HT Brunch Cover story: Kabir Khan’s crossover politics

Because he makes masala movies, most people tend to dismiss Kabir Khan as a director. True, he’s successful, they will agree. But he makes a certain kind of film targeted at a certain kind of an audience so, of course, he is successful.

But these people fail to recognise one crucial thing about Kabir Khan’s movies. That at the core of his masala entertainers, there is always a subtle, yet strong, political and social message.

Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015), for instance, was about borders. While it highlighted the human bond between the people of India and Pakistan, it also touched upon how people of a particular religion face ugly biases even while trying to rent a house. New York (2009) highlighted the illegal detention of Muslims in post 9/11 America. Phantom (2015) showed the aftermath of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. This is a difficult thing to pull off in a Bollywood film. But Kabir Khan is an ace at messaging.

“As a director, I say what I want to with my movie. If a person can access the subtext, great! But on face value, the movie should hit the mark with its audience.”

“The main idea of making a movie is to provide entertainment,” Kabir explains. “But as a director, I also say what I want to say with my movie. If a person can access the subtext, great! But on face value, the movie should hit the mark with its audience.”

Kabir’s ethos and aesthetics largely stem from his early works. As a freshly-minted filmmaker from Jamia Millia Islamia university in Delhi, he first became a globetrotting photographer partnering with journalist Saeed Naqvi, and then a documentary filmmaker. But after just three documentary movies, he switched sides and is now one of the most successful commercial filmmakers in India.

“There is no audience for documentary films in India,” Kabir says mournfully. “Also, when I was doing documentaries there were no streaming platforms and no options where a documentary could be screened. What is the point of telling stories if they don’t reach people? As a filmmaker, you want a certain interaction with the audience.”

Bollywood to the rescue

Kabir first became aware of the clout of Bollywood while working on a documentary. “I was shooting in Afghanistan in 2001, post 9/11. America was shelling the country and all the normal ways to enter the country were closed,” he recalls. “So, we bribed the pilot of a Russian military helicopter who was flying medical help to Kabul, but 40 minutes into the ride, he asked us to jump off. Apparently he couldn’t get the chopper on the ground due to some technical problem. So we jumped, loaded with our equipment.

“This is a scene we later recreated with John Abraham and Arshad Warsi in Kabul Express (2006), an autobiographical film based on my experiences in Afghanistan. But when we got our feet on the ground, this huge 6 foot 4 inches guy pointed a Kalashnikov at us. We didn’t know what to do or say and just kept repeating ‘Hindustan, Hindustan’. This guy came closer and closer. Then he smiled and broke into a rendition of ‘Mere sapno ki rani’. It was so out of the blue, but that day Bollywood saved my life and I saw its power.”

“Salman khan and I had huge disagreements [while shooting Ek Tha Tiger] but we found a middle path”

The real deal

For his first mainstream Bollywood movie, Kabir chose to tell the story of the life he lived as a documentary filmmaker. This was Kabul Express. “I couldn’t afford to hire a writer, so I wrote it myself,” he says. Armed with the script, Kabir landed in Mumbai.

“I knew nobody in Bollywood, apart from Maria and Arshad Warsi through Mini Mathur (his wife). Mini and Maria had both worked at MTV. I went door to door, reading my script to producers but nothing worked,” Kabir remembers. “Then one day I got a call claiming that Aditya Chopra wanted to meet me. Now, there was this joke that Adi Chopra was actually a mythical character. Yash Chopra claimed he existed, but no one apart from Yash Chopra had ever seen him. Also, YRF (Yash Raj Films) is known for romantic movies, and my script was so far removed from that world that I had not even sent them my script. So, I was totally convinced that this phone call was Cyrus Broacha trying to make an MTV Bakra episode out of me.”

“I went to YRF, prepared to be pounced upon any moment by Broacha holding the Bakra crown. But I walked and walked and walked and nothing happened except that I was standing in front of the Aditya Chopra. At that point, YRF wanted to launch a new department and was looking for different kinds of scripts. That new department never happened but my film was made under the main YRF banner!”

Now Kabir had found his place. After Kabul Express, he went on to give Aditya Chopra’s idea of a buddy movie a socio-political twist and the result was New York. Kabir’s first bonafide hit.

Both Benegal and Khan made documentaries on the life of Bose: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero (2005) and Kabir Khan’s Forgotten Army – Azaadi Ke Liye
(
Shivangi Kulkarni
)

The Salman factor

He followed it up with a bigger film, Ek Tha Tiger (2012), with superstar Salman Khan. This was Kabir’s third film while Salman Khan had had a good two decades of being Salman Khan. “So, of course the balance was hugely tilted!” Kabir laughs. “We had huge disagreements. Sometimes I would go overboard with my vision and sometimes he would get too mass-focused and had to be toned down, but we found a middle path.”

Though Salman often remained unconvinced about certain things, he always complied with the director’s vision. “He never came from the ‘Oh, I am the star, so you have to listen to whatever I say’ place. There was never arrogance. He would argue and sulk, but do it,” says Kabir. Perhaps Salman’s reputation as a brat on sets is too strong for most directors, Kabir muses. Perhaps they buy into the image so much that they don’t even try and push him.

But Kabir credits Salman for attempting a script like Bajrangi Bhaijaan. “It is essentially the movie of the little girl,” he points out. “There was nothing ‘hero’ like about Salman’s role. But he got so excited about the script that he even produced it! Although Salman never talks about politics and has an uneasy relationship with the press, his friends know just how conscious and concerned he is by what is going on. Salman’s politics are very similar to Bajrangi’s and I knew the script would resonate with him.”

Standing up for stars

Kabir has taken his own sweet time to get into the Bollywood groove; the songs in particular really foxed him. “I just couldn’t wrap my head around the very idea,” he says. “But while writing Bajrangi, I actually wrote songs into the script, and I didn’t have to force it!”

This does not mean the Bollywoodisation of Kabir Khan is finally complete. “I don’t care about box office numbers,” says the director whose Bajrangi Bhaijaan grossed ~300 crore, shaking his head about the corporatisation of Bollywood. “There are so many different parameters today that make these numbers,” says Kabir. “But I don’t make films for festivals either! I make movies for the mass audience and for myself. A filmmaker has to make a movie for himself first.”

“I don’t make films for festivals. I make them for the mass audience and for myself!”

However, Kabir does see value in international film festivals. “The idea is to highlight the uniqueness of cinema from various regions and there is a lot of interest for Bollywood as a genre,” he explains. “There is no point making an Indian film on the lines of Iranian cinema, because Iran is already making that! Why would you watch an Iranian movie that looks like a Korean movie? You will watch a Korean movie instead!”

A Bollywood movie is all about star power, and Kabir totally believes that is true. “Stars are stars because of their fan following; these are the people who will throng the theatres,” he points out. “Also, having a star makes it easier to get the money to make the film, which is crucial for a big budget movie.”

For instance, he explains, for his forthcoming movie, 83 (2020), he cast Ranveer Singh instead of a newcomer who looks more like Kapil Dev, so he could get the budget the film requires. In any case, most of the new stars are great actors, he says. “So it is a win-win situation. Ranveer is a brilliant actor! If he reminds you so much of Kapil Dev, it is not because of his make-up or prosthetics, it is because of Ranveer the actor. He has got the mannerisms spot on.”

And this is just the trailer. Picture abhi baaki hai, mere dost!

From HT Brunch, August 16, 2020