Vikramaditya Motwane ’s debut film, 'Udaan' (Flight), began in Cannes in 2002.
As a callow 25 year old assistant director, he was here for a special screening of Sanjay Leela Bhansali ’s 'Devdas' . During that sojourn, he caught his favourite director Ken Loach ’s 'Sweet Sixteen' , about a troubled teenager who sets out to raise the money that he needs for a new home. “That is when the seeds of 'Udaan' were sown,” Motwane says. “I thought to myself, why can’t I make a similar film about a youngster.”
The following year, Motwane mined his own environs to come up with the screenplay of 'Udaan', the story of a young boy who revolts against his overbearing father. At its press show in Cannes, where it screened in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section, the film drew deservedly generous applause from a nearfull house.
The taut, diligently crafted film narrates its moving and eventually uplifting story with a fine balance of empathy and restraint. The lead actor, Rajat Bharmecha , is outstanding as a boy who must pursue his dream of being a writer in the face of his autocratic dad’s attempts to impose his will on him. Motwane reveals that he was pleasantly surprised when 'Udaan' made it to the Cannes official selection, the first Indian film to do so since Murali Nair ’s 'Arimpara' .
“It was a mere shot in the dark,” says the 33-year-old debutant. “The film was ready by February, so we submitted it for consideration. We never thought it would make it.” He goes on to add, "Being in Cannes with a film is personally satisfying. I feel a sense of achievement but the real victory would be if the domestic audience responds positively to 'Udaan' when it opens on July 16.”
Motwane points out that this is a significant step for independent Indian filmmakers. "Actually, 'Udaan' is the first Hindi film in the Cannes official selection in several decades,” he adds.
Interestingly, Loach, who Motwane describes as a “huge inspiration”, is in Cannes this year as well with 'Irish Route' , a film about the war in Iraq that is competing for the Palme d’Or. “It would be great if I could meet him in person,” he says.
The Cannes effect
Motwane got into the swing of things within hours of landing in Cannes. He hit the red carpet for the screening of the competition film, Xavier Beauvois ’ 'Of God and Men' , and then headed off to the official Un Certain Regard dinner. By early next morning he turned up at an informal interaction with the media in the India Pavilion on the Cannes seafront.
The strength of his film, he says, lies in the screenplay. “We worked really hard on the script,” he continues. The first draft was written in 2003. “In late 2003, I gave Anurag Kashyap my screenplay. He read it in an hour and returned it, and went right back to what he was doing. He told me that one day he will produce this film and that nobody else will. I wanted to smack him then but it turned out that he was right.”
Desai, Mehra and other influences
Motwane, who spent the first six-seven years of his life in Nashik, where his father owned a factory, was weaned on a staple diet of Manmohan Desai and Prakash Mehra films before he discovered the work of the great auteurs of world cinema, including Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa . He does not agree that 'Udaan' is a marked departure from the films of his mentor, Bhansali. “Udaan has Sanjay’s influence, but it also has Anurag’s. It has songs, though they are not lip-synched,” he says.
The film came to fruition after several aborted attempts to get the project off the ground. “The producers would ask me to make alterations to the screenplay. They would say that the film did not have mass appeal," recalls Motwane.
His persistence paid off.
In March 2009, Kashyap, who had by now established himself at the forefront
of a new kind of Bollywood cinema, and a friend of his, Sanjay Singh, raised enough funds to green-light 'Udaan'. “Once the shoot began, there was no interference from any quarters. They backed me all the way to make the film I always wanted to,” says Motwane.
He is quick to point out that 'Udaan' isn’t an arthouse film. “It is an emotional family story that revolves around a troubled father-son relationship. It is a new age, independent, middle of the road film,” he says.
Motwane is hopeful that the impact of 'Udaan' will go well beyond its Cannes run. “The weight of commercial, star-driven films has been a deterrent for years for independent cinema. I think it is changing for real this time. It’s definitely getting better for younger filmmakers. It would be crucial for us as a group to deliver quality films consistently so that this turns into a movement,” he says.
On his part, Motwane is determined not to dilute his idea of what a film should be. “Whether I make a Rs 2 crore film or a Rs 20 crore one, my approach will remain the same. I might work with stars but the script will always be paramount,” he says.
About the gradual, welcome change in Indian cinema, he adds, "Anurag Kashyap’s 'Dev D' and Dibakar Banerjee’s 'Love Sex aur Dhoka' and 'Oye Lucky Lucky Oye' were released like regular mainstream films. I believe that 'Udaan' will get the same sort of treatment. Distributors are waking up to the potential of alternative cinema."
From Bhansali to 'Dev D'
In his early teens, Motwane wanted to be an engineer like his father. But at age 17, his mother led him into the sphere of filmmaking. In the late 1980s, she worked as a production manager/line producer for TV director Shukla Das. Bhansali, fresh from the Film and Television Institute of India, was an assistant to Das back then. After assisting his mother on the production of a television talk show in the early 1990s, Motwane joined Bhansali’s unit during the making of 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam'. As he struggled to bring 'Udaan' to the script stage, he worked on other scripts, notably 'Dev D' and 'Goal', to stay afloat in the industry.
In the company of friends
In an earlier interview, Motwane said that the suggestion to shoot the film in Jamshedpur, came from his friend, filmmaker Imtiaz Ali. “I wrote the script with Delhi or one of the satellite towns in mind. But when Imtiaz read the script, he told me that every detail of the surroundings described in the script matches with that of his hometown and he was right,” he said.