In search of perfection
I am in Copenhagen. The temperature outside is minus five and we are looking for the locations for my next 3D film which will be India’s first action film to be shot on exotic Scandinavian locales. Sounds like an advert, does it not? Well, if I don’t keep telling myself that then I keep asking myself why the hell am I doing this.
Looking for a suitable location can make or break a film and here I am obviously trying to make one! The problem here is that we filmmakers continue on that search like maniacs. Telling ourselves, “It must be there somewhere, damn it!”
I remember this funny moment that Mukeshji (Mukesh Bhatt) and I shared when we were scouting for locations for Dastak. We needed an island and so off we went to Seychelles, hired a boat and started scouring the seas. The sea was rough and giving Mukeshji a rough time, not to mention all of us as well. Finally after roaming around the whole day in ten foot waves we were still not close to what we wanted and Mukeshji looked at the boatman and asked, “Can we take this boat right out of the Indian Ocean, round the Cape of Good Hope, across the Atlantic and to the West Indies because I think what Vikram wants is the second island to the right of Jamaica!” The boatman’s expression was priceless and I fell on the deck rolling with laughter! That was what I call a gem of priceless humour and it really tells someone how difficult it is to search for what is in the mind’s eye. Like a black cat in a dark room and to add to my woes it is a minus five for the Mumbai Boy.
Aetbaar, a film I made in 2003, had a similar problem. We wanted a house by a lake and we went all the way to New Zealand and can you believe we could not find the house that we wanted in the entire Queenstown which is a lakeside town! Had to shoot in Vancouver, Canada, instead. As I look back I think what was so important about that house? Why was I obsessed with a lake house? I can’t really remember. Filmmakers have a propensity to get obsessed by putting on screen what they see in their mind’s eye. It has to be what we imagined. But we don’t pause to think if what we have imagined is a work of art set. It is clearly not! Yet we strive endlessly.
I was having this discussion with my team yesterday and my assistant Olivia said a brilliant thing. “How can we make a film if we cannot bring to the fore what we have imagined?” So true! So off I am to another day in the blizzard! Goodbye you lucky guys!
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