Catching up with the cinematographer of Rakesh Mehra’s revolutionary film and Karan Johar’s next

You started your career as a cinematographer with Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak. Why did it take you 10 years to return to films?
Twelve years to be precise and it certainly wasn’t for lack of offers. There were many offers but besides Mansoor (Khan) I didn’t know of any other maker who would give me the kind of creative liberty to experiment with features as Mansoor had done. So I decided to stick to advertising where every day you got to do new work and every two days a film is wrapped up. Advertising also gave me the kind of equipment and money that made work a challenge. So consciously I shifted from feature films to ad films and for 10 years didn’t regret my decision. With Abaan who’s now my wife, I opened my own production house, ‘Candid Creations’ and we were kept busy making commercials for BPL and Voltas and even diversifying into music videos. The film offers continued trickling in. Mukul Anand offered me Trimurti and then Dus but at that stage I didn’t want to commit myself to a three hour film and lose out on two years of lucrative advertising business. However, after a decade I reached saturation point. I began to feel the need to dabble on a bigger canvas and was waiting for the right script when Rakesh Mehra called.

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What was it about an off-beat film like Aks that changed your mind about feature films?
I had done a lot of ads with Rakesh earlier and this time too when he called I assumed it was for a commercial. “What’s the product? Coke, a car, what?” I asked him. He surprised me by saying, “It’s not a 30 seconds film but a three hour one.” Actually, it wasn’t so much a surprise because Rakesh had been toying with the idea of making a film for a year or two and in fact, I had been the one to encourage him to go for it. “Bana daal, take the plunge,” I had urged him. However, I was taken aback when he told me emphatically, “You’ll shoot the film for me.” When he narrated the script to me I could almost see the film and I realised that this was what I had been waiting for. A film that would give me a chance to try and match the kind of work I’d seen and admired in Hollywood films during the last decade. Films like Godfather and Gladiator that going by their unprecedented success made me believe that our audience were coming of age and ready for such experiments in Hindi cinema too. I had never been drawn to hardcore commercial films but a film like Aks piqued my interest. I told Rakesh that if I could get the kind of facilities I got in advertising and the creative freedom to give his film an international look, I was game. He assured me a free hand and that’s how Aks came about. The scenes of Amitabh Bachchan and Manoj Bajpai plunging down the waterfall are mind-boggling. Was the action live or computer generated? They leapt, by God they leapt even though they were tied with cables and every safety precaution taken. My heart was in my mouth during those shots. I knew that given Mr Bachchan’s age I couldn’t ask for a retake. It had to be right the first time. And thank God it was!

We’ve seen many club sequences in films before but nothing as eerie and reeking with hidden menace. I believe you actually recreated a real dancing bar of Mumbai, the Topaz Club.
I saw a lot of foreign films, flipped through hundreds of magazines and visited many such places in India and abroad. The Topaz Club was just one of them. What struck me about these places was that two-thirds of the club room is in darkness. It’s obvious that people frequenting these joints don’t wish to be spotted and identified. Under the cover of darkness they are anonymous silhouettes. In the film too you don’t see many faces besides those of Mr Bachchan, an upper middle-class government official who would die for duty, and the evil, eerie visage of Manoj Bajpai. The spotlight is on Raveena and her team of strippers, the rest of the room is in shadow, and sometimes in the shadows you spot a disembodied hand holding a glass or a glint of a lighted cigarette and this adds to the spookiness. When doing these sequences I drew my inspiration from a film called Cabaret. In that film too there was such a club crowded with Nazi soldiers and fearful revolutionaries trying to blend with the darkness, wondering which of them would be spotted by Hitler’s men and hauled off to the gas chamber.

One notices an interesting play of light in the film, especially when Bachchan metamorphoses into Bajpai.
Yeah, I’ve used marine light when Bachchan is possessed by the spirit of Manoj Bajpai. When he returns to his own self, the light too returns to normal. I didn’t use this visual style to impress but to tell a story convincingly. I also changed the light, giving the sequence a blue feel when Raveena croons ‘Yeh raat...’ a second time soon after Manoj Bajpai’s death. The first time she sings the song her mood is upbeat, provocative. The second time she’s sad. So the blue filters.

