to the vintage Kashyap we know. A t2 chat with the man known for his heart, humour and honesty.
Even so many years later, are you nervous or excited or both on the eve of a film’s release?
It is still the same, there is still anxiety. But with Nishaanchi, I have the satisfaction of having made a film from the heart and in the way I wanted to make it. I had a good studio, good producer, good actors.... Putting together Nishaanchi has been a beautiful experience.
It must be a relief after all the fighting and firefighting you have had to do all these years...
Yes. Life totally changed when I moved away (to Bengaluru). I found that I had more time for myself as well as for my work. Nothing was really pulling me down and then everything good started happening in terms of work, and very organically.
Has moving away from the industry in Mumbai also liberated you as a filmmaker?
I feel more empowered now. The firefighting never stops but the conviction that I have to keep doing what I am doing has become stronger. I find that almost everybody is chasing some kind of an invisible success... but one which is not coming from conviction, but from copying. Everybody is second-guessing at this point of time.
But you have never fallen prey to that...
Yes, I haven’t because of which the fights I have had to wage have been so much more. It hasn’t been smooth at all and I also lost my health in between. So I didn’t have the same energy to fight the system as I did when I made Dev.D or Gangs of Wasseypur. Right now, as I said, with how things are unfolding, I am happy in the space I am in.
You wrote Nishaanchi almost 10 years ago. What took so long to make it?
I wanted the right people to come together and make it. The script went to quite a few studios and also a number of actors, and everywhere I got the same questions that arise out of insecurity. Things like: “Can you not turn this into Gangs of Wasseypur?” or “Can we make a love story like Dev.D?” I told them those films had already been made and I had no interest in repeating myself.
You have said that Nishaanchi was written as a reaction to Mukkabaaz, a film that explored love and rebellion under the looming shadow of caste. Can you elaborate?
I made Mukkabaaz right after the debacle of Bombay Velvet (2015) and the word that went around was that I had straightaway landed from a big-budget film to a low-budget one like Mukkabaaz. By that time, Reliance had entered Phantom (the now-defunct production house that co-produced Bombay Velvet) and they were like: “Why are you making such low-budget films like Mukkabaaz and Raman Raghav 2.0? Can we do something which is of a slightly higher budget, at least?”
It was under that pressure that I wrote Nishaanchi. I wanted a north Indian actor for the lead and I zeroed in on Sushant Singh Rajput. He was to do it initially, but he moved on to bigger films. Even I moved on to Manmarziyaan, which was a medium-budget film with notable actors. Now I have come to this middle ground of making films with a decent but not a very high budget. Nishaanchi is an example of that.
So after Sushant’s casting fell through, did you want to make the film only with newcomers?
Initially, I went around speaking to a lot of actors. But I was very sure that this is the film I wanted to make and I decided that there was no point of having discussions with vanity. You can have a reasonable discussion with people who are invested in something. But discussions with vanity at a time where everybody’s aspiration is to be a star is not something I am going to waste time and energy on.
Everyone wants to be a star these days. But stars don’t get made just like that. You need to focus with all your honesty. All else just happens.
Are you actually saying that stars are made organically in this day and age of packaging and privilege?
I still believe in that. How many people you launch, how you launch, it doesn’t matter. It has to be the coming together of great casting, great acting, hard work and a good script. That is what the audience responds to. The whole launching-of-stars business is over. Look at Ahaan Panday. He waited seven years and put in hard work and conviction for Saiyaara to happen. So did Aneet Padda. A star like Vicky (Kaushal) gets made organically. He kept doing good, honest work. I remember there was one year of great supporting roles for Vicky and then one film (Uri) came and his career blew up.
So what made you finally pick Aaishvary Thackeray and Vedika Pinto?
Aaishvary had done a rendition of the climax monologue of Shool which I happened to watch on YouTube. At that point, I didn’t know that he was a Maharashtrian or even a Thackeray. When I found out about his lineage, I was like: “I don’t know if they (the Thackeray family) have plans of launching him in some other film”. I told Aaishvary that I needed some surety that he wanted to do Nishaanchi and that he had to become a total Kanpur-iya for the role.
The good thing is that he responded to the script very positively. I told him I needed a lot of his time and I had to meet his family. There were two-three other scripts that had come his way but he had his heart set on Nishaanchi. And he has given four years of his life to this film!
I saw Vedika in a music video. I needed someone who looked like a Kanpur ki Madhuri Dixit and she fit the bill. I saw that hunger in her... she told me that she wanted to be more than just the hero’s girlfriend and wear good clothes. The dance part was easy for her because she has trained in Kathak.
The cabaret we have in the film is different from the ones we have seen in Bollywood. So I showed her Sapna Choudhary’s videos, which also helped her get the language and accent right. The two of them lived in Kanpur and picked up the lingo and body language.
The male lead is, of course, a double role. I was not fixated on both brothers being played by Aaishvary... they could look different, and I was open to signing another actor. But he showed a lot of range and instead of being overwhelmed by a double role on debut, he excelled at it. He buffed up and grew his beard to play one brother and then lost all that weight — to the point that his cheeks became sunken — to play the other one. It is the same actor but he looks very different in both roles. It is not like Sinners where Michael B. Jordan looks the same in both roles.
Nishaanchi is an ode to the films you watched growing up in a small town. Would you say this is the closest film to the cinephile in you if not the filmmaker?
It is closest to the Bollywood cinephile in me and the closest to my childhood. Nishaanchi has two brothers and one girl in the middle. There is small-town crime, like robbing shops. It also has the attitude of Kanpur... it allows you to have a certain bakaiti (worthless chatter) which is so much fun.
You will get to see a world which is not developed, you will see a kind of dehat (bumpkin) which our cinema hasn’t seen in a long time. We travelled into the interiors to shoot this film and my team pushed me to do it. It was fun because we found villages which are still untouched by modernity.
What kind of a phase are you in now, personally and professionally?
Through Kennedy (still unreleased), I came out of a very low phase of my life. I was emotionally down, disappointed and heartbroken by the attitude of the industry and was feeling increasingly isolated. With Kennedy, there was an expulsion of all the anger that had been building within me which I had not recognised till then. After that, I decided that I needed to step away. Now I am living in a new city where I have a lovely home with lots of books. It has given me so much joy and the ability to focus. My entire focus is now on myself, my films, my health and the cinema I believe in.
Does the fact that Kennedy, notwithstanding the accolades at Cannes and beyond, remains unreleased despite your best efforts, take away from the catharsis that making it gave you?
Once it is done, it is done. The film is with the studio, it is their money and it is now up to them. Over the years, I have also learnt detachment. I have made the film I wanted to make. The problem is that there are so many people in that studio who have no idea about filmmaking. They don’t know how to market it because Kennedy is unlike anything they have ever seen.