Imtiaz Ali tells Pratiti Ganatra that his scripts grow organically, and become love stories along the way.
Your last film Tamasha received quite bipolar reviews from audiences, and in this day and age of social media and blogs, this sort of information is easily accessible to one and all. How do you personally think Tamasha did? How do you judge the success or failure of your film?
One is how much money it collects, and then there is also how deeply the movie affects and how well it entertains people. So, on the count of how much money it has collected, the trade wanted Tamasha to collect more. They somehow had bigger figures in mind with that combination of things, etc. But that’s not exactly the reason why somebody makes a movie, because you know there are better ways, safer ways of making money than getting into movies.
So the reason of making Tamasha was very well satisfied, very well fulfilled at this point in time. Of course, a film according to me is very permanent and it takes years and years to reach the people it is supposed to reach, and sometimes it reaches people that are not even born at the time of its release. So for Tamasha, I think the success lies in the fact that it has affected people deeply, it has touched upon certain things that have made them think about themselves in a different way. So, in terms of entertainment of that group of people and affecting them, it has scored very highly. But as I am saying, the trade wants more.
The theme of our issue this month is “love”, so I’d like to begin on that front. When you set out to write a script or make a movie, is it a conscious decision that it will be a love story or a romance? Are love stories/romance movies the only kind of movies that you want to make?
No, no. I never consciously think that I want to make a love story. I just write the story that comes to mind, and it just progresses quite without my own supervision, and it makes itself. Inevitably, there is something that qualifies it to be a love story but that is always something that I find out later.
I never consciously think that I want to make a love story. I just write the story that comes to mind, and it just progresses quite without my own supervision, and it makes itself.
So, you don’t set out to make just love stories?
No, I never set out to make a love story. It becomes a love story on the way.
In our country, be it TV or films, there is usually dumbing down of content—the audience is not considered smart enough. But the romance in your films is very un-Bollywood-like, if I may call it so, be it Socha Na Tha or Highway. Your stories are complex, and the love stories often have certain layers. Are you apprehensive at all while making such stories?
I don’t think that the audience of this country is dumb. I feel that we need to improve ourselves, especially if we are making films that are slightly unexpected, then I need to improve myself, I need to improve my ability as a director to reach out to them. And this is something that I say very often, that traditionally Indians have read, understood and lived with very complicated literature, very multi-layered, you know. Much more multi-layered than any movie you would have ever seen. Like Mahabharata and Ramayana—all stories are so complex; all the characters are so difficult to understand and they constantly keep exposing themselves chapter after chapter.
So, if people have grown up on that, I don’t think they will not get the subtlety of Tamasha. Indians are supposed to be very intelligent everywhere else in the world, so if an Indian goes to America, he becomes the most intelligent person in the room. So how can we say that Americans, or anybody else, are more intelligent that us? How can we say that they understand cinema in a different way and for Indians we need to dumb it down? I think that itself is a very dumb way of looking at it.
Traditionally Indians have read, understood and lived with very complicated literature, very multi-layered, you know. Much more multi-layered than any movie you would have ever seen.
Let go back a little bit—how did you fall in love with cinema? Did you always want to be a filmmaker, tell stories? How did you decide to do this?
The funny thing is, I never decided I wanted to do this. I only wanted it as a secret in my heart that I perhaps will do something like this. But where I come from, it was not easy to also have any aspirations that I wanted to something in the film industry. And then I used to do theatre, because that was something that was available and something that I had a lot of fun with, and one thing led to the other. But there are certain early impressions.
One of them was that when I was a kid, I used to go to cinema halls which belonged to my relatives, and watch glimpses and snatches of these great movies on the big screen and I never got to see the whole film, I just had enough time to see some song, or some scene and run away before getting caught. I think I wanted to be in that world somehow, to be in that world which was a little more emotional and fun than the outside world.
In one of your earlier interviews, you mention that “the biggest impediments to love are inner alone”, so how much of Imtiaz do we see in the characters that you write, their love, their pain?
Again, my attempt is for him not to be there at all. But since the work—the stories that I write or the movies that I make—are organic to me, they can’t come from any other source. I look at myself like a conducting metal that just conveys the electricity, but still there is some bias that gets into it. So, it is never deliberate but I have to admit that there are a few things that find their way in.
I look at myself like a conducting metal that just conveys the electricity, but still there is some bias that gets into it.
Your love for travel is evident from the kind of films that you make. Writers/filmmakers often say that a particular place is “like a character in their film.” What is your take on this? Was Corsica, say, a character in Tamasha or Prague in Rockstar? How do you choose these places while writing them?
No, I don’t look at it that way. I don’t see Corsica as a character but I see it as a phase. I looked at it like a phase that they went through.
In another interview, you mention that “If you have the guts, keep the script open.” Can you elaborate a bit on this? Isn’t it slightly risky, dangerous even to do this?
Very risky, actually. I did this in Highway, I felt that because Highway was so out there, and it was so real that it was difficult and artificial to try to install in it things that have been decided when I sat and wrote in a room. The detail of it sometimes was not consistent. Sometimes you sit and write in a room, or wherever else, you imagine something. But when you go that place, when you go through the scene that you had written in that room, certain new things happen, certain things that you had not seen when you were sitting in that room. And if you don’t use them, you are losing an opportunity.
To keep the script open means to be able to use these opportunities. A new thing happens in the actor, or in the atmosphere or somewhere, or a new thought comes in your own mind because no matter how well I imagine that I am standing at the top of a mountain in the Himalayas, when I am actually standing there, there will be at least a few new things that I will see.
I felt that because Highway was so out there, and it was so real that it was difficult and artificial to try to install in it things that have been decided when I sat and wrote in a room. The detail of it sometimes was not consistent.
So, the script is constantly evolving.
Yes, so you try to take than in. You try to take that into your script, it also changes certain things that you had already written. So, that is keeping it open.
There is a dedicated group of people who love Imtiaz Ali films…
May the tribe increase.
So does that add some extra pressure on you to deliver a certain kind of film because that is what is “expected” out of you now?
No, not at all. That would actually be like trying to kill them, because whatever the reason is that some people might like my films, I am sure it is drawn from the fact that I like to make films in a certain way, so I would like to keep it like that.
And finally, what do we get to see from you next? Have you started work on a new script/project?
I am writing a story…I am trying to figure out a story actually.
