~*Sushant's Bollywood Journey*~ #12 - Page 54

Dibakar Banerjee on taking Bengal's favourite sleuth to wider audiences; why recreating Kolkata of the 1940s is exciting and thinking of a new face for Ajit

Will he wear a dhoti, we ask Dibakar Banerjee. The director — smart, witty and one of the faces of Bollywood's new-age urban cinema — says, "Why not? But then, Bomkesh is a well-attired, young man. So expect to see him in many different looks." And with that, Dibakar takes us through how he's going to reinterpret one ofBengali literature's iconic characters in his Hindi film. Excerpts from a chat:

Uttam Kumar, Rajit Kapur, Abir Chatterjee, Sujoy Ghosh... different actors have played the iconic Bomkesh Bakshi. How does Sushant Singh Rajput work for you?
All iconic characters are open to various interpretations. For example, when Satyajit Ray directed Uttam Kumar as Bomkesh in Chiriyakhana, it did not match completely with the literary tradition. Bomkesh is married, but is seen sharing a bachelor pad with Ajit. This pad is not like the one described by Saradindu Bandopadhyay in the stories. So it is important to reinvent an iconic character.
My imagining of Bomkesh sees him as a young man, just out of college in 1942. He's an orphan, also a loner. He's misunderstood, ostracized, at loggerheads with the world around him, as so many brilliant people are. And he's on his first case. The crimes that are shown in the film are shocking, much ahead of their times, and so is the detection. There's something vulnerable about Bomkesh, which Saradindu himself created. And I think Sushant has that vulnerability in him.
Sushant is a heartthrob for the young crowd. He hardly looks like the sort to play a classic literary character...
But the Bomkesh I show is going to be extremely contemporary. And Sushant is going to be a sexy, young Bomkesh. He's good-looking and smart and I'm going to dispel the notion that sharp wits can't go with a good body. It'll be character that young people will relate to.
Think of The Name of The Rose. It has a medieval setting, but the detective monk is an Englishman — rational, cynical and with a dry sense of humour. What the novel does is transpose the gent detective of 19th century English literary tradition into a medieval Continental setting and weave a brilliant story around him. Similarly, my Bomkesh will be a contemporary young man in almost every way but the backdrop of his story is 1942. When these two are juxtaposed, they create explosive possibilities. I don't want to make Bomkesh a brainy, Holmesian character, who will solve the crime as the audience goes, 'Aha, aha!' I think that type of storytelling is boring. The story will start off as a whodunnit, turn into a whydunnit and finally it will be like, what is this guy doing?

From what you're telling us, it seems there is going to be an origin myth, a back story to Bomkesh. Is it something that you're developing on your own?
All the references to his origin are there in Saradindu's stories already! I'm just developing them. The author wrote his Bomkesh stories in two phases — the earlier one shows him as more adventurous, while the later one sees him married, more settled. I'm looking at Bomkesh in his earlier, younger avatar. It will also explore the question as to why did Bomkesh become a detective in the first place? In 1942, a young man fresh out of college would probably look for a government job. So why did he turn into a detective?

With this film, you're taking up two challenges. Detective films don't have afantastic box-office record in Hindi. On top of that, yours is a period film. Aren't you jittery?
At least five times as many action films fail at the box office as detective films. But do we blame the action genre for that? So why blame detective films? It's not about the genre but about how you tell the story. Do you think of Godfather or Lagaan as a period film? You don't, because these classics use the period in the context of the narrative. If you use period as just an excuse for vacuous art direction and costume drama, then of course you get a bad film.
When I made Khosla Ka Ghosla, they said films without stars don't work. For Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, they said this sort of screenplay wouldn't have takers. For Love Sex aur Dhokha, they said the digicam format would be too much for audiences. For Shanghai, it was like no one wants to watch political films. But I love these challenges. For Bomkesh, my treatment is that of a rogroge goppo, the old yarn that never lets you go. It's a story you listen to over cha, muri aar peyanji. It'll be pure entertainment.

First you adapt a Satyajit Ray story for Bombay Talkies. Now Saradindu. Is there a kick in taking these Bengali classics to audiences beyond Bengal's borders?
Trust me, these are stories I've always been wanting to tell. I've been wanting to make Bomkesh from the time I was 14. Since I've grown up in Delhi, there are two sides of me. There's the pan-India guy who makes films like LSD and Khosla Ka Ghosla. But deep inside me, there is something innately Bengali. My connection to my Bengaliness in my growing-up years was through books, books and more books. And these are some of the stories I've been wanting to take to audiences worldwide. If I was not a filmmaker, I would have been a translator. With Bomkesh, I feel like a 10-year-old who's been given the most exciting toys in the world. When I make the film in Hindi, the challenge will be to make Bomkesh's Bengaliness appeal to a wider, universal audience.

How do you want to recreate Kolkata of the 1940s?
The city itself will be a character in the film! There's so much to explore — Kolkata during the Second World War, the trams, buses, hustle-bustle, Bomkesh walking down College Street, Amherst Street, Harrison Road. We'll also have to use a lot of CG, I guess. But for me, the biggest question is, will we be able to show Bomkesh smoking? In the 1940s smoking was much more common and it's said in the stories that Bomkesh would light up a cheroot when he was thinking. But with the present censor laws, I don't know if I'll be able to show that.

And finally, the million-dollar question. Who's playing Ajit?
It's not decided yet. But I'll tell you this: he may even be a new face. We'll reinterpret Ajit's character as well. In the books, a detective's sidekick is important, since he translates and depicts the actions of the detective for the reader. On film, he's redundant, since the viewer can see the detective on screen directly. So I'm rereading the character in a way that Ajit becomes integral to the story.