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Even before we woke up to our scars, and went back to minding our business amid reassuring anonymity, a certain Ram Gopal Varma landed in a soup for being everything that is wrong with this country.

While the country aims brickbats at RGV’s assumed intentions, filmmakers defend their right to capture tragedy in reels

Even before we woke up to our scars, and went back to minding our business amid reassuring anonymity, a certain Ram Gopal Varma landed in a soup for being everything that is wrong with this country. Sensitivity, is what, this nation and scions of culture needed lessons in, accused many. While Varma vehemently denied the possibility of filming the worst terror attack on this country, the Bollywood roster has a different story to tell. From a stinging Mumbai Meri Jaan, a complicated Black Friday to an edgy Dhokha or an completely filmy Shootout At Lokhandwala and the several war and terror movies of the clan, Bollywood is yet to let alone an event of the dimension. So, even as the whole country sits numbed by violence at present, there are doubts if the same doesn’t end up being yet another way to send cash registers ringing for some quick-thinking director.

Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, however, resents the barbs aimed at filmmakers for their apparent lack of sensitivity. “Do the electronic media know where to draw a line? Is it justified when they hound a hostage the moment he’s out of the hell he has been in, with little concern for the trauma he has been through? This is called sensationalism, not the fiction we create,” fumes Bhatt. It’s difficult to refute the claim, as in the apparent urge to get the best footage, the grimiest pictures and the choicest bytes, we are no stranger to the lines crossed by the electronic media.

However, a film we assume, is a well thought-out endeavour, and does have more time to weigh issues of the heart, than live news coverage can afford to. But then again, if portrayed with some dignity, a film is also a document of the contemporary social concerns. “You might say filmmakers, or journalists even, don’t know where to draw the line when they capture devastation and tragedy in their cameras. But at the same time, there has to be someone who documents all this without silly aesthetic considerations. The issues are gross, are blood curdling for real,” says Anindya Shankar Das, a student of FTII Pune, explaining why he doesn’t feel the need to photoshop reality while depicting it. Seconds filmmaker Raja Sen, who made Desh on the Purulia arms drop incident. “The filmmaker needs to know if he wants a potboiler or a movie of some consequence. An incident like a terror attack can be filmed with a positive undertone, one that creates awareness or works against complacence,” says Sen.

Bhatt, nevertheless, doesn’t feel the necessity of objectivity while dealing with an issue with tricky emotional bearings. “I would never make a movie if I don’t have a valid opinion about it, or if an incident has not touched me in a personal level,” says Bhatt justifying the freedom exercised by directors in cinematic interpretations of real life issues. But then, adds Bhatt, the endeavor shouldn’t dwindle into a blasé commercial venture with no regards whatsoever for the graveness of the issue involved. “It’s not always that everybody understands the rhetoric of a serious art house movie. But it is also possible to make an unpretentious work of fiction based on a real incident without indulging in meaningless jingoism,” says FTII pass-out and filmmaker Abhaya Simha who cites Jagmohan Mundra’s Shoot on Sight as a fitting example.

Directors like Sen, hope that people learn to tread the middle-path. “It’s sad, but to recover costs producers at times demand the likes of an item song. It’s very difficult to remain honest to your conscience and make a movie in circumstances like that,” he sums up the paradox.