Musician, actor, director — all rolled into one. Is Ranjana Ami Aar Ashbona (releases on Friday) your magnum opus?

It is my most expensive film, the film with the highest production values. Ranjana is a culmination of music and drama... I mean in the genre of The Bong Connection and Madly Bangalee. I won’t do any more musicals.

Ranjana is dark, melodramatic, hard-hitting, though there are softer moments. It’s a passionate drama. It deals with the dark side of the human mind. Nobody is absolutely good in this film but they all have great qualities. They (the men) are lecherous, addicts and alcoholics, but they are also extremely creative. Ranjana (Parno Mittra) is not the sweet girl from the suburbs who wants to make it big in the city. She is very aggressive and brutal too.

I have tried to capture the changing times... the contradictions, the violence of today. I always feel that today’s Bengali cinema has the feel of the Sixties. The fact that the times have changed doesn’t come through. Ranjana is set in 2011... where you have chaos on the one hand and development on the other. The old giving way to the new.

Well, it’s very topical then...

That way, it is ironic that it is. But the old has to go and the new has to come. It’s about the change, seen through (Kabir) Suman’s Stanley. But I am not political and I didn’t make this film from that point.

Who is Abani Sen in real life? A combination of people you have met?

Abani Sen is 30 per cent me, The fact that I come from a shabeki Bangali family and yet I have been raised in a westernised way. He is into pop music like me. Just as I was inspired by Suman to do music, Abani is inspired by Stanley, which Suman is playing. The other 70 per cent of Abani is a mix of people I have seen like Gautam Chattopadhyay... bohemian characters older than me, people who introduced me to the hippie culture, to flower power. Abani is someone who lives on the edge. I have seen people like him.... Dilip Balakrishnan and also a few intellectuals.

And then you chose to play Abani...

I had written it for myself. See, between 1980 and 2011, I have done only 12 films. I have played the lead in seven films and in the other five I had secondary characters. I started off with Mrinalda (Sen) and Buddhada (Dasgupta) and was then picked up by Aparna Sen and Nabyendu Chatterjee. You can see that I have been an actor for a very, very niche audience. Back then, the divide between art film and commercial cinema was very strong. Yet you had Soumitra Chatterjee, Dipankar De, Victor Banerjee and Dhritiman Chaterji who did both kinds of films. But I could never bridge that gap. Mainstream cinema avoided me and neither could I go and ask for roles. Ritu (Rituparno Ghosh) says that I am westernised and I talk in English, and so mainstream cinema people have problems relating me to their cinema.

I had played a village taanti (weaver) in Nabyendu Chatterjee’s Shilpi and with that I had broken the mould. But I couldn’t become another Soumitra Chatterjee or Dipankar De. Yet I could have done mainstream cinema. Once I had gone and met Prabhat Roy, and asked him to think of a film with me as the central character. He entertained me but he never got back. My connection with Bangla cinema, as an actor, was only through Goutam Ghose, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Mrinal Sen, Aparna Sen and Rituparno Ghosh. So I couldn’t act any more. And there was a long gap.

Now I feel I have potential as an actor which is being wasted. And in the case of Ranjana, the producer (Rana Sarkar) had approached me to think of a film where I would act and also bring in my music. I thought of capturing the huge change that has happened in the music scenario. Suman agreed to come on board. So when I was writing the script, Suman and I were there in it as actors.

For the rest in Abani’s band, people like Sabyasachi Chakrabarty and Dhritiman Chaterji wouldn’t have fit in. That’s why Nondon (Bagchi), Lew (Hilt) and Amyt (Datta), with whom I have done music for many years.

Through Ranjana, I wanted to justify the actor and musician in me. Then Ritu came with his Chitrangada. Now I am doing Birsa’s (Dasgupta) new film and Supriyo Sen’s Projonmo. Films have started coming in and a new phase has started.

Don’t you think that since you are directing the film and also playing the lead, your performance may be self-indulgent? Wouldn’t it have been better had someone else directed it?

See, this is the catch! Charlie Chaplin, Raj Kapoor... the fear of being self-indulgent was there with all of them. It won’t happen if the filmmaker is mature. You don’t find it in Woody Allen’s movies. I think I have matured and I have not been self-indulgent in Ranjana. I have worked really hard as an actor for this film. At my age, I have gymmed, dyed my hair...

As an actor, I told Parno I will not allow you to steal the climax scene. Just because I am the director, don’t think I am going to let you have it easy. After that, as a director, I told her this is your scene, you are the heroine of the film. You must be so good that I have to edit my scenes out. So, I have constantly gone through this contradiction while making the film. The film is, finally, about Ranjana.

Why did you pick Ranjana from your songs and not Bela Bose?

Because Bela Bose is identifiable. She gets married in the song, it is too picturesque. Ranjana is a young Bengali girl but she is not defined. And I chose a female rock star character, though we have only male rock stars.

Why did you think Parno would suit the title role?

I had thought of Raima (Sen)... she has a cosmopolitan background but then this character is someone who is trying to make it big and Raima is a known face. Then I cast Aparajita Ghosh Das but she too was an established actress and I felt it would not work. I needed someone new, someone who might have done TV but not films. My wife Chanda suggested Parno and then Neel (son) traced her in Bombay and got her to come down.

We did workshops because she had to be my equal in this film. We also did the telefilm Lolita together as an exercise to see if it worked. I am very happy with her performance. She reminds me of the bachcha Konkona (Sensharma) from Ek Je Achhe Kanya.

In the film, Ranjana is a desperate girl. She has the edginess to leave home and walk into the weird world of some debauched old men who have kind of a half-father, half-fantasy attitude to her. None of these people are fatherly in that sense. Parno has that kind of edginess in her. I would like to work with her again.