Anurag Kashyap is all set to rock the screens with his next film Mukkabaaz. The movie opened to some rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival and Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.
Recently, Anurag spoke to Reuters about Mukkabaaz and why he does not like Bollywood biopics.
”Mukkabaaz is a film about sports, but it’s an honest sports film. We turn everything into formula. Even our biopics are not honest. See the films that have come out … it has become a formula now.”
”People with one singular achievement have a biopic being told about them. Or people whose life is not over yet … and all biopics are super nationalist and patriotic and end with the national anthem. And that pisses me off. They are born heroes, from the first frame to the last. I find them extremely manipulative and don’t like most of them.”
He added, ”People have always bought patriotism. Most people across the world live very meaningless lives. When they feel patriotic, they think they have a purpose and that’s why patriotism is sold to them, because their other issues they cannot redress.”
”Cinema in India is less of an art form and more of a business. So producers always say, put in a bit of this and that. You should hear when they say ‘we should put in the national anthem in the end’. It’s like putting in a bit of jeera (cumin) to a dish. That is what they reduce patriotism to. It pisses me off and that is what I have addressed in my film.”
When asked about working with Aanand L. Rai, he said, ”It just happened. I was looking for money, and we had a great script. Vineet Kumar Singh (the lead actor in Mukkabaaz) had gone in and put in so many years, but he had been a character actor. People loved the script so much, but they said take Vineet out of the equation. Let’s take the film to a big star and you take whatever money you want.”
”They didn’t have a problem with Zoya because ‘heroine koi bhi ho’ (the female lead could be anyone). I didn’t want to take Vineet out of the equation, so we walked out of one place. Aanand Rai called me because he wanted me to do Manmarziyan, but I said I wanted to do this one first. So he said let’s do both together,” Anurag revealed.
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