Dhak Dhak producer Pranjal Khandhdiya on slice-of-life cinema: 'Audience shouldn't evaluate films based on box office'

Taran Dudeja’s road trip film Dhak Dhak was released in theatres last weekend to a muted response. The film, which stars Ratna Pathak Shah, Dia Mirza, Fatima Sana Shaikh, and Sanjana Sanghi, is about four women who ride their bikes from Delhi to Ladakh. In an exclusive chat with DNA, the film’s producer Pranjal Khandhdiya talks about the logistical challenges of its shoot and why films should not be judged on box office returns alone.

Pranjal shares that the four actresses did ride their bikes all the way from Delhi to Ladakh for the shoot. “Most of the shots you see in the film are the actors actually riding the bikes on that terrain. We were mostly shooting on the go and they had to actually ride the bikes,” he shares.

But the filmmaker shares that not all actors were that enthusiastic about the prospect from the get go. He realls, “When I made the phone call to Ratna Pathak Shah, her first reaction was ‘have you gone mad’. She said. ‘are you even in your senses that you are offering me something like this’. I just requested her to read the script once. We were very sure about our story and the script. She read the script in 24 hours and told us she loved it. But she was worried about the biking part.”

Eventually, the makers arranged biking training for the four actresses ahead of the beginning of the shoot. “We got all the leads together and gave them two months of training. Hats off to them that they trained s hard even when they fell so many times. They didn’t give up. That gave them the confidence with which they could ride bikes on the screen,” shares Pranjal.

Dhak Dhak is a slice of life drama, the kinds of which Bollywood is making less and less these days. Pranjal feels he knows the reason. “We have stopped believing in cinema,” says the filmmaker, adding, “We are making films based on formula. When one thing starts to work, everyone is now only following that, which was not the case earlier. We were always open to experimentation. We have grown up on slice of life cinema. An Amitabh Bachchan action film would come every six months. But in between, we would get lots of slice of life films, with Rajesh Khanna and Amol Palekar.”

Pranjal adds that box office returns should not be the only parameter to judge how good or bad a film is. He says, “Audiences shouldn’t evaluate films based on box office performance. Let us just look at two recent films – Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani and Gadar 2. I am not even talking about the two Shah Rukh Khan films because that man’s stardom is beyond box office economics. But of the other two, Rocky Aur Rani is a star-studded film from a star filmmaker, but it does one-third the number of Gadar 2 (at the box office). But that doesn’t mean that is wrong. It is a feel-good film that has its audience whereas Gadar 2 is for the masses. The point I am trying to make here is that te box office numbers should not be the only thing determining a film’s ‘success’ or ‘failure’.”