Gandhi and Hitler brings together two epochal figures who never met. Will it work.
A letter written in 1939 by the apostle of peace to another who condemned hundreds of thousands to gas chambers caught the fancy of a young writer in 2008. Almost three years later, Nalin Ranjan Singh is ready with a film on Mohandas Gandhi and Adolf Hitler, the two history-shapers of the 20th century who, though they were arraigned against the same power, were ideologically as different as chalk and cheese.
“Gandhi wanted the British to leave India more than anything else. Hitler too was fighting the British in World War II. Yet, how differently they went about the struggle,” marvels Singh, who has written the script, acted in and also co-produced Gandhi to Hitler which revolves around Hitler’s last days in his bunker, his relationship with Eva Braun, whom he married close to his end, and Gandhi’s efforts to prevent a second world war.
In the first of his two letters to Hitler written a month before Germany overran Poland, Gandhi appealed: “It is quite clear to me that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be?”
Hitler went ahead with the invasion that triggered World War II. Hitler, for the record, had nothing but disdain for Indians; they themselves, he said more than once, were responsible for becoming subservient to a colonial power.
This is not the first time that Hitler makes an appearance in a Hindi film. He was in Shyam Benegal’s 2005 film, Bose: The Forgotten Hero. (It won the Nargis Dutt award that year for the best film on national integration). In that film, Subhas Chandra Bose “Netaji” tells Hitler how he doesn’t agree with his viewpoint on the “weaknesses” of Indians. Historians claim Hitler never gave an audience to Bose, and this, amongst others things, drove Bose to the Japanese.
Gandhi to Hitler, which releases worldwide in early July, has already been screened at the Berlin Film Festival and at Cannes, but that was a shorter version, dubbed in English for international audiences. Gandhi to Hitler, even though the title is in English, is an out-and-out Hindi movie. It is the first experiment of its kind where Bollywood has attempted a period film with an international theme in Hindi. (In Benegal’s film, Hitler spoke accented English.) It’s tricky, to say the least. For one, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to imagine Hitler speaking Hindi, and then to capture his mannerisms and recreate the scenes of his last days in a bunker, where he is seen engaged in serious consultations with his advisors or spending time with Braun, the woman in his life. Getting it right in Hindi, a language one has never associated Hitler with, couldn’t have been easy.
“It wasn’t,” admits Singh, who plays Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. “But that’s precisely the mental block I wanted to break. Hitler spoke German. Yet we have successful films of him in English, like The Last Ten Days. Gandhi and Slumdog Millionaire were strictly Indian subjects, but both were made in English. So why can’t we have Hitler and his people speak Hindi?” But the writer did take care not to go overboard with Hindi either. “For example ‘My Führer’ could not be translated into ‘Mere Führer’. That would sound ridiculous,” says Singh. Also, there is a tricky resemblance between Hitler and Charlie Chaplin, says Singh. “The script and the acting had to be nuanced or we ran the risk of turning a serious subject into a ridiculous comedy.”
Playing Hitler is Raghubir Yadav — initially Anupam Kher was signed for the role but he opted out after protests — and Neha Dhupia acts as Braun. “I was looking for a non-Indian face and someone who is tall. Neha’s father is from the defence forces; she slipped into the role naturally,” says Singh.
Getting producers to fund the script wasn’t easy. Hitler wasn’t a subject many wanted to go anywhere near. On top of that, Hitler in Hindi seemed like a wasted idea right from the start. But support came from an unexpected quarter: real estate developer Amrapali decided to throw its weight behind the movie. “I had been toying with the idea of launching a new company that would take care of our advertising and documentaries. Singh’s script acted as a catalyst and we launched our production house, Amrapali Media Vision,” says Anil Kumar Sharma, the chairman of Amrapali Group. “Gandhi to Hitler is the first film we are producing. More might follow.” The film, which has been shot in Film City (Noida), in villages near Gurgaon and in Ladakh, cost Rs 10 crore.
The movie has been further Indianised by bringing music into it — there are five songs in all. This again is an experiment. The promotional song, Vande Mataram, originally written in a mix of Bengali and Sanskrit, has been translated into Hindi word for word and composed to rock music. “Youth today do not understand the meaning of this great poem. We thought this way they will be able to relate to it,” says associate producer and lyricist Pallavi Mishra who is also the CEO of Amrapali Media Vision.
Gandhi’s favourite bhajan, Vaishnav Jan, has also been translated from Gujarati to Hindi by Mishra. Its male version has been sung by Bhupen Hazarika, the Assam-born singer-musician-lyricist who is 85 now. Only it was impossible for Hazarika to sing the entire song at one go. “He would record four or five lines and then stop to catch his breath. That’s how we recorded the song and later compiled it,” says Mishra, adding how thrilled Hazarika was when he heard the final song. Among others who have lent their voice to the film are Jagjit Singh, Daler Mehndi and Shaan. The movie will be dubbed in French, German, English, Tamil and Bengali. “We will screen it in 300 cinema halls, big and small, across India. It’s a page out of history that needs to be read,” says Singh.
Will Hitler sell 65 years after his suicide, or Gandhi 63 years after his assassination?
