‘I am never satisfied with any of my films’

It starts with Mrinalini,an ageing screen diva,trying to pen a suicide note,determined to exit this life. However,before taking the pills that will put her to sleep forever,she decides to destroy all her memorabilia lest it fall into the hands of the press. As she looks through the old box that contains relics from her past,memories flood the night. And,through these memories,an entire life is revealed — a life of loves lost and gained,friendships and betrayals,success and failure,agonies and ecstasies.

Mrinalini was a control freak in some ways. She had not had any control over her entry into the stage of life,but she is determined to control her exit. But life is so random,people only think they are in control. Are they really ?

How much of the film is autobiographical?

A great deal of it is autobiographical.

Mrinalini is Aparna to a very large extent as will be evident from the film. My mental make-up and Mrinalini’s are very similar. She,too,was very fond of literature,poetry and good cinema; her college life and pursuits are very like mine were. She,too,had not really thought she would become a star of Bengali mainstream cinema. She,too,longed to work in different,more meaningful films and yet got stuck in the rut of the mainstream.

However,the incidents of Mrinalini’s life and mine are not the same. It is not a biopic in that sense. If one is looking for scandals in a voyeuristic way,one is likely to be disappointed. I was never in love with a Naxalite boy; I never had a child out of wedlock; I never had a relationship with a much younger filmmaker; I never attempted suicide!

Iti Mrinalini is about an actress from the ’70s. What kind of problems did an actor face back then?

Not so much problems as boredom. It was the sameness of the formula films that got to one after a while. There was a lot of playback and mouthing songs in lip sync while traipsing along sea shores or running around trees. This is why I enjoyed acting in comedies more than in regular melodramas.

At an event recently,you expressed your disappointment on losing out on a role in Satyajit Ray’s Ghare Baire. Do you feel that as an actress you have not got your due?

No,it was I who voluntarily gave up acting in order to turn my energies and creativity towards film direction. I was tired of acting in the kind of cinema I did not believe in and wanted to make my kind of films. I never gave myself very high marks as an actor anyway. But it’s true that I would have loved to play Bimala in Ghare Baire.

Parts of Iti Mrinalini were shot in Presidency College,Kolkata. Do we get to see incidents from your college days in the film?

Not any real life incidents,no. I tried to capture the general atmosphere of the time more than anything else. We did not shoot inside the college; we shot on the street outside where we evoked the atmosphere of the time with second-hand bookshops,wall writings and political slogans. We also shot inside a restaurant called Favourite Cabin,which has hardly changed since the ’70s.

We wanted to shoot at the College Street Coffee House where we used to hang out all the time,but that’s changed so much that anyone who has seen it back then,would find it fake. It has been spruced up and painted white; and the dingy atmosphere that distinguished it,the quality of light itself against those gloomy walls of the ’70s has changed. We did include a scene at Favourite Cabin that was typical of our college days when we would argue over the poetry of Sunil Ganguly,Shakti Chattopadhyay and Vladimir Mayakovsky.

In your last film,The Japanese Wife,we saw a marked difference in your storytelling technique. What kind of technique did Iti Mrinalini require. Considering that it’s a memoir.

It’s not really a memoir in the sense that it is not the life of any real person — but yes,it is an imaginary account of the life of an actress of the ’70s. Because she is a star of mainstream cinema,we had to have a few mainstream elements such as playback songs that were almost mandatory then.

I have never used songs from the popular genre before in my films. I had to in this one.. We deliberately shot a good deal of the film in the conventional mainstream ’70s mode of close-ups and over-shoulder shots unlike in The Japanese Wife,in order to have some synergy with the films that had made Mrinalini a star.

As a mother how difficult is it to direct Konkona for a film?

When I am directing her,I am totally in ‘director’ mode. I have never had a problem in being objective about her or any other actor. I treat her no differently from the way I treat the others.

Iti Mrinalini comes in the middle of what many people are calling “a new wave in Bengali cinema”. There is a burst of talent with filmmakers like Srijit Mukherji,Birsa Dasgupta and Parambrata. Do you feel Bengali cinema has really come-of-age?

I don’t really know. Many of these films are well-made and young people today can connect with the way characters in these films speak,behave and act. Also,the songs are inspired by ‘Jibanmukhi’ songs that had become popular at the beginning of the decade.

The way film songs are used today is also different from the way they were used. Earlier,they were almost always sung by one or other of the protagonists; now they are used more often as the background score for a montage sequence that takes the story forward. These are good cinematic innovations; but they do not necessarily create artistic or emotional depth. I don’t really know what you mean by ‘coming of age’,but if you mean that today’s mainstream Bengali cinema is smarter and technically superior to that of yesteryear,then that is true.

Is Iti Mrinalini your most satisfying directorial venture yet?

I am never satisfied with any of my films! As Alfred Hitchcock had once said,it is only after you have finished making a film that you know how it should have been made! There is not a single film of mine that I have looked at afterwards and not shuddered,thinking ‘Oh,how I wish I could have made it again!’