Bollywoods Latest Renegade Entrant

An edited version of this appeared in Open Magazine titled "Tanu, Manu and The Real Stuff".

Bollywoods Latest Renegade Entrant

Aanand L. Rai - director Tanu Weds Manu - has learnt his success lessons the hard way, making him the latest entrant into Bollywood’s renegade space

“Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar Banerjee are the Bhagat Singh’s of Bollywood. They fight for their films. And you know even if their films flop at the box office, you will take something home from it.” Aanand L. Rai, the latest toast of Bolly-town after the success of Tanu Weds Manu (TWM), says this as we sit chatting sweet-nothings after the interview.

For an hour before, he faced a volley of questions, some clichéd some tough, with answers every entertainment journalist has heard endlessly. Some are so unoriginal that you end up wondering, if like his first two films, TWM is also somehow ‘inspired’.

But sensibility soon kicks in. A film that physically touches you cannot be a copy. For if nothing else, TWM smells of small town India, its maddening crowds, its towering insecurity of getting its girls married even if you have to cheat for it, of perennially eves-dropping friends making privacy a priviledge, of quirky idiosyncrasies hard to imagine but that does indeed exist. As any decent man of the arts will tell you; stories are rarely original, their execution can always be.

And Tanu Weds Manu reeks of an original, creative execution of a simple, heartfelt, men-are-from-mars-women-from-venus story. But you shake your head in disbelief, where did the film originate from in the first place?

First let’s get Aanand’s clichés out of the way: someone offered him a bigger star for TWM but he wanted to be in character and chose his cast, he could have had a bigger budget but that would have killed the films original look, Kangana Ranaut has given her best performance till date, he simply wanted to tell a story well without worrying about success, his producers Viacom 18 has been extremely supportive of his creative vision, he made the film without pressure etc. 

Yet, beyond these, to find the real Aanand L Rai, you have to go into his past. To understand the Aanand of TWM versus the one who made his first two films, you have to understand Bollywood’s success formula, and how that is changing drastically. For hidden behind this is a sweeping, but under-the-carpet change occurring in Bollywood.

Aanand L. Rai, showing how to bowl a cinematic doosra' - Photo by Satyen K. Bordoloi

First we take Aanand - the man. He comes from a typical middle class, Indian family full of hopes from their children, and noisy relatives, to whom he credits the real feel of TWM. In his own words, he saw India on yearly two month long LTC holidays of his parents, both of whom were teachers. Typical of Indian middle class aspiration, his parents packed him off to Nanded to do his engineering. But he knew where his heart lay - with his brother Ravi Rai who was doing television in Bombay. Hence, the day his engineering ended, in 1994, he landed at his brother’s doorsteps. “I did not even take a break to relax at home in Delhi. I knew if I went there, I’d have to look for a job, one thing would have led to the other and I would have had to miss out on my dreams,” he now says. It was the first gentle act of rebellion, that perhaps prepared him for what was to come later.

It helped to have a brother doing television in tinsel-town and he blended in perfectly. “Those were the golden days of TV in India and unlike today it was not merely conversion of visuals to money. There was creative satisfaction for everyone - writers, directors and producers.” Aanand ended up doing all three for television and with his brother Ravi Rai created some path breaking serials like ‘Sailaab’, ‘Thoda Hai Thode Ki Zaroorat Hai’, and ‘Sparsh’ among others.

With liberalization sinking its teeth deep into everything, including the medium of television, creativity nosedived and TV serials became assembly line productions. Aanand quit TV in 2001 and spent the next couple of years prepping himself for a stint in cinema. What he did not know then was that from 2001, he’d take another decade to find his own footing in filmdom. And that it will have nothing to do with his own strength or weakness, but the way Indian commercial cinema had become. 

In the first decade of the new millennium, if you consider the 10 highest grossing films of each year, over 50% have been from what we all know as ‘inspired’ films, mostly Indianized copies of Hollywood films, and sometimes Europe and now even east of south-east Asian films. Both old timers and new entrants have given in to this tacit formula.

A good example of the same is Aanand whose first theatrical film (he has made and hour long telefilm ‘One Night Stand’ for Star One) ‘Strangers’ was a take on Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Strangers on a Train’ with generous dosage of change from the original. Same with his second film – ‘Thodi Life Thoda Magic’, that looks oddly familiar to the Eddie Murphy starrer ‘Holy Man’. Both films were major box office duds.

