Mumbai, November 09: Yash Chopra says that people don’t make films on controversial subjects because of the ease with which ‘objections’ and ‘protests’ can bring down a costly production.
It was ironic - Yash Chopra was in Delhi to inaugurate a film festival that opened with his 1961 film, Dharmputra, which has intolerance as its theme. And he had to raise the issue of intolerance again in a current context, when he spoke about the film he made almost half a century ago. He said he returned to the subject of religious strife with Veer Zaara, decades later, but added that films like that weren’t being made anymore, and with good reason.
Films are a very costly proposition. Any small state, sector, organisation or individual can object to your film these days and make it go bust. So people are not making films on controversial subjects anymore. They are making candyfloss films, Bollywood is becoming more and more commercial. That should not happen,” he said.“Log darte nahin hain,” he later clarified. “Maine ek film banayi thi, Aaja Nachle. Usmein ek gaana tha, jisme line thi, ‘Bole mochi khud ko sunar’. Folk line hai. Teen states ne picture ban kar di, maafi maangni padi. Mohabbatein mein, there’s a man standing, reading the Gayatri mantra - usne shoes pehne hue hain. Itni parties hain, everybody wants to get political mileage out of it. So people take the safe way, make a film where there’s no controversy. Intolerance itni hai iss age mein, not just in India, everywhere. Nobody’s willing to tolerate anything that goes against their wishes. Nobody wants to sit and discuss anything,” says Chopra.
As for cinema, he says, “There’s huge money at stake. You can’t fool around with it,” referring to the ease with which an ‘objection’ or a ‘protest’ by anyone can stall the release of screening of a film. What does he think is the solution? “Solution toh government ke haath mein hai. Films are a peacetime industry. If there’s too much rain, too many riots, too many strikes, people don’t watch films. Keeping the peace is in the government’s hands.”
His next directorial venture, which he’s going to start soon, is also a “simple romantic film.” So he won’t make a film like Veer Zaara again at all? “I will, I can’t find an appropriate subject. I’m a director, not a writer. I’m making a music video on a Sahir Ludhianvi poem on war and how it separates people. I have the copyright to it, I’m going to make a peace video,” he says.
---Agencies