 "Sujoy Ghosh's journey from Jhankaar Beats to Ahalya")
The first thing that strikes you about Sujoy Ghosh is his enthusiasm. Ecstatic over his short digital film, Ahalya, going viral, Ghosh says, “Short film e onek chaap (a short film is very demanding).” The 14-minute film clocked 1.5 million views on YouTube within a day of being released on July 20 and over four million views in a week.
“The happiest person, I guess, was my mother. She was glad to see me finally doing something again as my last film, Kahaani, was in 2012,” says 49-year-old Ghosh. The subtle twists and turns in the plot and the suspense of Kahaani is reflected in Ahalya as well.
Ghosh, who usually writes his own scripts, believes that compactness of the story is what works for a film. “It’s a complete circle, from doorbell to doorbell; Ahalya starts with a doorbell and ends with one,” he says.
In his short film, Ghosh retells the story of Ahalya, the young beautiful wife of aged sage Gautama in the Ramayana, in a contemporary setting but imparts to the character the voice that he felt she had been “unfairly” deprived of in the original epic. Ghosh’s Ahalya (played by Radhika Apte) is thus innocent, yet sensuous. She is both seductress and co-conspirator in the plot.
What makes his films stand apart are their endings. “That’s the fun part,” says Ghosh, “when people discuss it, argue over it. When we were growing up, it was a ritual after every movie. That’s how art lives on, a film lives on.”
This ardent lover of literature and the arts is an MBA from Manchester Business School, and graduated with computer science. Thereafter, Ghosh worked for nine years, sourcing and selling news at Reuters. He attributes the success of his easily identifiable plots and characters to those initial years spent in marketing and sales, identification with the customer being a standard sales technique.
Recalling Ghosh’s “irrepressible and infectious sense of optimism” and “wicked sense of humour”, actor Rahul Bose, who worked in Jhankaar Beats, says, “He had a great (film) set, a happy set — it says a lot about the longevity of a director.” Bose remembers how Ghosh convinced him to even sing a few lines in the film.
Despite winning popular awards, like the Filmfare Award and the Star Guild Award for best director, Ghosh confesses he likes writing more than directing. No wonder then that the National Film award for Best Screenplay for Kahaani in 2013 is his most prized possession.
Ghosh aims to present familiar things with a new perspective. So, even for Kolkatans, the Monalisa guest house in Kahaani with its green reptilian exteriors or the typical old house in Deshapriya Park in south Kolkata in Ahalya appears mysterious and unknown in his films.
While casting too, Ghosh looks for unfamiliar faces that will resonate with the audience. Remember Kahaani’s Bob Biswas (played by Bengali actor Saswata Chatterjee) The soft-spoken, hapless employee was someone the audience immediately identified with, only to be shocked to later find him as cold-blooded mercenary.
Seasoned actor Soumitra Chatterjee, the star of several of Satyajit Ray’s films, who plays the aged artist Goutam Sadhu in Ahalya, finds Ghosh “remarkable.” “He is a very good director of actors. He knows exactly what he wants from them and does not compromise (on it).” Ghosh got Chatterjee to portray a flamboyant 78-year-old artist who is 18 at heart, speaks with a clipped British accent and is practically a ringmaster controlling the stage.
The camera-shy Ghosh recently also acted in the Bengali film, Satyanweshi, playing the role of detective Byomkesh Bakshi — an assignment he agreed to simply because he says it was the “only opportunity to work with the late Rituda (Rituparno Ghosh)”, one of his idols.
The going, however, hasn’t been all easy for this rank outsider in Bollywood who marks 12 years in the film industry this year. It took him three years to find a producer for Jhankaar Beats till Pritish Nandy stepped in. His next two films, Home Delivery (2005) and the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Aladin (2009), tanked at the box office.
Ghosh chooses not to talk about them. What gets him excited is the scope of the “digital platform”, which he hails as the “medium of the future”. Ghosh also finds that “audiences have matured enough to appreciate good cinema — their language and length are no bar”.
His next film is based on a Japanese novel and will be produced by Ekta Kapoor’s Balaji Motion Pictures. In the meantime, business schools have roped him in to talk about the potential of the digital medium.
While Ghosh is an avid film buff and a voracious reader with no inclination towards sports, his teenage son, Agni, plays rugby in England. Ghosh, who is currently reading Roopa Pai’s Gita for Children, regrets that his daughter is yet to read any of the epics. But the proud father confesses that his children love all his films.
