Having worked in cinematic masterpieces including Life of Pi, English Vinglish and Mukti Bhawan among others, Adil Hussain has proven his acting credentials more than once. The actor has been at the fore of content-driven meaningful cinema and pulled off disparate roles in films spanning several genres. Hussain has been nominated in the Best Actor category for his layered and nuanced performance as Rajiv in Shubhashish Bhutiani’s Mukti Bhawan at the News18 Reel Movie Awards. Here’s what he has to say in an interaction with News18.com.
Having done Mukti Bhawan feels very good, it’s one of the best movies I have done so far. Quite often, the taste of the makers and viewers do not match, but I’m glad that this film -- its director, the script, the supporting actors and the kind of work I understand in appreciation of acting -- is being appreciated by the audience too. The viewers' tastes are evolving and they are looking for something which is real, truer, layered and complex, as well as artistic at the same time. It makes me very hopeful for the future of Indian cinema.
I don’t know if I can be profound in my explanation but what I understand is that because of the kind of access viewers have to good content over the bad, people are watching content-driven films and appreciating truthful acting more. Credible situations, scripts, and characters are being portrayed all over the world. The younger filmmakers appreciate cinema throughout the globe and now intend to make better films, whether short or feature-length. So it is a slow evolutionary process in the taste of viewers. But it is still minuscule; the evolution is nowhere near complete, it has just started. We have a long way to go as it’s only the beginning of good-content driven films.
In every sense, things in the commercial genre are changing. But when it comes to truly appreciating aesthetically pleasing, meaningful cinema and also the narrative styles, I think we have a long way to go before we start celebrating. We must of course, at the same time, celebrate the beginning of this change.
I don’t think the lines between commercial and art-house cinema are blurring in terms of finance because I know how much I’ve gotten paid for Mukti Bhawan. For their love for and faith in director and producer, the actors do a film because it is rare that you get to relish a role. It has paid me in kind- in terms of artistic satisfaction, it is priceless. The kind of appreciation it has gotten all across the globe, you cannot price tag that. But if you are talking about finances- there are chances certain films can make money like Lunchbox had, while Mukti Bhawan will end up breaking even. The platforms are coming up slowly but you can’t compete with the commercial film sector. I think the best answer can be given by the producers themselves.
In Indian cinema, the star culture is more than in European films, or Hollywood even. In Hollywood, most of the stars are fantastic actors, and the line there has blurred definitely. But In India, I guess it is the mindset of the people in the position of power- mostly the distributors, exhibitors, producers and to some extent film market experts- who decide the films or actors that will work. Or we’ll have some good actors to support a star which happens quite often. There is a sort of assortment of old good actors, old star, and a new star, and a semi-famous actor. It is their perception that needs to change. It has been proven time and again that if a film is good and if it’s marketed well, it works. Like Sairat or Life Of Pi, I don’t think it worked because of the actors’ popularity, it worked because of the film. If a film runs in Assam for five weeks, it’s not because I'm Assamese, it’s because the film is fantastic. But it has to be marketed well. If someone can recognize a good film- if we had 5 crores at least to market Mukti Bhawan for instance, I think it would have become a commercially successful film. But people have to know about it and advertisements have to be run aggressively on print, television, and social media. Once people came to watch Mukti Bhawan, they loved it, apart from one or two people who found it difficult to digest the impact of the film.
I think it is time for producers, financiers, distributors, and exhibitors to take actors and abolish the star system, create good content and rope in best of the makers- right from production to DOP. And I really hope they emphasize on script-writing at least for the next 5-6 years. India somehow gives the least importance to the script - which forms the skeleton of a film - and it is only later that other people come and breathe life into the film. It’s not about gloss and glitter and production design; the short-story writers should be trained and sent to different countries to understand film writing. There have been amazing films in India a few months ago with fantastic visuals, but they didn’t work despite being directed by famous directors. It is the matter of how you tell a story - it has to be interesting, you cannot make a boring film. It has to be engaging. At the same time, you cannot expect everyone to like your film.
(As told to Kriti Tulsiani)
(The REEL Movie Awards are India’s first and only movie awards that recognise and reward New Age Cinema and its artists who deserve glory as they champion creative visual storytelling and epitomize diversity in the uniqueness of content.)
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