His debut feature film — the much-feted Thithi — won a National Award. Since then, expectations have been high from Raam Reddy, who has delivered once again with his sophomore directorial Jugnuma. Now playing in theatres, the film — headlined by Manoj Bajpayee and boasting a strong ensemble of actors — blends Reddy’s trademark elements of quirk, deep emotions and magic realism. A t2 chat with the director.

Jugnuma has been appreciated across the world. Do the emotions hit different when a film releases on home ground?

Yes, this is the real thing... the rest was a build-up. Having a proper theatrical release for this film was always the dream. Thithi (his debut film) was a smaller film, and so doing more festivals was fine. But Jugnuma was always meant to be a theatrical film. The design of the film is such that it promises a unique experience on the big screen.

I made it with a global aesthetic but I wanted Jugnuma to be first seen in India and then travel the world. Of course, the reverse happened and though the accolades from the West have given the film a lot of momentum, if it was left to me, I would have liked it to go the other way.

Some of the most prominent filmmakers of the country have been backing it. That must be a huge shot in the arm for you and the film...

I am still a young filmmaker and it feels completely unreal, surreal. They all have built their own worlds and I am on this journey of trying to create mine. To have them all come together to support the world that I was trying to build in Jugnuma... it is still sinking in. From Guneet (Monga Kapoor) and Anurag (Kashyap) presenting it to the trailer launch, which happened with these iconic filmmakers (Vetrimaaran, Lijo Jose Pellissery, Raj B. Shetty and Nag Ashwin) from across India, has been fantastic and humbling. There is a real sense of gratitude.

Manoj Bajpayee has gone on record to say that Jugnuma is very close to his heart. Was he always your first choice for the film?

When I wrote the part, I always wanted an actor like him who has the power to transform... where the actor disappears and the character emerges as a living, breathing entity. Manoj was at the top of the list for me as someone who could achieve that completely. He is a 100 films down and this is my second film. I was very nervous before meeting him for the first time, but he has a big heart and is so passionate about his craft. He wears his talent lightly. As an actor, he submits to the director, and as a filmmaker, I felt very safe to entrust my vision to him. The deeper significance of this film for me as a writer, and what he was going through at that point in his life, hit exactly the same wavelength.

We had a great ensemble cast as well and a certain feeling of family developed between everyone because we got stuck at the location (during the pandemic).

What has been the most memorable feedback to the film so far?

We have gone to so many countries with this film and in every place, there has been something that I will never forget. One was in Ireland, where, after the screening, an elderly woman stood up to ask a question. But when she was handed the mic, she choked up and couldn’t get a word out. She cried and finally didn’t end up asking the question, but that really touched my heart because she and I connected on an extremely deep level. That exchange of silences was more poignant than any words would have been. Like her, there have been a lot of people with tears, a lot of emotions.

At the premiere in Berlin, a woman who has been attending the festival for the last 10-15 years, said that Jugnuma was the best film she had ever watched! Films shown at Berlin have sometimes broken out and become commercial successes. So for her to say that really eased some nerves for me.

Jugnuma is the sum total of varied experiences for you. Was there a specific trigger?

I had gone up to the mountains with Thithi for a film festival. I have always liked the genre of magic realism and generally the ability to use fantastical elements to create emotion in a story. In the hills, while we were driving around, I had this kind of a silly image in my head, accompanied by the thought: ‘I wish I could jump off this cliff, take a quick flight and come back!’ That image was what kick-started this journey.

The mountains have always been magical to me. The Himalayas have been the choice of saints... there is this aura that has pulled them there. It represents the pinnacle of a certain kind of pilgrimage or journey. To be in that space and breathe that air made me keen to take on a story with suspense and mystery and to hook a what-happens-next narrative in that kind of a setting. From there, I built on it.

Did being stranded there during the pandemic contribute to the film’s inherent theme of seclusion?

Being remote helps. The main house in Jugnuma is in a place called Abbott Mount, which is near the India-Nepal border. It takes seven hours to drive there from the nearest train station. It is literally in the middle of nowhere, and that environment helped to go deep into a different world. During the shoot, the entire unit became like a tribe, finding a collective way to live and thrive.

From a filmmaking point of view, it felt almost like a private outdoor studio... no roads, no traffic, absolute silence except for the sounds of nature.... We shot Jugnuma on film and not in digital, and the location translates very well on screen.

You shot on 16mm stock to capture not only the mood of the film, but also the period in which it is set, which is the late ’80s. Can you talk about what went into designing the unique look of the film?

I have always been a bit of a purist that way. I had the opportunity to shoot on film as my diploma project in film school in Prague. I had learned cinema through the digital medium, but once I experienced shooting on film, it made me realise how the visual DNA it delivers is so different. It feels like you are creating something which is very individualistic. Shooting on film changes so many things apart from just the look and feel... it seeps into the process, the rigour, the design element, the need for you to be on top of your craft continuously. It is the greatest silent motivator.

As you said, we needed to shoot on film because the film is set in 1989, and that was the medium of the time. Secondly, there is a beauty, an unpredictability and a feeling of consciousness in film that is different because it is alive. It is the interplay of chemical and light and it changes those molecules into something else, making it as tactile as it can be. The feeling of nostalgia, the feeling of memory also play a role. That is what Impressionism is... emotion above form in some ways. I am a bit like an impressionistic filmmaker that way.

I spent a lot of time with the visual team — DoP Sunil Borkar, production designer Juhi Agarwal, storyboard artist Upamanyu Bhattacharya — working on these things. The colorist Himanshu Kamble played a massive role because film eventually gets scanned and turned into digital. The VFX supervisor, Varun Ramanna, had to create 500 to 600 VFX shots and make it implicit to a 16mm impressionistic feel so that you don’t feel that it is VFX. This whole collaboration is what makes Jugnuma look the way it does.

What is it about the genre of magic realism that appeals to you so much? You have even authored a book on it...

I believe that even in real life, if your mind is open to it, things that are semi-magical just kind of happen. Something as simple as rain is water falling out of the sky, but if you look at it with wonder, it is one of the most fascinating things possible. Like in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book (One Hundred Years of Solitude), yellow flowers fall out of the sky as rain, but it is written so naturalistically that once you are in it, you cannot help but feel it is real.

Magic realism is looking at something and feeling that there is more to it. I like being able to push things at the level of consciousness and believe that there is more than what meets the eye. Magic realism helps expand your worldview... when I first read it, it made me realise that one should never close one’s mind to the possibility of more than what is clearly explainable.

I also like the genre because it has no set rules. Every artist can treat it differently. When I was writing this script, I had these funny diagrams of the space in which I was moving narratively. So there was sub-realism, there was hyper-realism, there were all these strange terms that I put together as an ex-science-y economic student! (Laughs) I charted my screenplay with these minor shifts. Jugnuma moves back and forth between some of these treatments.

Priyanka Roy
Which is your favourite film that uses magic realism?
Tell t2@abp.in