Director Pia Sukanya tells Chahak Mittal how a crisis-like situation can make somebody laugh provided he is not the sufferer
Imagine. It’s a usual day, you have lost your phone and you inadvertently come across a crime scene and become a witness to it. You are, in turn, then trapped in a pool of circumstances where you are considered to be the actual culprit eventually. How will you overcome such a situation?
Director Pia Sukanya’s directorial debut film, Bombairiya, starring Radhika Apte, Akshay Oberoi, Adil Hussain, and Shilpa Shukla, brings something similar to people’s conscience. It not only projects what happens when one finds himself/herself under such circumstances, but also stands for a cause of witness protection in India.
When the trailer of the film was first released later in November, there was curiosity among the audience as to what the film wanted to say.
Pia is glad to hear that the trailer intrigued the audience. She narrates how the film is a “smart comedy that doesn’t have any slapsticks or abhorrent content, rather keeps one focussed.” She says that it will keep people glued to the mystery that “unveils with every scene of the film.”
She says, “I realised this when I watched the film for the first time with a live audience in a theatre during its screening. In a way, I was also watching my film for the first time, and I realised what a mystery it is. It’s a smart comedy and the audience will realise it when they watch it for the second time. It is actually a film that is a second- or third-time watch.”
Set in Mumbai, in the film, Radhika Apte plays Meghna, who is a public relations manager and gets embroiled in a series of events after her phone gets stolen.
Pia believes that the film is “reflection of our personalities” and a lot goes on in it. She says, “It is complex and witty yet has a warm touch. People are describing it as a dark comedy but it is nothing like that. There is a lot of hope in it. It’s a very gentle and hopeful satire.
She says that the film includes a huge cast of 54 actors, and yet “each one of them shines. Even the watchman, who has just one dialogue in the film, has such an important presence. I realised how real it is and that even minor things can make a great difference.”
Pia reveals that she had got a bit emotional when she first watched the film during its screening upon realising that her first project has finally come alive. She says, “There’s magic in that moment since in your first film, you have a lot to lose and give, and at the same time there is one condition — you can’t stop. No matter how tired you are, whatever condition you are in, it’s a do-or-die situation. You even give away your bone marrow if the need be.”
However, she believes that such is the beauty of the first film for a director.
She shares the first part of their struggle that begun when they had to write the screenplay 27 times before executing the final plan. Giving credit to her husband and also the writer of the film, Michael Ward, and her friend Aarti Bagdi, she tells us how the story came into shape. “The nugget of the story came when Aarti told us how her phone got stolen on the streets of Mumbai and the thief who stole it never switched it off. Since it was active, she was able to negotiate with the thief to track it. Meanwhile, there was also another person who was helping her.”
That was where the spark of the idea for this film was born. She explains, “In today’s world, it seems difficult to work when you have lost something that is like your second hand, and also a habit. How do you function without a limb? You lose all your data and important information with the phone. In that sense, the film is a very modern story.” The film explores how three beings get connected and their worlds collide with each other. “Amidst that, Meghna finds herself trapped in a much larger story.”
Under the title itself, it reads, One witness, one hitman and one bunch of idiots.
She explains that story isn’t just a comedy but also brings a very serious issue to light that is extremely important to every citizen of the country. It questions that if you inadvertently become a witness to a crime, what does the state infrastructure do to protect you as a witness?
“We, in this nation, till date, have not had a fruitful or well-implemented witness protection act. Many a times the witness is only the one who is being preyed upon and considered as the final culprit,” says Pia.
She adds, “I wanted the story to be much bigger than just a comedy and show something that’s relatable to the society and stands for a cause.”
Hence, there are two broad lines. First is Meghna, who is quite “self-absorbed” and having a bad day as she loses her phone. And in the midst of that self-absorption, “she is forced to interact with the world. On the other hand, she finds herself swimming in a much larger pool of chaos.”
She says that making the film was a “vast game” as it needed a lot of focus. “It unveils a new side with every scene like Russian dolls. There is a clue in every shot. Hence, to build that level of curiosity and the right balance, the script had to be written well.”
Since the film shows only one day throughout the story, Pia reveals that they used 40 different locations to shoot it and not even one of them was a studio. It was all at live locations and streets of Mumbai, which was “extremely tough.”
She lists a number of challenges that the film’s eight-month long shooting process went through. She says, “We lost some locations, the city rains wiped us out, the climax location got lost five days before its shoot. Eventually, even after writing the script a number of times, improvisation was all that helped. You think that everything is going the way you had planned, but there are certain situations that always make you change the initial game.”
She explains that the title of the film, Bombairiya, signifies a number of things. It contains the word, Bairiya, that “initially Michael didn’t know the meaning of. He found it interesting when I explained him that it referred towards an enemy who was also like a lover.”
The initial title, The Phone Thief, she says, made it look very “arthouse.” She adds, “But we wanted to make a commercial film. Hence, Bombairiya also evokes a feeling of love-hate relationship that we have with the cities with live in. And here, it is with Mumbai.”
She says that the film is a “serious comedy,” which itself implies an oxymoron. Isn’t it? So how did she bring together seriousness and comedy into one frame?
She explains that we laugh at people when they are in crisis even though we are aware of what they are going through. This is because they are able to relate to them.
“For instance, if someone falls on a banana peel, it’s funny for us but the person will get hurt (Laughs). It is about how we, as third persons, perceive such scenes where people are struggling with their daily lives. We are all weird in our own way of looking at the world. It’s somewhat laughing at your own problems because at the end, you also relate to them.”
Talking about Bollywood and its ever-evolving course, Pia says that she is excited to see how things have changed to such an extent in the industry. “We are hitting the right chord today. Films like Andhadhun, Newton, are wonderful. There’s a feeling linked to such films that ‘Wow! What did we just watch!’ I feel that we have started getting that and most importantly, filmmakers have started understanding the importance of it.”
She adds that the level of craft that filmmakers have started touching is “incredible.”
“Our cinema is increasingly moving towards the realistic theme. It’s not only music and dance that makes Bollywood different, there are musicals even in the Western film industry, like La La Land... but a Bollywood film is about the performance pitch,” she adds, saying that if people want to see Indian cinema to match the world stage, “so we need our performances to be around reality rather than creating some larger-than-life characters. We just need them to be human beings.”
(The film releases on January 18.)