Director Anurag Basu is cheerful and chatty when we speak to him over the phone, post the release of his latest musical, relationship-drama Metro… In Dino. He isn’t much for going too deep into the artistic process. He doesn’t take it high-handedly (“It’s all organic”, “there is no set formula”). The film, featuring an impressive ensemble of Pankaj Tripathi, Konkona Sen Sharma, Alia Fazal, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sara Ali Khan, Neena Gupta and Saswata Chatterjee, released last Friday and Anurag, although happy with the responses, is on a wait-and-watch mode. The film business is a fickle one.We speak to the director about his process of coming up with hyperlinked narratives, musical influences, his views on modern love, and if he thinks of the box office before making a film.Excerpts:How are you taking the responses to the film?I am happy at the moment but it is too early to make a conclusion. People’s reactions and reviews have been favourable, and hopefully, they will turn into numbers.Since Life in a… Metro (2007) and then Ludo (2020), hyperlinked narrative is becoming your USP. Do film ideas come to you as a string of multiple stories?I think if we look into our lives, we will realise that everything that happens is somehow connected with the lives of our family members and our friends. Our lives are a result of the chaotic domino effect of the stories of other people. It’s just that we have to be creative to showcase that on the big screen. The earlier Metro took some time, but Metro… In Dino was relatively easier to write.How so?I think it was because I had done the hyperlinked format twice before. It made things easier. Moreover, I didn’t get into the trap of trying to impress the audience by flexing my screenwriting skills or by showcasing how I merge stories, something which I did in Ludo.There is a certain dissonance I felt when the film began. There were too many characters being introduced, and too many dynamics at play. But the good thing was that it made me sit up and pay attention. Was it intentional to have the film begin with too many elements?It was. I wanted people to understand the characters and also what kind of film they are in for. It was important for viewers to get into the tone and mood of the film. Metro… In Dino has a musical format and it was needed that within the first ten minutes, people know how much concentration would be required for this one.There seems to be an influence of Western musicals on the film…No, no, it was purely an Indian influence. Our performing arts are rooted in singing and narrating stories, be it nautanki or pandwani theatre, so it comes from there and not from the West. Even our old songs were like conversations between people, like ‘accha toh hum chalte hain’ (Ok, I should get going) ‘fir kab miloge?’ (‘When will we meet again?’). In fact, my 2017 film Jagga Jasoos was more influenced by Satyajit Ray’s Hirak Rajar Deshe (1980) than any Western musical. In fact, I don’t enjoy Western musicals; I think they have only copied from Indian traditional art forms.Tell me about your viewpoint on modern love. I think Gen Z knows something about love that previous generations didn’t, but is there also something that the preceding generations know that they don’t?I think the major difference is that my generation learned about love more from experience than information. But what is happening today is that the young people know a lot about love but they haven’t tried things out. Terms like situationship have come up, and tags have been given to every stage of love, which is a good thing in a way, because in my time, we were in relationships in which we didn’t exactly know what to call. I have two daughters who are Gen Alpha and there is a lot I learn from them (laughs).I liked how technology seamlessly blended with the film’s narrative, Aditya Roy Kapur’s character is a travel blogger, a girl asks Siri when she is in doubt about her sexual orientation, and Saswata Chatterjee’s character, an old man, knows how to use Gemini to find his phone…This was very organic. I ask AI chatbots about everything. There wasn’t any conscious effort as I took all of this from life. I see that children today rarely ask their parents anything, all answers are given by the Internet. I observe the life and people around me closely, that’s where all my ideas come from.Do your friends blame you for taking things from their lives and putting them in your film?Not my friends but my wife does (laughs). She saw the first cut and was like, ‘You have put the conversations between us into the film.’Apart from action, other genres aren’t doing too well in theatres. When you are working on a film, does audience acceptance and the box office play a factor?I always think about the audience. I don’t consider myself an indulgent film director. When I start a film, the first thing I think about is what I want to see as a viewer and most of the time I end up making that. I do it while hoping that there are a lot of audiences like me.
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