Filmmaker Vandana Kataria tells Dhruvika Bhanot how her latest venture, Noblemen, while being a take on bullying and revenge, does not romanticise the feeling or the phenomenon
Ever been bullied during your teenage years? Or skipped school due to the fear of fellow students teasing you for certain things you own? Or singled out for your body size, shape or sexuality? Bullying has been the premise of several films and filmmakers have adopted innovative approaches to showcase this theme. Filmmaker Vandana Kataria’s Noblemen imaginatively uses the Shakespearean play Merchant of Venice as an inspiration.
Set in a boarding school, the film talks about bullyism in the context of the persecution of the play’s antagonist Shylock. In a story within story format, the angst-ridden students actually enact the play as part of a school event. Fifteen year-old Shay (played by Ali Haji), becomes the victim of grotesque bullying. But in a role reversal, he plays Antonio, particularly the sequence where the anti-Semitic merchant indulges in irrational bullying and criticism of Shylock, who is a Jew in a predominantly Catholic set-up. Perhaps, this is his way of understanding and analysing the source of hatred. The filmmaker has also touched upon homosexuality, using the male bonding of Antonio and Bassanio as a takeoff point. There is a scene in the film where actors Kunal Kapoor and Ali Haji indulge in a fleeting kiss. Is their closet passion the reason why they fire guns at Shylock? Is it a clash of sub-cultures then? Such questions, Kataria feels, “may help us be more tolerant of each other. With the digital boom in entertainment, there is space to have mature conversations around these subjects and issues.”
The director, who has donned several hats as a production designer, an assistant director and now as a filmmaker, has spent her academic life in a boarding school and has seen bullying up front. She says, “During that time, 1983 to 94 to be precise, bullying was bad, not just here but in British and American ones as well. These mostly took place in boys’ schools. There’s a moment in the trailer, where the bullies threaten the protagonist in the bathroom with a fork down his throat, which is drawn from my own experiences.”
The concept of revenge is woven into the script when Shay finds himself unable to endure the bullying and decides to avenge his mistreatment. Upon questioning whether she thought that her concept of revenge and retribution would be twisted, Kataria replies, “Of course. And which is precisely why Noblemen’s end is what it is. I did not want to give the audience the romanticised version of revenge, where they feel happy and satisfied that the underdog eventually got his revenge even if that came from a heinous act of violence.” The conclusion of the film explores how the victim had to barter his innocence to avenge his mistreatment. “The film is a Shakespearean story with a tragic end. It is a tale where monsters, who are left unobserved, create bigger monsters in the process,” says Kataria. It deals with the darkest corners of a mind, the vulnerability that is an offshoot of bullying, she adds.
The constant battle between being satisfied with your art and being a ruthless self-critic is inevitable for creative minds. Kataria, who was a production designer for Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye, Shanghai and a second unit director for Gully Boy, is, therefore, able to easily spot gaps. While as a production designer, she literally created every prop with her own hands, as a director, she says, “I have to let go of that and let the crew do their job. Most importantly, I learnt that I always want to work with a crew that is better than me at the job, so I can learn from them and keep getting better at my work.” She adds that this was an extremely humbling experience for her as compared to her work as a production designer. “The learnings were numerous.”
She says that she is not sure if the audience will buy into her cerebral take on things. But she believes in her language of communication. She says, “I am nervous and excited at the same time to know what the verdict will be. People are always strongly affected by the film. You can’t watch this one passively, you will have a strong reaction to it, good or bad.”
Despite the crest and troughs in an industry as arduous as Bollywood, the creative freedom it grants is notable. That is how Kataria found herself in the shoes of a filmmaker and after the commercial release of the film, she will have another one accredited to her name. She humbly shares that she has not yet made a comfortable home in the director’s shoes. She says, “I am always anxious, I never know how, till I get there.” And what is the advice she would bequeath to a fellow debut director? She answers, “You’ve got to have doggedness, you can’t survive without it. Add to that, child-like enthusiasm to explore something new. If you’ve got these two qualities, the rest can be learnt.”
(The film releases today.)
Photo: Pankaj Kumar