For her third film, director-writer Reema Kagti switched genre and the period. Unlike her directorial debut, Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (2007), a slice-of-life comedy drama, or her second film Talaash: The Answer Lies Within (2012), a psychological thriller, the most recent one, Gold, is a sports film in a period setting.
45-year-old Kagti, who hails from Guwahati, Assam, started her career in the reel world as an assistant director for films like Lagaan, Dil Chahta Hai, and Lakshya. An intrinsic part of Excel Entertainment, led by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, she has continually partnered with Zoya Akhtar as writer and assistant director.
Gold, starring Akshay Kumar as Tapan Das, manager of the Indian Hockey team during the 1948 Olympics, charts the larger journey of the sport; Das goes from being a junior manager of the British India hockey team during the 1936 Olympics in Germany, to manager in the post-independence era when India played as a free nation. The film also tracks the turmoil of World War II, and more poignantly, the bloody partition of India and Pakistan. Besides, the tumultuous life of Das who deals with unemployment in the aftermath of the Second World War, when Olympic Games were halted, alcohol addiction, and a burning passion to take independent India's hockey team to the Olympics, becomes the core of the film. On the commercial front, the film did decently, making around Rs 75 cr in one week. However, it also received its share of criticism—lack of nuance, playing to the patriotic gallery, and being more of a masala movie when compared to her finely textured previous outings.
“I wasn’t expecting anything, but I was hoping things would go well,” says Kagti. She had come across the story of Das while researching India's historic 1948 win. During the course of the research, she met hockey historian K. Arumugam, who told her about the legend in the hockey circle—a junior manager who unfurled the Indian national flag during the Berlin Olympics in 1936, and went on to become the manager of the Indian team 12 years later. She found the story interesting enough to pursue it further.
In a brief conversation with THE WEEK, Kagti talks about the film, the response, the criticism, and her upcoming Amazon Prime Video series, Made In Heaven, about the journey of two wedding planners in India.
Is it by design that you have been picking up these different stories?
No, it’s not that. It’s really about what idea catches you. For me, the start of a film is always with the germ of an idea. It just so happened that they were all very different. I am not trying to be different, it just worked out that way.
This was your first time playing around with a different era. Besides, it is centered around sports. Were you comfortable switching from one genre to another? And were there any difficulties in recreating the past?
I feel comfortable. There was no discomfort in switching from HTPL to Talaash to Gold. Obviously, in terms of locations, it was a little difficult. Even if you do, it is difficult to recreate another era. I had a lot of help from my production designer, Shailaja [Sharma] and Paul [Rowan]. Apart from that, when you are shooting a sports film, the actors are not really hockey players, so the real challenge was to try and get the boys into a programme. And, the entire sports team [in the film], worked under a custom routine for each player. That was pretty challenging. I was fortunate to have very sincere hardworking actors on-board.
You got former hockey player Sandeep Singh to coach the actors, along with Michael Nobbs [former Australian player and the ex-coach of Indian hockey team].
Sandeep was there for a while. There was Aimee McDaniel throughout the film as the sports choreographer. Aimee introduced me to Michael Nobbs. He was considering options as to who the hockey specialist should be; I also had a chat with Michael. Interestingly, Michael was in Australia when he started playing [hockey]. He was taught by the Anglo-Indian players who had left India [during the Partition] and settled in Australia. So, he somehow really connected with the script. He said I know these guys, that they have taught him. And he should do the film. That’s how it came about.
Akshay Kumar was a very unlikely choice to play the Bengali man, Tapan Das, around whom the film revolves. As a director what convinced you to cast him for this role?
I was always very sure that he could pull it off. And I also thought it would be very interesting because he had never played a part like this.
After the release of the film (on August 15), there were many opinions—about Kumar’s flawed Bengali, comparisons with Chak De!, and more. What do you make of all this?
I don’t really make anything out of it, because it’s impossible to make a film and please everybody. There will always be some people who wouldn’t like the film, saying there are flaws in it. But there are also a whole lot of people who have loved the film, and they had some really nice things to say about it. It’s really a question of personal taste.
How important was it for you to make the national anthem a part of the film?
I think it was very important. I would like to clarify that nobody is under pressure to stand up. The Supreme Court has also clarified that nobody has to stand up. People are not being forced. If they are feeling a certain emotion and standing up, it is fine. A lot of people have reached out to me from the US, some from England, and some have been sending tweets saying it wasn’t just the Indians in the audience who stood up. There were foreigners who stood up because they were swept up by the emotions. If you ask me personally, when the anthem plays, would I stand up? Yes, I would. I always do. I also find our anthem to be among the most beautiful anthems in the world. And, I do not impose this on anybody, it’s completely up to you to stand up or not.
True. However, earlier this year, Meghna Gulzar’s film, Raazi, which managed to evoke patriotic feelings too, didn’t have the anthem…
[Cuts in] Yeah, but these are two different films. Meghna’s film [which Kagti really appreciated] was about a girl who was a spy; my film is about the first time the Indian fla unfurled [at the Olympic Games], and the anthem sung. It would be very strange if it is about the first time we won a medal, and Akshay’s character keeps saying about our own anthem playing, our own flag rising, and at the end of the film I don’t show that. I felt, in terms of my story, the natural culmination can only be that, regardless of how many people feel uncomfortable with their own national anthem being played in today’s climate. I have tried to be true to my story. I have tried to avoid putting it across in a jingoistic way.
There have been opinions on Akshay Kumar’s character being given more importance over the hockey players. People, including me, felt that to see the names of the real players would have been nicer. Did you always want it to be like that?
Again, it is a fictional story. I never said I was making a real story. This was the journey of a man who had a dream. I followed him. And, there were other pivotal characters in the film, and I followed their story as and when it came.
You have been working on Amazon Prime Video’s Made In Heaven. How different has the experience, writing for a digital series been compared to a film?
This is the first time I have written long-form, and it’s very interesting. In terms of a film, you just have two-and-a-half hours to establish the characters, to get your dramatic points going. Generally, you give that as your time frame for your narrative to finish and end. But, with long-format, you can spend a lot more time with the characters, with the story. I am enjoying it a lot.
How did the idea come about?
Like most of the other ideas, it came generally during a session when we were just bouncing ideas, and we started developing it. Then, we had Alankrita Srivastava come on and work with us. And yeah, the three of us just started developing the story.
Did the immense success of Sacred Games put you under any sort of pressure?
No. We are trying to make Made In Heaven the best possible show from our point of view, and that was the case even before and after Sacred Games released. It was not that before Sacred Games, we were doing a bad job. You want to try and do the best job for yourself. It has nothing to do with what anybody else is doing.
What is your view on the digital space opening up in India?
Right now, it is a platform that is not censored. You can push the envelope a lot. You can talk about things that you are normally not allowed to talk about. In that sense, it’s quite interesting.