The indie spirit

His ‘Bhonsle’ took nine years from script to OTT and ‘Ajji’ took six. Devashish Makhija explains why directors like him reject the beaten path and choose an artistic path fraught with risk

Being a teller of stories, I’ll begin with one. There was this Hindi film I wrote and directed in 2017 called Ajji (Granny). It was a perverse retelling of ‘Red Riding Hood’ — a vigilante drama where a grandmother avenges the rape of her granddaughter. At the wolf’s lair, a construction site, I wanted to create an alternation of light and shadow to make Ajji’s navigation of the place difficult, dangerous, eerie even — to make it appear like a jungle at night, where the moonlight filtering through the branches of trees allows one to see some bits of the jungle floor, and the bits the light can’t pierce through are where the beasts of prey lurk.

Filmmaker Devashish Makhija.

To create that, we would’ve needed many lights, rostrums, cranes, generators. But this being a frighteningly small, independent, artistic, dark, socio-political film, there was money for none of that. There was only enough for half a dozen tube lights!

Much discussion and experimentation later, it struck us that we were trying to create this alternation in the dimension of Space. What if we utilised the other dimension – that of Time? What we did then was to simply flicker one of those half a dozen tube lights constantly. We got what we needed. Now too the light and shadow alternated, but over the dimension of Time, not Space!

Independent, artistic cinema pushes one to constantly seek out alternative approaches. The lack of resources, when embraced, becomes the catalyst in the shaping of the uniqueness of an auteur voice.

Escape and trap

We live in an increasingly grim world, which makes us rightfully seek ‘escape’ when we go to the cinema. Independent filmmakers like myself (a minority) use this medium instead to subvert that expectation. The artistic film often seeks to be a mirror, giving viewers the opposite of ‘escape’ — we ‘trap’ them in sometimes unwelcome, brutal, ugly realities.

Reality is something we do not want to be reminded of, given that we are trudging through our own share of it each day. And so, reality in cinema is not something that easily attracts money.

Then why do we persist in holding up this mirror, risking all kinds of collateral – psychological, financial, mental? Why do we invite trolling, rejection, backlash? Perhaps because a healthy society is one that allows questioning and protest. And an artiste’s truest protest is their art.

The ‘Bhonsle’ team shot the climax fight scene on the phone camera, by strapping it to the helmet.

Films like mine – Taandav, Oonga, Ajji, Bhonsle, Cycle, Agli Baar, Cheepatakadumpa – aren’t films that the ‘market’ actively seeks out. So I’m already up against severe odds even before writing my film. But I want to make it, and so I do. It is a huge risk. I’m never sure I’ll find a financier or studio or producer. I’ve had nearly 20 shelved films over a decade and a half. Even if I find backing, I’m not sure when the film will hit the screens, or if it will at all.

Still waiting

My first feature film, Oonga, a fantasy-adventure-thriller set in the world of the Dongria Kondh tribe of Odisha whose lives are threatened by large-scale mining, stays unreleased 10 years since its premiere at a festival in New York. I subsequently wrote it as a young adult novel in 2020 in what is now India’s first film-to-book reverse adaptation.

Moreover, I do not know if the rare, courageous producers that my films finally find will make their little money back. I start recalibrating my film then — starting with its writing — to enable its making, to increase its chances of reaching its intended viewers, to make it a little easier for the producers to take that leap of faith. Recalibration doesn’t mean toning down. It’s about building a slightly different film with the same material and intent, and these decisions can range from the actors we cast to the cinematographer we hire. It can be rewarding in its own way. Actor Manoj Bajpayee helped me discover a slightly different Bhonsle, the titular character of my 2018 film about a retired cop, from the one Irrfan Khan may have portrayed, for instance.

Why so stubborn?

For being so adamant about ‘staying my course’, I have been at the receiving end of much advice-giving and flat-out scoldings by my peers, who have become a proxy family of sorts in my adopted town Mumbai. Over the past five years, I have been turning down offers from an average of five web series producers a month. Most of these good, unsuspecting folks walk away either perplexed or with the impression that I'm too arrogant for my own good.

I haven’t been able to fully explain to my peers why I simply want to make my 'own' films even though it takes me six years to get an ‘Ajji’ out there, or eight years for the upcoming ‘Joram’. ‘Bhonsle’, which won the National Award eventually, was written in 2011, shot in 2017, and had its festival premiere in Busan in 2018. It won the Asia-Pacific Screen Award and travelled to over 40 festivals in 2019 before it found an OTT release in 2020.

Why do I exhaust every last rupee in my bank account to fund my short films (‘Cycle’, ‘Rahim Murge Pe Mat Ro’, ‘Cheepatakadumpa’)? The truth is, no one else will, at least not without me pandering to one or the other market requirement.

I'm simply driven by a compelling desire to tell stories I want to tell. Some of that desire, well, rage, comes from the night of December 6, 1992, when the Babri Masjid was demolished in Ayodhya. The communal riots and the domino effect of deaths that followed is said to have shaped the India we know today. It may have shaped my psyche and voice too. The riots reached my home in a tiny mohalla in central Calcutta. What happened and how bad it could have gotten has haunted me all my life. It filled me with rage against our skewed policies, our collective apathy towards social inequalities, and our capacity for hate.

