Anant Mahadevan: We have lost Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra, Rishikesh Mukherjee... audience totally to formula films - Exclusive!

Anant Mahadevan: We have lost Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra, Rishikesh Mukherjee… audience totally to formula films – Exclusive!

Actor-director Anant Mahadevan, who is gearing up for the release of the much-awaited ‘Aata Vel Zaali’ starring Dilip Prabhavalkar and Rohini Hattangadi, is based on the true story of an existential crisis in the life of an elderly couple who feel that they are leading unproductive and obsolete lives and hence seek active euthanasia as an unusual remedy.

In an exclusive chat with Etimes, Anant Narayan Mahadevan said, “The subject is something that has not been dealt with in Indian cinema and, as far as I know, maybe even world cinema. The question of active euthanasia is because we always talk about mercy killing and passive euthanasia—you know, people whose lives are terminated because they have some terminal disease, are suffering, are in a coma, or something. But no one has ever talked about terminating life when we are absolutely healthy because we do not want to get into the stage of passive euthanasia and mercy killing. So, how courageous are we to accept that concept? How revolutionary are we to think about these things? And then also look at it in a very practical sense and not in any other way.”

“So, when you have a challenging subject like this, especially after COVID came and the whole world looked at life and death in a very different way, I thought, you know, when I did my case studies from all over the world, we found out that elderly couples mostly want to end their lives happily with dignity rather than get into a hospital bed and suffer and go into a coma or a ventilator. If I had made it in Marathi, or even if I had made it in Hindi, I think I would have only taken Dilip Prabhavalkar and Rohini Hattangadi. They conveyed the dilemma, the emotion, the whole subject, and the situation in such a way that it looks very, very real to you. And it does not look like somebody has concocted this whole thing and just imagined it. It looks so real that you start thinking about it, and one starts discussing the film even after the film is over. So, I feel that is where I managed to get two very veteran actors and very experienced veterans who have done all kinds of roles, but as they have themselves admitted, they have not done this kind of role in their lives before.” Mahadevan added.

Talking about his research and case studies, Mahadevan shared, “The film had to have a lot of depth, and the film had to have realism because unless this is treated realistically, the audience will not believe in the subject and in the characters, so that was the challenge. So, we took real locations, we went all over Bombay from a chawl to streets to so many other theatres, to so many other locations and the journey, the adventure of this couple in their, what would one say, journey or in their search for a happy ending to their life and trying to solve the dilemma of their life is what we have tried to do in the film with a very, very realistic touch that you feel that you are not watching a film, you are watching life itself.”

Commenting on the on-screen chemistry between Dilip Prabhavalkar and Rohini Hattangadi, Mahadevan said, “The chemistry between the husband and the wife. Yeah, exactly; they look like that. Yeah, who has not taken life for granted? You know, they know that it’s going to end one day. They are so practical about it that they are quite strong and ruthless about their decision. I knew that Dilip and Rohini select the scripts, and they don’t do any film if there is no depth in the story or character. So, I had to be very careful when I went to them. I went to them with a complete shooting script, and when Dilip Ji read it, he also admitted that he had never been approached by this kind of subject before. Rohiniji is always on the lookout for good subjects, and she was also quite hooked on the subject, and it wasn’t very difficult to get them on board because the subject itself sold.”

When asked about his view on the impact of Hindi commercial cinema on Indian audiences, the filmmaker said, “I think one has to be honest. One cannot exploit cinema in the name of commercial film. Cinema has to be commercial. Every ticket you sell makes it a commercial film. So, we want people to see it. We want more and more people to see it. So, I can’t say that I’m making films only for a restricted audience. But if I can help my audience grow with this kind of cinema, there is something called cinema literacy—educating people in cinema. But our audiences in India especially are hooked on so much to cinema that is mainstream, cinema that is a formula, cinema that only means entertainment in a fun way. I mean, this film is also very entertaining, ‘Ata Veel Zalli’. If you see it, it’s a dark-humoured film. But people should realise and see the definition. What is the definition of entertainment in cinema? For me, the definition is different. And I want to educate people so that more and more people slowly get drawn to this kind of cinema as well. Once upon a time, people were watching Manmohan Desai and Prakash Mehra, along with Rishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar, Vasu Bhattacharya, and Vasu Chatterjee. So, now we have lost that audience totally to formula films. Now I want to get that audience back and tell them that cinema is serious business. Cinema is not a frivolous business. So, educating the audience and taking socially relevant subjects, which are challenging, is how I look at cinema.”

Anant Mahadevan also praised his producer, Dinesh Bansal, for being courageous and backing his film. He said, “I know what kind of cinema I would like to make. But where are the funders? Where are the producers who believe in this kind of cinema? 99.9 percent of funders, corporations, and producers would rather play safe. No one wants to take a chance; no one wants to pioneer. I would use the word pioneer, a different kind of cinema, and put India on the world map, you know. So, for me, I would say that if I found a person like, say, the producer of this film, Mr. Dinesh Bansal, he would have dared to back a film like this. So, I salute producers who dare to back films like ‘Storyteller’, or Phule, ‘Bittersweet’, ‘Me Sindhu Tai’, and ‘Aata Vel Zaali’.

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