Time to thrill

Banerjee’s next may be a medium-budget project,but he is quick to add that it does not come anywhere close to the magnum opuses one sees these days. The director — famous for making intelligent yet small budget cinema — says that he doesn’t start writing a film with a budget in mind. “But given that I like to use provokative subjects,unfamiliar technology and experiment with techniques in storytelling or presentation,it is only fair that I ensure that the producer’s money is safe.”

Shanghai has been written by the Oye Lucky team,Urmi Juvekar and Banerjee,and is an adaptation of a European book that is based on real-life incidents,rooted in politics of everyday life. “We’ve adapted it to the modern times but the central events of the story do not change. The film is very much based in India.” The film will go on floors in March 2011 and is said to star one of the director’s favourite actors,Abhay Deol,alongside Emraan Hashmi. Though the director refuses to confirm this,he does admit that the film has three central characters and the the hunt is on for the female lead. “An Indian woman can be uprooted at various levels,” he says. A woman’s upheaval from her family after marriage is one such level. “But I’m looking for someone with messed up roots.”

The 39-year-old filmmaker,promises Shanghai to be one of his last angry films in some time to come. “A huge ball of anger will be vented out.” The anger that finds expression in his films,he says,stems from his love for the society he lives in. “We have become so callous and blasé that nothing affects us anymore. We have perfected the art of ignoring the elephant in the room. Now take for example the murders of RTI activists over the last one year. The sheer numbers should have made the higher-ups ensure security cover to the activists. My anger stems from this inaction,” he rues.

Known to attempt unique ways of storytelling,Banerjee says that Shanghai too,will be an experiment in the way the story is presented. “With LSD,there was a strong premise,and with Oye Lucky,we had experimented by using still photographs to tell a story and also used episodic structure though the protagonist remained the same. In the next film,it will be about how the same story is told again and again through the film.”

The narrative of this film,points out the director,may not be as humourous as his previous films. “Humour won’t form the spine of the film since it’s about violence,right from the first title sequence,though it isn’t gory.

It will be a straight-out thriller.” The soundtrack will be a radically different one,he promises. “The lead song is a gaily abundant and loving song,” he pauses before adding,“about killing.”