It’s not uncommon then for people to judge me as a ‘serious person’, but that perception fades when they meet me. If not for filmmaking, I may have considered a career as a standup comic, perhaps India’s most cynical one. In ‘When Ali Became Bajrangbali’ and ‘Why Paploo was Perplexed’, the bestselling children’s picture books I have written, I indulge my funny side. Sometimes in my cinema too — like in the bizarre comedies ‘El'ayichi’, ‘Cheepatakadumpa’, and ‘Taandav’.

Universe conspires

Filmmaking is an absolute act of faith, as American filmmaker Darius Marder puts it. He fought for his artistic freedom for years. His multiple award-winning film ‘Sound of Metal’, about a drummer in a metal band who starts to lose his hearing, took a decade to come out. “I said ‘no’ to a lot of versions of the movie that could have gotten financed. I was kind of daring the universe to work for me,” he once said in an interview.

It’s what every independent filmmaker does and what intensely driven artistes from Vincent Van Gogh to Franz Kafka have done too. We dare the universe to align with our fight every single day.

American filmmaker Lynn Shelton, who died recently, epitomised this thinking of self-generating her work and just going for it in a career spanning 15 independent artistic feature films. She turned down an offer to direct Marvel’s ‘Black Widow’, which went on to break many post-pandemic box office records. “The more the money involved, the more complicated it becomes because there are people involved who want to make sure they’re not throwing their cash down a big hole,” she said, doffing her hat to the spirit of staying independent.

How do we obstinate art junkies sustain the making of films then? To answer that, I have another somewhat-story. I often tell my team that when a film is made with pure artistic intent, ‘synchronicities’ occur. There are things I might want in the frame that might be impossible to acquire or coordinate. But if the energy of the intent is strong and clear, that desire finds a cosmic way to manifest what you need. But it’ll do so at a time when you aren’t acutely aware of it.

In both ‘Ajji’ and ‘Bhonsle’, I needed stray dogs and cats as recurring motifs. The dogs guide and protect Ajji through the sordid nights when she has to navigate the city’s underbelly to get to the wolf Dhavle’s world. And stray cats were Bhonsle’s silent companions, watching his slow decay from close quarters.

We didn’t have the resources for an animal wrangler of the calibre I needed for the jobs. Also, I wanted to dare the universe to dance with me. For both films, we purposely shot at locations where strays proliferated. In ‘Ajji’, not only was Sushama Deshpande (who plays Ajji) scared of stray dogs, but as soon as the crew landed at the location and started setting up their equipment the strays would disappear. My team would panic, while I disguised my worry.

We kept shooting, regardless. In some takes, dogs appeared without warning just as the camera rolled, and did what they needed to do, and then disappeared. In most takes, they didn’t appear. Since it was I who had made such a delusional cosmic plan, I had to live with what I got. I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

When we started cutting ‘Ajji’ in the edit room, my editor, Ujjwal Chandra, was spooked. Each and every take we had okayed had stray dogs. And the ones we rejected for narrative or creative reasons happened not to have stray dogs. In the final film, each and every time Ajji dives into the night to hunt down Dhavle, strays follow her, leading her, sniffing around for her, watching over her.

In ‘Bhonsle’, a cat miraculously appears at the exact moment when Bhonsle has a profound silent communion with his god in the empty courtyard of the chawl he lives in. During the shoot, the cat snuggled up to Bhonsle and sat there right through the scene even when we changed angles and did retakes. I simply ensured my team did not make any sudden movements or raise their voices, so that this serendipitous cat could perform undisturbed. Even more miraculously, the cat walked out of the frame, with measured steps, when the emotional arc of the scene changed. In the edit, we found that point to be the perfect finish for the scene.

Art as an anchor

To date, many ask me who was in charge of coordinating the magical timing of these dogs and cats. I smile and stay silent because I cannot explain what I haven’t fully understood myself. But I do ask myself if I would have been able to manifest something like this in a commercially-driven film where we shoot constructed (un)realities on sets.

Having chosen artistic expression over commercial gain, I wonder if one needs to work towards making art one’s strongest emotional support. Whenever I feel rage or disappointment or unrest or a deep sorrow I do try and reach for my art as much and as soon as I can. It has kept me from reaching out for alcohol or drugs and the like.

When people ask me why ‘Ajji’ and ‘Bhonsle’ needed to be so ‘dark’, I say they are dark so that I don’t have to be. Someone in those films is killed so that I don’t have to kill. Those films are tragic so that my life doesn’t have to be. I have channelled all that into my art to keep myself from tipping over the edge. It’s a well-oiled channel that is permanently at my disposal. Being an artistic filmmaker could be seen as a privilege that way. Or perhaps that’s just me trying to make sense of what appears insane even to me on most days.

I wish I was surer about the life choices I’ve made. But since all true art is discovery and not assurance, I may never really know.

'Festival acclaim doesn’t help distribution'

Film festivals bring indie filmmakers critical acclaim and energy. But the distribution ecosystem in India is disconnected from the festival circuit (unlike in most other countries). In fact, most distributors here are suspicious of films that are widely awarded, fearing they are too artistic and niche. ‘Ajji’ and ‘Bhonsle’ belied those suspicions to some extent. Yet, despite having a dozen festival-acclaimed feature and short films on my resume, I still have to fight as hard as I did for the first to be able to put out my next.

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