It has been six years since Shimit Amin has made a movie, but the spotlight has refused to leave him. The Uganda-born filmmaker’s last release was 2009’s critical darling Rocket Singh Salesman of the Year. His work on a television commercial for Whisper sanitary pads won the prestigious Grand Prix Glass Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June. Created by BBDO, the commercial tackles the fallacy that if a menstruating woman touches a bottle of pickle, it will go bad. Amin is typically modest about the award, says the commercial is “not clever or aspirational advertising, but just an earnest one”.
Amin is better known as the director of three movies with disparate themes. Ab Tak Chappan (2004) examines the flexible moral code that rules the Mumbai Police’s encounter cop squad; Chak De! India (2007) is the rousing tale of a coach catapulting his female hockey team to victory; Rocket Singh examines whether honesty has a place in a market economy. Amin also edited The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012), Mira Nair’s adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s novel of the same name. He tells us whether to not to expect another movie from him soon.
There is a lot of speculation about your next feature, which was to have been a sports-themed film featuring Arjun Kapoor, but has been scrapped.
I am right now developing stuff. Actually, I have been doing it for a while. A couple of projects crossed paths, things got messy. I am just trying to get them grounded. I will be happy to talk about it when things get into place.
Meanwhile, has any script or story caught your imagination?
There was a film I was producing three years ago [Megha Ramaswamy’s Girls]. A low-budget independent female-centric film by a female director. I loved the script and was producing it. A major studio got involved. We shot a bit. But then the studio heads changed and the new head wasn’t convinced about the project. I had spent a good two years working on it non-stop while directing commercials on the side. It was heartbreaking for me because I really believed in the film. It made me realise that you are at the mercy of people who have the power over you. No matter what you have done in your life and made certain projects work, people don’t always believe in you.
Isn’t there any way you could revive the project?
No. The cast has grown up and there are legal issues.
Female-centric films are now doing well. When I tried, it didn’t happen. Indie films are harder on women. There is a whole boys’ network just sitting out there, feeding off each other, back slapping, and saying, “Amazing work.” There are no women there. And it is no better than what the studios are doing. Indie cinema is very chauvinistic. Mainstream cinema has Zoya Akhtar, Farah Khan and maybe Shonali Bose in a different genre. That’s it.
Independent cinema is supposed to break barriers. But there are still so very, very, very few women filmmakers. If you are a boy and talk brashly about cinema and Lars von Trier, it is cool. And if you are a woman and talk about Jane Campion, people go, “What’s this?!”
What about advertising?
It is chauvinistic as well. It is a pity that I am being feted for telling stories about women, when ideally women directors should be telling these stories.
But it has kept you busy.
I didn’t foresee things working out this way. Just as I didn’t foresee doing a film like Chak De! India. But I did the film because I was bored of telling myself that I would only do certain kinds of films. Had someone pitched it to me, I would have said no. But once I read it, I was convinced.
The scene in Chak De! India in which the players score the winning goal and Shah Rukh Khan reins in his emotions and steps back from the spotlight is a standout moment. The movie features one of his finest performances.
Shah Rukh and I discussed the scene a little bit. His character until then had shown no emotions. But the breakdown was natural. He had to feel something at that point. I had seen a Japanese coach do this as a part of my research. It stayed with me. SRK and I worked on the scene, saying this is it. He took it to another level. That’s what the collaboration was about. We never really spoke for more than five words on the set. He read my mind and I read his and it just came together.
Both Shah Rukh Khan and Ranbir Kapoor gave understated and nuanced performances in Chak De! India and Rocket Singh respectively. How did you get the stars to become actors on the set?
I didn’t do anything. They understood their roles pretty well. I just managed to be there and shoot.
Maybe Ranbir too modelled his quiet character on Shah Rukh’s. He was playing a naïve, candid person who is very optimistic and gets screwed so bad he has to do something.
Both films also had an amazing ensemble cast that made their world richer. Shah Rukh and Ranbir never let their status override the kind the ensemble they were a part of. It made the film and performances strong. These films were not about the hero. They understood that, which is why the performances reflect that they became the characters.
It has been little more than a decade since you made Ab Tak Chhappan for Ram Gopal Varma, which followed your editing job for Varma’s Bhoot. How have things changed for you over the years?
I have been lucky and sheltered as a filmmaker. My first film had been offered to me. The second film too came my way. I have heard stories of people pitching their stories for years.
My first film had no songs, not even a background score. It was amazing when you consider than it happened 10 years ago. It was a big deal for a mainstream film.
I also hate intervals. I would love to get rid of this part of the industry. Structurally, in my head I don’t think about it that way. A film is one piece rather than two halves. I still haven’t gotten used to this.
Today, you can still get experimental and make a film without songs. Or may be cast the way we did in Chak De! But we still cannot think beyond the interval.
Kiran Rao did it [in Dhobi Ghat]. It was amazing. So yes, that too has been done somewhat. So except for maybe censorship, there are certain things that will keep changing.
