Sushant S Rajput - Byomkesh Bakshi- In theaters now - Go see it :) - Page 16

Originally posted by: BeingAnonymous

Dibakar Banerjee hopes his new movie will be a shock ' hopefully a pleasant shock'

The latest interpretation of Saradindu Bandopadhyay's popular Bengali detective is set in 1943, but the treatment is contemporary.

Nandini Ramnath
Today 04:40 pm

Photo Credit: Yash Raj Films

Dibakar Banerjee's new movie Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! is not for die-hard fans of Bengali author Saradindu Bandopadhyay's popular Kolkata sleuth, who featured in a series of stories between 1932 and 1970. Banerjee says so himself. He is billing his fifth feature film, which opens on April 3, as a contemporary telling of a story set in 1943 in a colonial city swarming with Chinese drug runners, British policemen, Japanese bombers, a mysterious arch-villain, and at least one dangerous woman. The casting (non-Bengalis Sushant Singh Rajput as Byomkesh and Anand Tiwari as his Watsonian sidekick Ajit), the language (Hindi and not Bengali), and the anachronistic soundtrack (pounding beats over the soothing strains of Rabindrasangeet) all point to Banerjee's ambition to do for the local hero what Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes movies have done for the iconic English detective.

Ritchie picked American actor Robert Downey Jr and re-imagined Holmes as a raffish man of action rather than a cerebral private eye. In Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, Rajput plays a young man who "meets the world" for the first time, Banerjee told Scroll.in. The lavishly mounted Yash Raj Films co-production represents a departure for Banerjee, whose previous movies have investigated corruption, moral decay, sexual tensions and urban nightmares. In his fifth movie, Banerjee says, expect the expected.

Excerpts from an interview,

It will be a shock, a pleasant shock'


Sushant Singh Rajput and Anand Tiwari.

"Those who are expecting fake classicism or the kind of fake periodicity that we put on to period films where everybody speaks highfalutin' language and is attired in the clothes you find in the photographs and everything looks brushed and CGed [enhanced with computer graphics] will be in for a shock, a pleasant shock, I hope.

You will see 1943 India, but as a crowded, noisy and dangerous place that is as full of people and multiple threads of narratives as it is today. We will transport audiences to that time through computer graphics and sets, but we are behaving just as we would in a contemporary setting. The language which the characters speak is also contemporary and blurs the distinction between the past and present. The music is anachronistic and is used to suspend audiences between that time zone and this one.

We shot in Calcutta and a set on a back lot in central Mumbai. It's the first time I have worked on a constructed set. I enjoyed planning, trying to see how much I could squeeze out of locations, the inventive ways in which I could explore angles and giving birth to something that was not there. You are playing with giant Lego blocks, and it is quite a guilty pleasure. When the set was broken down, we were all hurting."

A special zone where people disappear'


Meiyang Chang.

"Saradindu writes that somewhere in the heart of Calcutta is Chinatown on the one side and slums and workers' colonies on the other, and in between these two is a delta, a special zone where people disappear. At the edge of this delta is a lodging house, and I am telling how Byomkesh came to be in that house.

This is not the suave and extremely cogent and practised Byomkesh who appears on the scene from nowhere. This is a Byomkesh I have extrapolated from the stories. He is young and inexperienced, he makes mistakes and is deceived, and he discovers the world in the process. This is an origins story, but it is also a coming-of-age movie.

Those who have read the Byomkesh stories will be struck by the liberties, but I dare say that if they look closely, they will see that I have drawn from between the lines of what Saradindu has written ' from what he has not said."

Ajit keeps the mystery of Byomkesh alive, Anguri Devi shakes him up'


Swastika Mukherjee.

"The assistant, whether it's Watson or Ajit, fulfils the literary function of keeping the mystery of the detective alive. He separates the viewer from the detective by being another person and being slightly stupid. That gives the audience the extra joy of knowing the detective better. However, the Watson character becomes difficult to sustain cinematically on its own terms. So I had to reinvent Ajit's character and his relevance and relationship to Byomkesh.

Byomkesh has a deep streak of moralism, conservatism and Puritanism. Swastika Mukherjee's character Anguri Devi is a femme fatale who shakes him up in more ways than one. Many elements from the Byomkesh canon have been compressed in her character.

Byomkesh is at the level of a straight moral play. True-blue detective fiction can have ambiguity of character, but not of choices. Bad is bad and good is good, and if you enjoy detective fiction in the old-world way, you have to know what the detective is fighting for. I wasn't into subverting the genre. I was totally sold on the idea of the yarn and the whodunit. What is contemporary is the outer form."

A boy from next door with a distinct edge'


Sushant Singh Rajput.

"Sushant Singh is so today. He is not a huge rebel, but a good-looking, hunky boy next door. Yet, there is a distinct edge and darkness in him that I think all the Indian youth of today have. They are all slightly warped. Something has gone wrong for them, delightfully wrong. Sushant lost 12 kg for the role. I refused to let him have his naturally broken lovely nose. I darkened him, gave him a unibrow and styled his hair."

The format is Western, but the idiom is our own'


Anand Tiwari.

