The Hindu Business Line : Saluting the human spirit

As a director, Nagesh Kukunoor is only six films old. His latest film Iqbal, about an 18-year-old hearing and speech impaired boy who aspires to be in the Indian cricket team, was released recently. "With Iqbal, I wanted to make a film that was like a fable. Right from the opening frame, you know that he is going to win. I did not worry about where the film was leading to, as much as how," he says, adding that Iqbal is all about the human spirit, about someone following his dream. It was his long-time desire to make what "we consider the classic underdog story... where disability is treated with dignity." In the film, after the first five minutes, "you forget that Iqbal is deaf and dumb. I didn't want to give him special privileges that came out of self-pity; any advantage that came out of the fact that he was a disabled person. I wanted the audience to look at the film and learn to accept a deaf and dumb person as normal. Disability is just one feature in the film," says the 38-year-old director. All his films have dealt mostly with real people in real situations, but "with a little bit of the boundary stretched. I have always written characters with flaws, with shades of grey. Iqbal is the only character I have written as a pure hero... very naïve and simplistic," he says. "You take a real situation, and as a filmmaker colour the edges as you think is necessary to get the story across."

In Iqbal, Kukunoor has done this with a backdrop that the audience can easily identify with... cricket! Because no other sport in this country inspires the level of passion that cricket does, he says. "I felt that I had to pick up a sport that I wouldn't have to try and sell to the audience. The game is only secondary to the film."

Tell him that except Lagaan, films with cricket as the backdrop have not done well, and he says that he has never written any script based on market trends. "The box office is just a guessing game... there are no rules to this game. When I write the story, I never think, `Oh, the audience will love this or that!' I just write a story that I am passionate about, which I believe will work, because my chances of success are as good or as bad."

Though he says he does not watch the audience's pulse, he likes to hang out in a theatre and watch audience reaction. Trying to guess audience preferences leads you to make a bad film. "This is not a statistical vote-gathering process. It is just one person's vision," he says.

On comparisons of Iqbal with Lagaan and Black, he says that every movie has been done before. The question therefore is "how you make the story interesting enough." However, cricket was not what he had scripted originally. "For several years, I met producers with this idea of a deaf and dumb boy winning in malkhamb, a rural gymnastic sport in Maharashtra. Of course, no one was interested in the idea; but when I said a deaf and dumb boy who wants to win at cricket, instantly there was money."

Making the film was not easy either. There were two completely different aspects when it came to preparation for the film, says Kukunoor. One is the cricket aspect, and the other the sign language for the lead character. "This is a cricket-crazy nation... so I wanted to make the cricket aspect authentic enough, giving no room for any error."

For the role of Iqbal, the director wanted a guy who would convincingly bowl fast, and "in this case the hero bowls a good part of it barefoot." The validation for Iqbal came from former Indian cricket captain Sandeep Patil who said, `It's a very authentic movie; Iqbal looks like a bowler.' Other famous cricketers who saw the film include Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar. Kukunoor also took help from ex-Ranji Trophy players for the right bowling action; "every aspect of the script was checked by them to make sure that the cricket portions were authentic," he says.

For the sign language, three or four sign languages were combined to suit the character who lives in a village with no educational background. Experts were roped in to explain the signs for the 100 most commonly used words, DVDs of the sign language were given "to all the actors a month before the shoot," he explains.

Getting an actor for the lead role was equally difficult. Cricketers were the obvious choice, but Kukunoor soon found out that sportspersons necessarily don't make good actors. "We auditioned about 200 cricketers from cricket training academies; they had great bowling action, but when it came to acting, it was a different story." Then he turned to actors, hoping to train them in cricket; "but the reverse was worse... the actors were terrible physically. Finally I said I wanted actors who have played cricket earlier. Shreyas, who acted as Iqbal, had played league cricket and used to bowl medium pace," he says about the selection process.

Interestingly, former Indian captain Kapil Dev is part of the film's star cast too. "Kapil Dev plays a very important part in the film; I don't mean physically where he appears in one important scene. But more in terms of the Kapil Dev persona that pervades the film. He was one player that I couldn't do without." Subhash Ghai, who is the film's producer, did the trick on this count, he says.

As part of the promotional campaigns, Kukunoor says the film has been screened for Mumbai schoolchildren at reduced rates as it has "the potential to inspire them, and give them a burst of positive energy even if only for two hours."

Picture by Bijoy Ghosh

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
A gourmet's odyssey

Trim reality

Salty tidbit

Romances romp home

Saluting the human spirit

Rebelling against injustice