He may be not as successful, but Ram Gopal Varma is the maverick of Indian cinema
Once upon a time Ram Gopal Varma was one of the top filmmakers of Hindi cinema. He was the versatile filmmaker, as skilled with horror (Raat, Kaun, Phoonk) and romance and comedy (Rangeela) as with gangster dramas (Satya, Company).
He had an eye for talent too, with Anurag Kashyap, Sriram Raghavan and Shimit Amin starting their cinematic journeys with him. Then Aag (2007) happened. The backlash was strong. Its blow was such that Varma is still struggling to bounce back.
Seated in his company office which has rooms named after a few good men and women (Gandhi, Urmila) and many bad (Dawood, Hitler) and where statues of a bull dog and a lizard greet visitors as do nude photographs of women, Varma is in his usual brutally honest self.
He heaps praises on SS Rajamouli and Aamir Khan with the same candour as he berates film personalities on his Twitter. He has a movie out like he does pretty much every year, this one has buzz because it sees him collaborating with Amitabh Bachchan and reviving a memorable character in Sarkar.
“I never ever went after stars in my entire career with the exception of Mr Bachchan,” says Varma. “The kind of subjects I dealt with and the kind of characters I captured, mainstream actors didn’t fit in those kinds of roles.”
He is still prolific, the digital medium enabling him to make a film a year. Ask him if his reputation has diminished since Aag, and he says, “I always had a fair share of hits and flops. Satya and Company made such a huge impact that it made people forget the next five failures in a row.”
A lot has changed since Varma’s heyday, primarily the way information is consumed and delivered. Social media also has a significant role to play. “The media wasn’t as big as it is now,” he says. “The failures didn’t resonate as much in volume as they do now.”
One thing is for certain that Varma’s work no longer registers as memorable an impact as let’s say Rangeela or Satya did.
“I don’t know the reasons for my failure because I don’t know the reasons for my success,” says Varma. “I put the same work and passion in every film. Any film I make, my intention is always to make people like it, but if I fail, I will know only after the result is out. Why would any filmmaker intentionally make a film which might not work for the audience?”
One place where he does make an impact is on his busy Twitter feed. He is conscious that his rabble-rousing ways are not winning him many friends.
“I know it may irritate or offend some people,” he says. “I have accepted that truth in my life that anything anybody does creates a variety of emotions in different people. But I don’t regret what I have said. I don’t consider anything sacred including my whole family. Eventually Twitter is an extension of your personality and it is going to be influenced by your emotional state of mind which is subject to change. Like all emotions they are bound to vary in course of time.”
But Ram Gopal Varma will be the same — the maverick of Indian cinema.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)