Vishal Bhardwaj is in the hot seat

Fresh from the acclaim that he received for ‘Omkara’, filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj turned up at Subhash Ghai’s film school Whistling Woods International (WWI) last week. What teed off as an interactive session with the film students turned out to be a healthy discussion on ‘Omkara’, ‘Maqbool’ and cinema in general.

Meghna Ghai-Puri, Subhash Ghai’s daughter who runs the institute, said that filmmakers like Bhardwaj should be on the faculty as the students get to learn so much from him. And quite incidentally, Ghai also managed to convince Bhardwaj to deliver occasional lectures at the school. On his part, Bhardwaj offered to screen his yet-to-release film ‘The Blue Umbrella’ for the institute.

Bhardwaj was thoroughly grilled by the students. The director stressed on fact that the box office has never held any fear for him. “As a filmmaker, the day you think that you have an eye on the box office, the story ends there. A story has to be expressed; it has to come from within. Maybe I was more concerned about the film that I wanted to make – the adaptation of ‘Othello’,” he said.

When asked about the fact that not many movies have a tragic end much like ‘Omkara’, Bhardwaj said that he was never apprehensive about the film’s ending. “I just wanted to be true to the spirit of ‘Othello’. I didn’t want to make it a happy ending,” he added. What about economics, asked a screen-writing student. Bhardwaj had an answer for that too. “Economics, of course, is a very important part of filmmaking. You have to get the money recovered for your producer,” he replied quickly. The students went on to scrutinise his earlier movies – prominently ‘Maqbool’.

“When I started off with ‘Maqbool’, I was scared of the media and the reaction that I would get. But then the success of ‘Maqbool’ gave me the confidence to tamper with another of the bard’s plays. Of course, I had taken my own liberties, but the point is that you cannot be dishonest to a story,” said Bhardwaj.