The latest biopic to hit the screens in 2017 is about an unlikely heroine – a 13-year-old tribal from Telangana who scaled Mount Everest on May 25, 2014. Rahul Bose’s Poorna revisits Poorna Malavath’s feat, which was aided in no small measure by her coach, Shekhar Babu, and RS Praveen Kumar, a former Indian Police Service officer. Bose, who has previously directed Everybody Says I’m Fine (2001) and the unreleased The Whisperers, plays Kumar, while first-time actor Aditi Inamdar plays the titular lead character. The movie has been produced by Bose Productions and Amit Patni and will be released on March 31. Bose spoke to Scroll.in about what drew him to the project, the challenges in making the film and what’s next for him.
Why did you choose ‘Poorna’ to be the first film from Bose Productions?
I was approached to the play the role of RS Praveen Kumar. At the time, the project had no money. I was so struck by the story that I thought this was the perfect antidote to the tired cliché of mainstream cinema versus art cinema. This is a completely mainstream film, but the arc of the story is so real. I thought this was a great opportunity to put something out there that will hopefully be a massive success, but will have no stars in it and is just a terrific story.
I was excited to walk to the tightrope of language, texture and milieu. The film opens like Malgudi Days, with the girl swimming in a pond, but ends on a heart-pulsating note like the Hollywood film Everest. The film straddles genres and is true to different stages of Poorna’s life.
How did you find the actor who plays the lead role?
We saw over 500 girls and shortlisted 109. All of them were from the social welfare schools in Telangana. However, you cannot teach children to fake. If you are looking for a girl who is going to be essaying the role of a girl from a certain milieu, then you have to cast accordingly. But I didn’t get the actor I wanted. Aditi Inamdar is not from these schools, but she is from Telangana.
I realised that I cannot direct non-actors, which means people who don’t have emotional intelligence, expressive eyes, resilience and the ability to take direction. I don’t have the hubris to direct non-actors. Aditi was the 110th girl I saw. She was resilient under pressure, and filmmaking is about all kinds of pressure.
How would you categorise the film? As a biopic or a sports film?
It’s a biopic meets sports film meets drama. Essentially, every biopic is dramatic. There is only one fictitious character in this film. Poorna and everyone had the script two years ago and they signed off on it, obviously.
Life plays itself out in little dramas. In movies, that doesn’t work. You have to collect all those little dramas and create one medium/big drama. There is to be one point in the film where the person’s mind changes, because in life it happens gradually. That’s the only compromise you have to make.
There is a line in the trailer, ‘Ladkiyan kuch bhi kar sakti hain.’ Is it important to make films with this kind of a social theme?
This is Poorna’s line in real life. This is what she said when she was asked why she climbed Everest. This is not cynical advertising. This is not Rahul Bose bathing himself in a gender equality halo.
There is a much larger answer to the question of whether these kind of films should be made. Films play a very small role in social change. If you look at the example of how the incidence of smoking was reduced in Los Angeles, it is striking how little a part cinema played in it. LA makes the most films with smoking and at the same time, if you smoke in LA, you are a pariah. How do you explain that? It is because there were community efforts and campaigns in schools and neighbourhoods centred on anti-smoking.
If there is a rise in motorcycle accidents, do we stop riding motorbikes in film? Is that the end of the story? Any social change has to happen 360 degrees, and cinema is just 10 of those 360 degrees. In fact, documentaries are more powerful and television is the most powerful audio-visual medium. The responsibility of a film is first to excite and entertain and next to make you think.
Since ‘Poorna’ is about a girl’s journey towards empowerment, would you say you are a feminist?
Of course I am a feminist. Who is a feminist? Someone who believes in equal rights for all four genders. And of course, it passes the Bechdel test. Three-quarters of the film is the Bechdel test. It is about women talking to women. But I never thought of these things.
Was I the first producer in Indian film history to have a sexual harassment charter on my film? Yes. I had three charters. I had a child actor working charter, where they won’t work for more than four hours at a stretch and eight hours a day and have teachers and counsellors on hand. I had a green charter, that there will not be any plastic on my set, except for water bottles. We left every location cleaner than it was when we went into it, which is the sad part about India’s tourism. And a sexual harassment charter. As a producer, I enforced the feminist ideology 100%.
Was there never the urge to adapt Poorna’s story into another cultural background?
It would just be false compromise or a watered-down version of what happened. One should never fear cultural richness. We are so cinema literate, we’ll get it. There is no problem watching the life of an old woman in a little French town. We’ll get those cross-cultural references quickly and subconsciously.
Were there any specific challenges in making this film?
The whole damn thing was a challenge. It was a killer. Starting from shooting in Poorna’s actual hut in Pakala in 45 degrees centigrade heat of the flatlands of Telangana to shooting on Sikkim’s iced roads where we couldn’t reach our location because there was too much snow. That was the time when being both director and producer was helpful. The director saved the producer that day.
The visual effects look impressive in the trailer.
Yes, I spent a tonne of money on that. The VFX by Tata Elxsi is astounding. I spent months peering at the screen, desperately trying to get every detail, including the way snowflakes are moving onscreen, just right.
Any inspirations for the film?
We got 171 shots from unreleased footage of The Summit of Everest, an expedition that went up in 2014. You are going to feel like you were there. There is a documentary called Everest Rising – a five-part series made by Hemanth Sachdev and friends that really inspired me. It made me understand that there is no tougher feat on the planet. Ninety-nine per cent of humanity will die before they get to the top, if they try.
Has making the movie inspired you to climb Everest?
I’ve been asked for the past eight years by Tim Mosedale [Everest and Ama Dablam expedition leader] if I’d like to climb. I will not do it until I train for 18 months and do eight or nine peaks before that, because that’s how I approach everything I do. But the day I have 18 months, I’ll probably be on my deathbed.
What’s next for Bose Productions?
I’m writing a film about one of the feistiest women I know. It is going to be a warm but gritty film set in Bombay. I’m deeply embarrassed to be starring in my own productions. I will not be that person. This is probably the first and last film from my production house that I’m going to star in. The acting roles are not coming as thick and fast as they used to, that’s the truth. I’m going to wait for something spectacular, because otherwise why do it?