Ranbir Kapoor’s film Animal, released in December last year, became a major box office hit despite receiving mixed reviews. Veteran filmmaker and Ranbir's father-in-law, Mahesh Bhatt, has responded to the criticism.
While speaking to the Hindustan Times, Mahesh Bhatt said, "That's also part of entertainment… It is a bloodsport. You get into the arena and there will be people celebrating you falling down and there will be people celebrating you triumphing. So that's a part of it."
He added, "You have chosen that life. That’s why the world has very few performers and most of the people are spectators. The world ultimately belongs to the creators, not to the ones who are just sitting out there and throwing brickbats at a good performer. It takes another kind of audacity to be a performer."
He further explained, "These are occupational hazards. You can't have it both. You stand in the sun, you get sunburnt."
When a section of society and critics were slamming Sandeep Reddy Vanga and his film Animal for its perceived glorification of extreme violence and misogyny, Anurag Kashyap came in support of the filmmaker. He not only hailed the movie but also described Vanga as the “most misunderstood, judged, and reviled” filmmaker.
In a conversation with Zoom, Anurag Kashyap opened up on why he supported Sandeep Reddy Vanga and said, "I like the guy. I have no problem with him. Unlike a lot of people in the industry who pretend to be someone they are not, he is honest. The former kind, I think, is even more toxic. But Vanga is an honest man. I don’t like anything more than honesty, no matter what others’ issues with honesty are. I love talking to him."
He further recalled how he got no support during Bombay Velvet and most of the scenes were cut to get U/A certificate and said, "No one can deny the impact Animal made. It made the action scenes we had seen in movies before seem fake. It changed so many things in terms of real action scenes, and it was an adult film of three and a half hours. They cut my film Bombay Velvet to two hours and fifty minutes and censored scenes because they were pushing for a U/A certificate. It is my most censored film and Pahlaj Nihalani (the then chairman of the Central Board of Film Certification-CBFC) personally made sure that he cut scenes from it."
He added, "I got no support. I was under so much pressure during Bombay Velvet about the recovery and opening of the film. But it didn’t feel like mine anymore. I should have been stubborn like Sandeep and fought back to keep my version. You can argue with his creative vision, and he gives space to argue. But what do we do in general? We only attack and cancel people. We don’t discuss or debate."
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