Have audiences changed too?
I have been lucky again – the audience has been with me and vice versa. The audience has not evolved – there was always a hunger for good films. It’s just that the film financers and others involved in film-making have evolved. They are doing things they have never done before.
You don’t subscribe to the view that movies are getting better?
No, I don’t. The 1970s had very evolved, amazing, artistic and accomplished films. What’s this, oh my God, we are making better films? In fact, we are making worse films. The ’70s filmmakers were grounded in literature. Now, it is films feeding off one another. Nobody writes any more. There were better scripts written in the ’70s than today. Give me any Gulzar script. It is way better than anything any kid writes today.
Mira Nair could have hired any Hollywood editor for The Reluctant Fundamentalist. But she chose to work with you.
In 2000, I read Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke during a train journey in India. I loved it and wanted to make a film on it. But I was a nobody then and someone was already making a film on it in England. Years later, I was in Uganda, where I am from, for Mira’s workshop for East African students. And then that incredible moment when she asked me to edit The Reluctant Fundamentalist! Nothing in the world can top that moment. I was very honoured because Mira is my hero, she inspired me to make films.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist was not received well. Did that bother you?
I always thought it was a tricky film for many reasons. When the West makes films with an Eastern subject matter, it is with Western writers such as Dominique Lapierre and it comes out weird. Then they also adapt Eastern books like The Kite Runner, and it too becomes weird. This was a brown person, with a brown subject matter and also a brown cast using the West as a resource, and difficult in lots of ways. Mira wasn’t making a thriller. She makes humanist films. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an odd book, it is a political thriller. And Mira pitched a thriller as a humanist film. What is it like to be in South Asia in today’s day and time? The only film that comes to mind is Zero Dark Thirty.
We have trained ourselves to see our stories from a white perspective. Mira challenged all of that. Who would think of doing a political thriller with Shabana Azmi and Om Puri? It is odd but an interesting palette.
Your films are known for their realism, and your characters are rooted in identifiably middle-class milieus. Why doesn’t love find much play?
None of my films had space for anything else. There was no time to dwell on everything. In Ab Tak Chhappan, there is an inter-racial romance [between the characters played by Nana Patekar and Revathy : she is South Indian, he is Maharashtrian. There had to be some chemistry in the oddness of a middle class inter-racial marriage without making a big deal about it. I also had this incredible sub-plot with the characters played by Hrishita Bhatt and Nakul Dev, where she leaves him because his police job leaves him with no time for her. It had to be edited because it did not help the film.
But it is said that you should shoot more than what you can put into the final cut.
Oh yes, I did. And I hated the footage of Ab Tak Chhapan when I first saw it. I was so embarrassed. Even today I can see so many mistakes. I was depressed for two days and finally got someone else to edit it.
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Amin is better known as the director of three movies with disparate themes. Ab Tak Chappan (2004) examines the flexible moral code that rules the Mumbai Police’s encounter cop squad; Chak De! India (2007) is the rousing tale of a coach catapulting his female hockey team to victory; Rocket Singh examines whether honesty has a place in a market economy. Amin also edited The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012), Mira Nair’s adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s novel of the same name. He tells us whether to not to expect another movie from him soon.
There is a lot of speculation about your next feature, which was to have been a sports-themed film featuring Arjun Kapoor, but has been scrapped.
I am right now developing stuff. Actually, I have been doing it for a while. A couple of projects crossed paths, things got messy. I am just trying to get them grounded. I will be happy to talk about it when things get into place.
Meanwhile, has any script or story caught your imagination?
There was a film I was producing three years ago [Megha Ramaswamy’s Girls]. A low-budget independent female-centric film by a female director. I loved the script and was producing it. A major studio got involved. We shot a bit. But then the studio heads changed and the new head wasn’t convinced about the project. I had spent a good two years working on it non-stop while directing commercials on the side. It was heartbreaking for me because I really believed in the film. It made me realise that you are at the mercy of people who have the power over you. No matter what you have done in your life and made certain projects work, people don’t always believe in you.
Isn’t there any way you could revive the project?
No. The cast has grown up and there are legal issues.
Female-centric films are now doing well. When I tried, it didn’t happen. Indie films are harder on women. There is a whole boys’ network just sitting out there, feeding off each other, back slapping, and saying, “Amazing work.” There are no women there. And it is no better than what the studios are doing. Indie cinema is very chauvinistic. Mainstream cinema has Zoya Akhtar, Farah Khan and maybe Shonali Bose in a different genre. That’s it.
Independent cinema is supposed to break barriers. But there are still so very, very, very few women filmmakers. If you are a boy and talk brashly about cinema and Lars von Trier, it is cool. And if you are a woman and talk about Jane Campion, people go, “What’s this?!”
What about advertising?
It is chauvinistic as well. It is a pity that I am being feted for telling stories about women, when ideally women directors should be telling these stories.
But it has kept you busy.