What was your most difficult moment when shooting the film?
I think it was when I was dangling from a chopper at -15 degrees celsius in the Hungarian sky trying to bring to life the opening sequences. Normally such shots are taken by an areal photographer but I insisted on doing them myself, using a local Hungarian mount. Today, when I see the film I realise just how risky the job was.

Today when you see Aks are you satisfied with your work or do you think you could have done better?
You are never really happy with what you’ve done. I know I could have given the film a little more finish and gloss if I had better equipment. I would have also liked to do the climax differently. But then, this being Rakesh’s first film we were all stretched. There were date problems, money problems, even the weather played truant. There were times when I’ve shot in rain, with the sun playing hide-and-seek with the clouds.

What kind of feedback have you got for your work in Aks?
I’ve been told that the two stars of Aks are Amitabh Bachchan and Kiran Deohans. Everyone agrees that the cinematography was brilliant. I won a Filmfare award for Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and my friends are saying that I should win one for Aks too. For me the biggest reward was when Jaya Bachan called to say, “Kiran, I saw the film and you are the real hero of Aks.” Even the lay person is impressed and compares the visuals with that in a Hollywood film and that is heartening. I would have been happier if the film had worked but perhaps where content is concerned, we aren’t ready for something as drastically different as Aks yet. But cinematically we are ready for such experiments.

It’s a dream for every actor and technician to work with Amitabh Bachchan. What were your experience like shooting with the millennium star?
It was a dream come true, twice over because I not only worked with him in Aks but Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham too. He’s really good and very cooperative. Of course, the way I’ve presented him in Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham is very different from Aks. If in Aks he was like the night in Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham he’s like the sunny sky.

Has Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham lived up to your expectations?
Well, it’s a very glossy, dramatic and internationally upmarket film. Karan Johar is very particular about the look of his film. As I said earlier, it’s a subject very different from Aks yet as challenging. There’re so many stars and you have to do justice to all of them which isn’t easy because no face in the world is perfect. So when you have a Hrithik and a Kareena in the same frame even though both stars are real stunners, you have to work on one’s skin tones and the other’s jaw line. But eventually, when you see the effect on screen all the efforts are worth it.

Is it really true that after seeing a song of Aks, Karan Johar was so impressed he called up Raveena who thought he was offering her a role only to discover to her disappointment that he actually was looking for the contact number of the film’s cinematographer?
That’s right. And I’m glad he called.

Is there any film in recent times that has impressed you?
I’d say Lagaan. I loved the film though there are some minor technical flaws only a professional would notice. It’s a thoroughly entertaining film and cinematically very innovative.

So was your music video, Krishna?
When Lezz and Hari (Lesley Lewis and Hariharan) approached Abaan and me to do this video for them we told them right away that they would have to buy whatever we gave them. They agreed to give us complete creative licence and we put our thinking caps on. Those days a lot of big videos were playing on MTV and Channel (V). We realised we could not better Madonna and Michael Jackson in terms of special effects and gimmicks. But if the language of cinema was strong then even the smallest budget would suffice. So using black-and-white visuals we came up with a video that was very original and very Indian. A video that has impressed every parent. A video that won us some very coveted awards like the Screen-Videocon Award and the Channel (V) Award for Best Direction.

So what’s next on the cards?
Right now I’m busy with the post-production work of Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham. Once that’s true Abaan and I are planning to direct a film. There have been some interesting offers, one even from the UK. Some of our friends are also ready to put up the money. We’re taking our time deciding. We are not interested in formula. It has to be a different film, may be a period film. Things will work out soon. Right now I’m busy wrapping up some commercials. I shot one for Coke another for Parachute and yet another for Pepsodent. The show goes on...

—ROSHMILA BHATTACHARYA
roshmila@hotmail.com