Mumbai Matinee

reviews for its representation of the city and inducing nostalgia.

Though one may argue that with OUATIM,the story demanded using Mumbai as the backdrop,the fact remains that the city hasn’t yet ceased to fascinate filmmakers from across genres. An instance would be Pradeep Sarkar’s next,Lafangey Parindey,which uses the city in its present form as a personality in the film. Sarkar feels that Mumbai lends to filmmaking for its multi-faceted character and every filmmaker is inspired to highlight a different shade of the city. “You don’t have to art direct here; everything is already art directed,” he says. But as opposed to Luthria’s film,where the colour was maintained on lines of films like Zanjeer

in order to give it a retro feel,Sarkar’s Lafangey Parindey lends Mumbai a youthful spirit. “Filmmakers until now have captured the city in gritty yellows and browns; I’ve used blue,” he says.

But despite not having to bother about depicting a certain period,Sarkar hasn’t had it easy either. The crew had zeroed in on the car shed near Dockyard Road to shoot significant portions. “This is the adda of Nandu (Neil Nitin Mukesh) and Pinky (Deepika Padukone) and their friends. So we were happy with the location during the recce because there was an abandoned train bogie with weeds growing all over,empty platforms and a train passing in the backdrop on the elevated tracks — a perfect setting for the story. But when we came here a day before the shoot,the bogie had been taken away and we were left with nothing,” says the Kolkata-based filmmaker who had to rely on his writer and line producer to initially shortlist locations in Mumbai. Luckily,on the day of the shoot,an open goods car had been brought in where the team shot an important scene and then a goods car was hired for a few days.

Both the films have been extensively shot in Ballard Pier,Fort,Horniman Circle and Marine Drive. Sarkar calls these areas “ageless”. “In reality too,the biker gangs in Mumbai usually start their night caps from Ballard Pier and then race down Marine Drive,” he explains. In the case of OUATIM,says Luthria,the story required it to be shot there “since Mumbai started there and ended near Dadar in those days”. As Lafangey Parindey releases next week,it will be interesting to note how different the same places look in the two films.

The rooftop of the GPO,JJ School of Arts and the ship repair docks made for the other outdoor locations,but Chor Bazaar and Dongri were the most prominent in OUATIM since the lead characters in the film are Muslims from the area. “As if getting permissions to shoot in these locations was not tough enough,we had to deal with the local mafia who charged us for protection and even held us to ransom on the last day of shoot in Dongri,” recounts Luthria.

But with both the films,it was not always possible to shoot in live locations. Sarkar recalls,“I fell for Tilakwadi near Chembur —– it had the perfect setting for the film’s characters. But to shoot there for anything more than two days would mean disrupting their lives. So we recreated the place in a studio in Chandivli.” After shooting at the set for a week,the crew left it as is for a month to shoot at other locations. By the time they returned,crows,cows,dust and cobwebs had already settled in,which made the set look more authentic.

Luthria rented the set for his climax from Vipul Shah who had created it for his forthcoming Action Replayy,another film set in the ‘70s. “While he created it to resemble CST station,we have portrayed it as a mosque in Dongri,” Luthria smiles. Talk of the myriad shades of Mumbai.