It is at this point, the story of Aanand L Rai, takes a very interesting twist in the tale. While many like him have continued on this well-trodden path, Aanand was sensible. “I realized I was not connecting with the audience. I had become indulgent. I was not telling their story. For TWM, that was my most important task,” he says. So the two men – Aanand and his writer Himanshu Sharma - decided to find inspiration from their own lives with characters so rooted in reality that one could find them in our own family or friend circle. This became the major reason behind the success of Tanu Weds Manu. 

Go watch TMW at any single screen theatre, especially in North India, and you will notice how well he has connected with the Indian aspiration and reality. Girls hoot when Kangana says that she prefers any kind of partner - if a man is not available a woman would do. The theatre is in splits when Madhavan and his friend, on entering a Punjabi home in the throes of marriage, are asked to mount a horse to go from the gate to its veranda.

Like any Anurag Kashyap or Dibakar Banerjee film and unlike the sanitized studio spaces of a Yash Raj or Dharma Production film, something is always happening in the background making the film dense with life

“I wanted to create a simple, transparent, honest space with all its flaws and quirks. I am the king of that space and if you like something in it, that’s me and if you didn’t I’m to blame for the same,” Aanand says.

What he means, but does not articulate in deliberate words, is that for the first time in his three film long career he is in absolute command of his craft and cinema. Call it the case of twice unlucky, third time shy, but he has turned towards a kind of creative space, that Bollywood is gradually shifting towards where originality and rootedness call the shots, and not an inspiration from someone else’s work.

Thus, like Aanand says about the likes of Anurag and Dibakar, you have on one side these renegade band of filmmakers who after years and years of creative struggle are finally in a position to demand their own terms and turfs, on the other side you have those like Aanand that have tried to blend in to Bollywood’s ‘inspired-by’ standards, only to realize that they not only can, but have to trust their own instincts of creation.

If you can call it so, this merging of different creative spaces has created a new renegade space in Bollywood, wherein lies - as the success of many of these films in 2010 pitted against the corresponding failures of biggies has shown - the hope and prospects of Bollywood that goes beyond the meaningless rhetoric of India being the largest film producing nation in the world. In its womb lies the potential that will truly create an Indian film industry that is at par with global standards, both in creativity and production.

And this band, unlike the proponents of parallel cinema of the 70s and 80s, are very conscious about the financial angle. Dibakar Banerjee had told Open Magazine (Scheduled Cast – 31 Jan, 2011 issue) that unless a small budget film achieves a substantial multiplier on investment, the mainstream will not take notice. Aanand echoes the sentiment, “The conversion of creativity to money is very important. Filmmaking is not my hobby, it is someone’s business.” With a budget of 17 crores (production and P&A), TMW theatrically made a gross of 18 crores in the first weekend itself. With few films releasing till the cricket world cup gets over, TWM will enjoy a longer stay at theatrical screens, leaving no doubts that the film would be a hit theatrically. Add to it peripherals like satellite rights and overseas sales, and you have a sure-shot winner in hand.

But what does success mean to this man who has seen his share of upheavals in life. “My ten year old daughter passes Cinemax daily to go to school. During ‘Strangers’she was upset that the poster was taken out in a week while anther films’ poster hung longer. I had promised her then that one day my film will last longer than others. Today I see her beaming face every time she sees a TWM poster or when her teachers tell her that her dad has made a good film - that is my biggest happiness.”

Today, Aanand is a relaxed man. He looks forward to finally fulfilling his dream of working with Vidya Balan and Shahrukh Khan. He had approached Vidya for ‘Strangers’, before she had became successful. As for Shahrukh he says, “I have a story idea that only he can do. Inshallah if I get the chance I would love to narrate it to him.” 

For the time being though, beyond the congratulatory calls from the industry, he has already got many offers. But he is in no hurry, “I will take my time choosing the next project. I want to work fearlessly,” says this latest Bollywood rebel. “My fight is different from others. I will fight gently, like Gandhi,” he says adding, “I have made it a point to be on the ground. Nothing will change internally. I have learnt my lessons. I will tell the story the way I want to.” A message others wanting to make their mark in Bollywood, would do well to heed to.