Man on a mission

There are very few directors who strike the national film award with their debut film and Nishikant Kamat is one of them. His first, Dombivali Fast brought him the award for best feature film in Marathi in 2006 and since then, there has been no looking back for him. Although he began his career with a Marathi film, he dabbles in Bollywood as well, his debut B-Town movie being Mumbai Meri Jaan. His second Marathi movie lai Bhaari, not only did plenty to boost the already popular image of Riteish Deshmukh but also put Kamath very prominently on the map.

He is known to create characters that are strong and tough but he himself is a much grounded man, with a good sense of humour. After a gap of four years, he is back with his hard-hitting thriller Drishyam, stories of which have been doing the rounds already. The star cast is stellar with the likes of Tabu and Ajay Devgn. “Not only were they a director’s actor but they showed faith in me and my vision of the film,” he said. Tabu, he added, was a pleasure to work with. “I wanted someone who can play the head of the state, the inspector general, and also the part of a mother who loves her son and be very vulnerable at the same time. It is very rare to find an actress who can pull off this combination — who can do equal justice to both the sides of the character. I thought of Tabu because of her experience in the industry. She loved it and immediately came on board,” he said. 

The core concept of the movie is very simple; it is the story of a common man who is a fourth standard failure. He has a family and two kids. It is the story of what happens when something comes into his life and changes it overnight. “Something happens and then the entire police force clamps down on that family. He fights till the end to protect the family, that is the story. It can be the story of any common man, how he can go to any extent to protect his family,” Kamath revealed with much caution.

Earlier there were rumors about Saif Ali Khan being the first choice of Kamath before Devgn but the director cleared all hearsay saying that when he was writing the script Devgn was the only actor he had in mind. He confessed of being nervous while approaching the actor, “Ajay is such a senior actor that I was almost like a newcomer in front of him; I am hardly eight films old. I told him in the beginning that I cannot impress you with my large body of work because I had nothing to brag about.” 

But after things worked out, the biggest hurdle that Kamat faced was turning Devgn’s larger than life image into a simple one for his story. He shared that after a lot of discussion they came up with a simple solution. “There was nothing much that we could do to tone his action-hero image down so we paid attention to little details to change his appearance and make him look like an everyday man,” he said. 

The little things that the creative team did to ground the star were to give him oversized shirts and terry cloth pants. “We also gave him regular slippers and the simplest watch we could find. We turned him into a middle class man,” added the director. 

The movie is on the verge of releasing but the director still does not seem to be happy. “I wish I could have got the original script rather than the film because the screenplay is so exciting,” he said and added that it is only because of the screenplay that he wanted to have a Hindi remake. He pointed out the differences, too. “The original was region specific, it centered on one state and I always felt the need that it should go to a wider audience. More than a director I feel like a medium which I have translated from one language to another,” he justified.

Kamath does not follow a set of rules when it comes to film making; he just does what most appeals to him. That is why while Dombivali Fast talks about socially relevant issues, Mumbai Meri Jaan revolves around a cross-section of the society. He, however, took a detour with Force, where the protagonist was a tough cop. “In all my movies I have used a common man as a protagonist because majority of the viewers are common men from the middle class, and they connect to it better,” he said.

His forthcoming film is Rocky Handsome which will hit the screens this October. Although he chose to remain hush-hush about the movie he did share that it will be an “out and out action film.” “It will be completely different from Drishyam. I can vouch for the fact that Indian cinema has not seen this kind of action. I have put my best foot forward — I have tried to make an action film like no one has seen before,” he concluded.

photo Sanjeev Kumar