"The detective fiction genre is a Western format, but so are trousers and the automobile. The idiom, however, is our own.

Detective fiction is a nineteenth-century trope, it has to do with colonialism, the industrial revolution, the class system. American detective fiction in the 1920s and '30s did a reboot, where they looked at corruption, the idea of everybody being sucked into a dystopia and the detective being the idealist, the one guy who ensured justice. Saradindu's work is a bridge between the old-style colonial detective and restorative fiction.

I am talking to anybody who cares to sit down and listen to a yarn. I would be reading the books and the light would change by the time I had finished. I want the audience to feel the same way. A yarn is about you becoming someone else and vicariously living the life of an adventurer.

I want the film to make money so that Byomkesh becomes a character we are proud of. I am saying this in a slightly jingoistic way. There should be a bit of pride in saying that we have our own stuff. I do have ideas for a sequel, but this film needs to do well. This is all so new. I don't think we have seen anything remotely close in a long time to a detective fiction where it goes from clue to inference to exposure of the crime."

All stills courtesy Yash Raj Films.

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Originally posted by: BeingAnonymous

Struggle is a very nave word'

ALOK DESHPANDE

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Sushant Singh Rajput returns with the crime thriller Detective Byomkesh Bakshy, set to hit screens on April 3

Sushant Singh Rajput is all set to portray Byomkesh Bakshi, the famous fictional Indian detective created by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay. The film, titled Detective Byomkesh Bakshy, is directed by Dibakar Banerjee. Alok Deshpande catches up with the actor.

From theatre to television to films. Are you happy with your journey?

I cannot be happier than I am right now. Before all this fame, two diametrically opposite feelings existed within me. One, I believed that this would happen, and two, there was no reason to support this belief. But today, when I get a room just beside Shah Rukh Khan's, I feel this is it. What more do you want?

Was it your dream to be an actor?

I never wanted to be an actor. Ten years ago, becoming an actor was as unlikely as becoming an astronaut or a Prime Minister. Nobody I knew had any idea about this industry, I had no money to produce a film and lastly, I was studying Physics.

How did it happen then?

It was quite incidental. I was born in Patna and then moved to Delhi. I was the youngest son in a big family, which meant pampering. I thought that was life. When I stepped out for education, I was never able to talk to anyone or be friendly with people. While pursuing engineering, I joined Shiamak Davar's dance class. But Shiamak asked me to do theatre, which worried me as I had to speak. But the thought that it was the character on stage that was speaking, and not me, made me comfortable. I could hide behind the character. It was so liberating that I decided to do it for the rest of my life and dropped out of college.

How did you end up playing Byomkesh Bakshi?

I was shooting for Shuddh Desi Romance, when Adi (Aditya Chopra) called me and said that Dibakar Banerjee and Yash Raj Films were working together on a film on Byomkesh Bakshy and I would be the detective. I was kind of sceptical initially.

Why?

Because Byomkesh has been done so many times. But then I met Dibakar and auditioned for the role. I got selected too. He told me that this film was going to be our interpretation of a guy in existence for the last 50-60 years and so we have to be very sure of our intent.

How was it working with Dibakar?

He asked me not to watch any of the previous Byomkesh films or serials prior to shooting. I did not understand many things when I read all the Byomkesh stories, but I was sure that Dibakar knew everything.

Which story of Byomkesh have you used in the film?

Well, it's a mix of two or three stories, set in 1943. The things that were happening in Calcutta at that time, which impacted the culture of that city, are an integral part of the story. We have shot almost 70 per cent of the film in the city.

There's always a risk of playing such roles, as many don't like to change the existing image of the character imprinted in public memory. Are you scared of criticism?

This, I think, is the biggest leap of faith that Dibakar has taken. But, this is his interpretation. And for me, I don't think about people while selecting a film or shooting for it. But now that the shooting is over, I do get these thoughts that people should like it. So that the film is commercially viable and so that I will get these kinds of films again. Because nobody puts their money on a non-bankable star.

What's your criterion for choosing a film?

The first feel of the script. It stays with you. I don't plan what kinds of films I want to do. People ask me why you don't do truly commercial films. See, I want to do these films and enjoy on-screen dancing, fighting and other things. But in the last two years, the films I did had slightly more interesting scripts than the other escapist films I was offered. The moment I get an interesting script with dance and fight sequences, I will jump at it.

What is your ideal role?

First, I should understand the character and second, there has to be some room to explore it. Byomkesh did give me that space. Maybe Dibakar knew exactly what he wanted from me, but allowed me to explore.

What makes your journey from an aspiring engineer to an actor so special?

The experience I had while doing it.

You mean your struggle?

Nope. Struggle is a very nave word. It means struggling to do something. I never struggled to do anything. People called me an average actor, but in my head, I was a star. I used to have one line in a play, but I used to believe that people frequenting Prithvi Theatre had come to see me. And that is because I was so into the performance. Nobody can take away that experience from me.

Is it difficult for an outsider to make a name in the industry?

Of course, it is. Tomorrow, if two of my films do not do well consecutively, I may not get another chance. You have to be sure of what you want. You have to keep thinking that you will survive, no matter what.