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| June, Mainak and Swastika at the t2 chat in Wise Owl. Pictures: Rashbehari Das |
t2: Mainak, don’t you think bringing in the Sita comparisons was too preachy? The constant harping on the fact that Doel Mitra (played by Swastika Mukherjee) is going through what Sita had gone through?
Mainak: I remember what Mrinal Sen said once: ‘The only existing identity of an Indian virgin is Sita.’ Bringing up the story of an Indian woman and the hypocrisy of the Indian middle class, I thought using Sita would be the right identity. It could have been Joan of Arc...
June: More than an ideal virgin, Sita is the ideal sacrificial goat.
Mainak: Right. Whenever we think of sacrifice of a woman, we think of Sita. And the middle class immediately relates to it. And I brought it up again and again in the film because I don’t think the audience would have understood if I had showed just a scene on Sita. I wasn’t sure.
June: I thought you could have brought in the comparison in the beginning and towards the end.
Mainak: I thought I would use it as a metaphoric parallel. It’s not even in words, I am using it in visuals, so there are a lot of people who will not understand it. I know for a fact that there are people who didn’t understand the agnipariksha scene because a lot of people don’t know the Ramayana, let’s face it!
June: I thought those Sita scenes could have been chopped.
Mainak: I shouldn’t assume everyone’s aware.
Swastika: There are a lot of people today who don’t even know the name of our Prime Minister! So, to expect that they will know the Ramayana and know the details of what Sita went through is too much to expect!
Mainak: As it is, I am making something very silent and arty and I wasn’t sure how much people would understand.
June: It’s cool these days to be unaware of your surroundings.
t2: Take one has received extreme reactions. People have either loved it or trashed it...
Mainak: Yes!
Swastika: The people from our industry have no opinion about the film!
June: I have told many people that I have really liked the film. There are certain areas which I didn’t like but most of it I liked. I liked Swastika, I liked Mani (Swastika’s daughter Anwesha). But Mainak, please be careful when you cast people opposite Swastika!
Mainak: (Laughs) It’s difficult to find boys in Calcutta!
June: Swastika is so good, natural and spontaneous...
Mainak: Achha, in a movie can’t the men be weaker?
June: Of course, let them be weak, but your Ram (Angshuman) was robotic! I also want to add that men will hate this film. It’s a big slap on their faces. It’s a big slap on society too. I feel every woman would relate to this character. Not just actors but women in general. When I went to watch Take One, there were 50-plus men who went for all the wrong reasons, obviously there was nothing in the film but a nice mom-daughter relationship story. They were disgusted!
Swastika: Blame the censor board.
June: No. Don’t go to watch a film only because there are bold scenes!
Swastika: I got a lot of messages on WhatsApp where everyone asked me where they could get the uncut version! Why? Do they just want to see my boobs? See, anybody’s nah! I don’t have three!
June: That’s men, nah! When a woman is clad in a bikini and 90 per cent of her flesh is visible, they still look at the covered parts!
Mainak: See, the movie is about a woman who has done something that has turned into an MMS and people have opinions. Anybody who goes and watches my film has access to pornography on their phones, so they don’t need to see my film for that one-and-a-half-minute smooching scene. If you are watching my film because there is sex in it, just watch Xtube (pornography on Youtube)! I have made enough films for people to know how much I am going to show and how well I will please men! (Everyone laughs)
June: The kind of dialogues Swastika had to mouth, specially the ones that were very subdued... one could tell who she was hinting at! Like the scene where she says that there are actresses who do nude photo shoots covering their assets with hair!
Swastika: That wasn’t scripted, you know!
Mainak: Yes, I couldn’t control her then!
Swastika: Also the scene where Doel says how much would the producer’s mother charge when the voice on the other side of the phone asks her to do a porn film! Because it has actually happened to me!
June: It has happened to all of us!
By and large, men hate women who are bold, independent and beautiful. They like to dominate. They don’t like a woman who can have her way, dump him and leave.
Swastika: Let all men hate me then! (Laughs)
June: Yes, all men hate us!
t2: The crisis in Doel Mitra’s life seems to have been blown out of proportion in contrast to the plot which is thin...
Mainak: Honestly, I was making Take One as an emotional vignette. I wasn’t trying out a plot. You’re watching a fragmented journey, basically a journey of her psyche. And I think I made that pretty evident in the first 15-20 minutes where it wasn’t going from a moment to a crisis to a situation to a scene. It’s kind of going through a journey of this person.
June: Mainak, instead of making Swastika’s character a widow, you could have shown her as someone who’s divorced. It would have made your plot stronger...
Mainak: For me it was essentially the absence of a man, not necessarily how he was absent. I never wanted to get into that. See, I love it when people watch a film and they notice things, they like things, don’t like things. I like when my films are criticised!
Swastika: In fact someone asked me why there was no photo of Doel’s dead husband in the film!
Mainak: The whole point of making a film is that it should become a debatable issue. People either love you or criticise you, the worst is when they ignore you. When people say ‘not bad’ after watching a film I find that disgusting! I made a film like Maach Mishti & More, people loved it, but I don’t want to go back and make another Maach Mishti. It’s a safe film, not debatable at all. There’s no fun in being a filmmaker when your work is not criticised. I am not in a job where I need to be cushioned. I want to be questioned about why I made what I made. The unfairness of the Bengali film industry is that people are not open to criticism.
t2: Swastika, while playing Doel, did the line between reel and real get blurred at times?
Swastika: Yes, a lot of times. A lot of things that happen in Doel’s life have also happened in my life. I cannot exactly pinpoint. For instance, the party sequence, something like that had actually happened in my life!
t2: In the mother-daughter scenes, we felt Mani stole the show...
Swastika: I’m so happy! (Smiles) I cannot be a more happier mother. Mani is not bothered or interested as far as acting is concerned.
June: I really want to applaud Mani and my children and children who have actor parents who really have to put up with so much, because we don’t really face the world. But they are asked questions in schools and college and are more answerable than us. So cheers to them! And I loved the wine scene (between Swastika and Mani). I thought it was cool!
t2: But that particular scene enraged a few from the audience because the daughter says that she didn’t like the taste of wine...
Mainak: No, she said she has tasted it and didn’t like it. She is trying to cover it up, actually. Anything that you do and you are not okay with sharing it with your parents, don’t do it, at her age or even later in life.
t2: Mainak what was the need for so many close-up shots of Swastika?
Swastika: Because I’m very beautiful! (Laughs)
Mainak: I wanted to show Doel up close and personal. I wanted to show her eyes. Cinema is a visual medium. You can keep talking about pain and dwelling on it but I thought it’s more interesting to see. You can’t define pain in words. Sometimes it’s the pain and the numbness and if you look at her face you will understand. And it’s not that I like close-ups. I rarely have close-ups. I wanted to get into her headspace with the close-ups, into the psyche of that character. See, I want to push my limits, I want to do things and get criticised. I don’t want to play it safe because then there’s no fun in it.
t2: Mainak, Take One is at its fourth week, would you like to give away the ambiguity of the bathtub scene? Does Doel commit suicide?
Mainak: If you noticed, throughout the film I use water. In the beginning of the film, she is going in for a shower and she washes her face. I use water as a symbol for cleansing.
June: I didn’t think she committed suicide.
Mainak: I again come back to your first question, sometimes you have to spoon-feed people!
