Piyush Jha Director,screenwriter,novelist To depict a criminal as a charismatic character is perhaps as big a crime as the one a criminal has committed. And to revel in it,over and over again is sheer insensitivity. Yet,we see a slew of recent films featuring Dawood Ibrahim as a central character. This Robin Hood version of Dawood has become the new favourite grist for the Hindi film storytelling mill. And with every cinematic depiction,the need to go one up on the previous,makes the Dawood myth larger and larger till it becomes larger than life. What is surprising is our inability to exercise restraint and make the distinction between fictional and real villains because unlike Gabbar Singh or Mogambo who are mere figments of a fertile imagination,Dawood is flesh and blood and is allegedly guilty of crimes against humanity. In their eagerness to create a formidable antagonist,filmy storytellers have hit upon Dawood as a fount of modern villainy. The flavour of the season churned out in different shapes and sizes,all of who have their dark goggles and thick moustache firmly in place. The truly horrific nature of Dawoods deeds and their ramifications are swept under the carpet,all in the name of cinematic liberty. Creating a false legend where Dawood turns out to be a warmnfuzzy,almost likable character. That Dawood is hand-in-glove and under the protection of Indias enemies in Pakistan,is well-known. Its been many years since any reliable source set eyes on him. And yet he appears,glorified on celluloid to almost messiah-like proportions. Sometimes hes directly named,sometimes hes obliquely referred to,sometimes hes middle-aged and indulging in taalimar dialoguebaazi and in recent times hes youthful and singing. If the truly larger-than-life Gabbar Singh were a real-life person,he would surely roll in his grave shouting Bahut be-insaafi hai . Suresh Nair Writer,producer movies are fiction,which often use real life characters as reference points because they make for exciting cinema. So filmmakers are fascinated by the legends,folkore and myths around them. These characters are larger-than-life,nobodys met them and it all depends on the imagination that comes from whatever we have read,or whatever information is available. That era of cinema is gone where there were clear-cut good guys and bad guys. You can no longer make films about Mogambo or Dr Dang because they are outlandish. The audience today would like their movies and its characters with a shade of believable reality. So movies are today drawn from news stories,real incidents and real people. And there will always be cinematic interpretations of fascinating real people,whether it is a don like Dawood or a political leader like Nelson Mandela. D-Day is fiction. It might draw from news headlines,real incidents and facts,but at its core it is just a thriller that speculates a scenario. So the aim was not to cash in on the films antagonist or his seeming physical resemblance to a real person. But to explore what would happen if such a mission were staged in reality. In fact,the research that went into the film was not so much on its antagonist,Goldman,but the logistics of an intelligence operation on foreign soil. Cinema is full of such interpretations or alternate realities. Carlos the Jackal has been for decades the subject of several films and books,including Robert Ludlums Jason Bourne trilogy. And so is the case with Americas most famous gangster from the 50s Al Capone,whom Robert De Niro immortalised with his brilliant performance in The Untouchables. As long as there are such dangerously larger-than-life personalities,movies will always be fascinated by them.