His one big dream, he says, is to write an original script for his “hero” — his “guru” and screen idol, Bachchan. He says he wants to be “an activist who propagates reading when he grows old”. But for the present, he is content at just “entertaining”. “If you get my message (in the process),” he says, “it is an added bonus for me.”
“The happiest person, I guess, was my mother. She was glad to see me finally doing something again as my last film, Kahaani, was in 2012,” says 49-year-old Ghosh. The subtle twists and turns in the plot and the suspense of Kahaani is reflected in Ahalya as well.
Ghosh, who usually writes his own scripts, believes that compactness of the story is what works for a film. “It’s a complete circle, from doorbell to doorbell; Ahalya starts with a doorbell and ends with one,” he says.
Radhika Apte in Ahalya
In his short film, Ghosh retells the story of Ahalya, the young beautiful wife of aged sage Gautama in the Ramayana, in a contemporary setting but imparts to the character the voice that he felt she had been “unfairly” deprived of in the original epic. Ghosh’s Ahalya (played by Radhika Apte) is thus innocent, yet sensuous. She is both seductress and co-conspirator in the plot.
What makes his films stand apart are their endings. “That’s the fun part,” says Ghosh, “when people discuss it, argue over it. When we were growing up, it was a ritual after every movie. That’s how art lives on, a film lives on.”
This ardent lover of literature and the arts is an MBA from Manchester Business School, and graduated with computer science. Thereafter, Ghosh worked for nine years, sourcing and selling news at Reuters. He attributes the success of his easily identifiable plots and characters to those initial years spent in marketing and sales, identification with the customer being a standard sales technique.
Jhankaar Beats
Recalling Ghosh’s “irrepressible and infectious sense of optimism” and “wicked sense of humour”, actor Rahul Bose, who worked in Jhankaar Beats, says, “He had a great (film) set, a happy set — it says a lot about the longevity of a director.” Bose remembers how Ghosh convinced him to even sing a few lines in the film.
Despite winning popular awards, like the Filmfare Award and the Star Guild Award for best director, Ghosh confesses he likes writing more than directing. No wonder then that the National Film award for Best Screenplay for Kahaani in 2013 is his most prized possession.
Vidya Balan in Kahaani
Ghosh aims to present familiar things with a new perspective. So, even for Kolkatans, the Monalisa guest house in Kahaani with its green reptilian exteriors or the typical old house in Deshapriya Park in south Kolkata in Ahalya appears mysterious and unknown in his films.
While casting too, Ghosh looks for unfamiliar faces that will resonate with the audience. Remember Kahaani’s Bob Biswas (played by Bengali actor Saswata Chatterjee) The soft-spoken, hapless employee was someone the audience immediately identified with, only to be shocked to later find him as cold-blooded mercenary.
Seasoned actor Soumitra Chatterjee, the star of several of Satyajit Ray’s films, who plays the aged artist Goutam Sadhu in Ahalya, finds Ghosh “remarkable.” “He is a very good director of actors. He knows exactly what he wants from them and does not compromise (on it).” Ghosh got Chatterjee to portray a flamboyant 78-year-old artist who is 18 at heart, speaks with a clipped British accent and is practically a ringmaster controlling the stage.
The camera-shy Ghosh recently also acted in the Bengali film, Satyanweshi, playing the role of detective Byomkesh Bakshi — an assignment he agreed to simply because he says it was the “only opportunity to work with the late Rituda (Rituparno Ghosh)”, one of his idols.
The going, however, hasn’t been all easy for this rank outsider in Bollywood who marks 12 years in the film industry this year. It took him three years to find a producer for Jhankaar Beats till Pritish Nandy stepped in. His next two films, Home Delivery (2005) and the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Aladin (2009), tanked at the box office.
Ghosh chooses not to talk about them. What gets him excited is the scope of the “digital platform”, which he hails as the “medium of the future”. Ghosh also finds that “audiences have matured enough to appreciate good cinema — their language and length are no bar”.
His next film is based on a Japanese novel and will be produced by Ekta Kapoor’s Balaji Motion Pictures. In the meantime, business schools have roped him in to talk about the potential of the digital medium.
While Ghosh is an avid film buff and a voracious reader with no inclination towards sports, his teenage son, Agni, plays rugby in England. Ghosh, who is currently reading Roopa Pai’s Gita for Children, regrets that his daughter is yet to read any of the epics. But the proud father confesses that his children love all his films.
His one big dream, he says, is to write an original script for his “hero” — his “guru” and screen idol, Bachchan. He says he wants to be “an activist who propagates reading when he grows old”. But for the present, he is content at just “entertaining”. “If you get my message (in the process),” he says, “it is an added bonus for me.”