I didn’t foresee things working out this way. Just as I didn’t foresee doing a film like Chak De! India. But I did the film because I was bored of telling myself that I would only do certain kinds of films. Had someone pitched it to me, I would have said no. But once I read it, I was convinced.
The scene in Chak De! India in which the players score the winning goal and Shah Rukh Khan reins in his emotions and steps back from the spotlight is a standout moment. The movie features one of his finest performances.
Shah Rukh and I discussed the scene a little bit. His character until then had shown no emotions. But the breakdown was natural. He had to feel something at that point. I had seen a Japanese coach do this as a part of my research. It stayed with me. SRK and I worked on the scene, saying this is it. He took it to another level. That’s what the collaboration was about. We never really spoke for more than five words on the set. He read my mind and I read his and it just came together.
Both Shah Rukh Khan and Ranbir Kapoor gave understated and nuanced performances in Chak De! India and Rocket Singh respectively. How did you get the stars to become actors on the set?
I didn’t do anything. They understood their roles pretty well. I just managed to be there and shoot.
Maybe Ranbir too modelled his quiet character on Shah Rukh’s. He was playing a naïve, candid person who is very optimistic and gets screwed so bad he has to do something.
Both films also had an amazing ensemble cast that made their world richer. Shah Rukh and Ranbir never let their status override the kind the ensemble they were a part of. It made the film and performances strong. These films were not about the hero. They understood that, which is why the performances reflect that they became the characters.
It has been little more than a decade since you made Ab Tak Chhappan for Ram Gopal Varma, which followed your editing job for Varma’s Bhoot. How have things changed for you over the years?
I have been lucky and sheltered as a filmmaker. My first film had been offered to me. The second film too came my way. I have heard stories of people pitching their stories for years.
My first film had no songs, not even a background score. It was amazing when you consider than it happened 10 years ago. It was a big deal for a mainstream film.
I also hate intervals. I would love to get rid of this part of the industry. Structurally, in my head I don’t think about it that way. A film is one piece rather than two halves. I still haven’t gotten used to this.
Today, you can still get experimental and make a film without songs. Or may be cast the way we did in Chak De! But we still cannot think beyond the interval.
Kiran Rao did it [in Dhobi Ghat]. It was amazing. So yes, that too has been done somewhat. So except for maybe censorship, there are certain things that will keep changing.
Have audiences changed too?
I have been lucky again – the audience has been with me and vice versa. The audience has not evolved – there was always a hunger for good films. It’s just that the film financers and others involved in film-making have evolved. They are doing things they have never done before.
You don’t subscribe to the view that movies are getting better?
No, I don’t. The 1970s had very evolved, amazing, artistic and accomplished films. What’s this, oh my God, we are making better films? In fact, we are making worse films. The ’70s filmmakers were grounded in literature. Now, it is films feeding off one another. Nobody writes any more. There were better scripts written in the ’70s than today. Give me any Gulzar script. It is way better than anything any kid writes today.
Mira Nair could have hired any Hollywood editor for The Reluctant Fundamentalist. But she chose to work with you.
In 2000, I read Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke during a train journey in India. I loved it and wanted to make a film on it. But I was a nobody then and someone was already making a film on it in England. Years later, I was in Uganda, where I am from, for Mira’s workshop for East African students. And then that incredible moment when she asked me to edit The Reluctant Fundamentalist! Nothing in the world can top that moment. I was very honoured because Mira is my hero, she inspired me to make films.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist was not received well. Did that bother you?
I always thought it was a tricky film for many reasons. When the West makes films with an Eastern subject matter, it is with Western writers such as Dominique Lapierre and it comes out weird. Then they also adapt Eastern books like The Kite Runner, and it too becomes weird. This was a brown person, with a brown subject matter and also a brown cast using the West as a resource, and difficult in lots of ways. Mira wasn’t making a thriller. She makes humanist films. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an odd book, it is a political thriller. And Mira pitched a thriller as a humanist film. What is it like to be in South Asia in today’s day and time? The only film that comes to mind is Zero Dark Thirty.
We have trained ourselves to see our stories from a white perspective. Mira challenged all of that. Who would think of doing a political thriller with Shabana Azmi and Om Puri? It is odd but an interesting palette.
Your films are known for their realism, and your characters are rooted in identifiably middle-class milieus. Why doesn’t love find much play?
None of my films had space for anything else. There was no time to dwell on everything. In Ab Tak Chhappan, there is an inter-racial romance [between the characters played by Nana Patekar and Revathy : she is South Indian, he is Maharashtrian. There had to be some chemistry in the oddness of a middle class inter-racial marriage without making a big deal about it. I also had this incredible sub-plot with the characters played by Hrishita Bhatt and Nakul Dev, where she leaves him because his police job leaves him with no time for her. It had to be edited because it did not help the film.
But it is said that you should shoot more than what you can put into the final cut.
Oh yes, I did. And I hated the footage of Ab Tak Chhapan when I first saw it. I was so embarrassed. Even today I can see so many mistakes. I was depressed for two days and finally got someone else to edit it.
