Dibakar Banerjee talks about his fascination with the 1969 film Z, the need to make a political movie like Shanghai and the unnerving response it has received

Raja Sen (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 11, 2012)

 

Vassilis Vassilikos’ Z is a book about a very specific Greek political assassination. What made you want to mine a true and fascinating story for plot and narrative, adding your own politics? I told my writer Urmi (Juvekar) that I wanted to make a political film, like All The President’s Men, or Z. She suggested I read Z. In the book I felt there was a lot more anguish. From Z, I took the idea of the investigation, but politically Z has a very different theme: Z is about the Left and the Right. In India we have the Rich and the Poor and the gap in between.

The Costa Gavras film made for an aware audience was stark and minimal. To try and reach a more politically apathetical Indian audience did have to make it more ‘entertaining’? We are fundamentally Indian and somewhere there is a pulse shared by you, me and a taxi driver. So I made the film the way I felt the events would unfold here.

Were you tempted to dumb the plot down, make it more accessible? We haven’t really done that. The big impact of the film – if there is an impact –lies in the fact that you watch the film and you feel the narrative. The dots aren’t joined for you.

Isn’t that a huge commercial risk, with our blockbusters becoming increasingly daft these days ? Absolutely. But if you constantly underestimate More >