Some time after he debuted as a feature filmmaker with the critically-acclaimed Socha Na Tha (2005), Imtiaz Ali was exploring the underbelly of Hong Kong, where he had gone to shoot a commercial. There, he noticed the women on the streets “strutting their femininity” and enjoying the power of doing so. It is these women who inspired his new Netflix original, She, a seven-episode noir starring Aaditi Pohankar and Vijay Varma. It has been created and co-written by him and Divya Johry, and co-directed by Ali’s younger brother Arif Ali and Avinash Das, of Anaarkali of Aarah (2017) fame.
The idea, conceived more than 10 years ago, remained dormant as there was no medium that could do justice to it. Although it was his idea, Ali distanced himself from directing She as he felt that it would be difficult to assume many roles in a digital series. “You can maybe do that in a film, but there is too much work to do in a series,” he says. “You cannot be everywhere.” He decided the writers should keep away from directing and, instead, guide the story. “It has been a lovely experience, but a lot of writing. I did not expect it to be so much work,” he says.
She tells the story of a timid police constable’s sexual awakening as she gets an undercover assignment as a prostitute. The constable, Bhumi, surprises herself by enjoying the power she starts having over men. One might never have expected Ali to come out with a noir like She. In a career spanning nearly two decades, the filmmaker has mostly been associated with popcorn romances that range from the passionate to heart-breaking and inspirational. His latest is the second instalment of Love Aaj Kal, coming 11 years after the first.
Ali has never before tangoed with such a dark story. The furthest he went was with Highway (2014), about a woman abducted by a gangster. He says he is glad to offer something so unexpected of him. And he hopes it is “good and not just unexpected”, so that people will accept similar stories he might come up with.
According to him, the fact that it is new territory made it easier to write She. “I could take any turn as I had not been there before,” he says. “In storytelling, there is nothing difficult or easy. It is all about what interests you more or less. This [genre] was so undiscovered that it was very interesting for me.”
The fact that the story goes into the deeply personal space of a woman was very compelling for him. “I was fascinated by the certain sense of power that a woman can have about her sexuality—the very thing that can bring her a lot of shame,” he says. “It almost defines her place in the social structure.”
Ali’s relationship with his female characters has been interesting. No matter how broken they are in the beginning, or how flawed the story turns out to be, the women evolve profoundly as the narrative develops—whether it is Jab We Met’s Geet, Highway’s Veera or Tamasha’s Tara. The men, however, “are stunted,” Ali finishes my sentence with a smile. He attributes it to being more interested in women. “Fascination takes you beyond familiarity. So, although I am less familiar with women, I am more interested in them. It could be because of that that they have a three-dimensional existence in my films.”
Despite his success, Ali has faced criticism for coming out with formulaic films. It does not bother him, though. “Each time I have done something, I have felt like I am doing it for the first time,” he says. According to him, that is the reason why he did not do Cocktail (2012), even though it was offered to him. “I thought it was too similar to Jab We Met (2007), which I had already done,” he says. “Love Aaj Kal (2009), at the time, was very different. Similarly, Rockstar (2011), after those two films, was risky new territory, which many people liked and many did not. Then again, Highway was different because it was the film I made with the lowest budget since Socha Na Tha.”
Sometimes, some aspects of his films, especially their flaws, reveal themselves to him long after the films have been made. “Then I think to myself that I must have been blind not to have seen it,” he says. In Rockstar, for example, the story tends to lag in the second half before getting back on track. In Tamasha, things become too “bulky”, because Ali is trying to do too many things at the same time. “It is the peril of being a filmmaker,” he says. “You always find faults with what you have done.”
Ali says he will always have a sense of what has worked and what has not in his films. Of course he would like everyone to love everything he does, although that is not possible. In a way, maybe that is not so bad. “It means that I am always going through some sort of struggle, trying to restructure or learn new things and not resting on my laurels. It is uncomfortable for sure. But in that discomfort, I feel the throbbing of the heart, he says, quoting lyricist Javed Akhtar’s lines from Dil Dhadakne Do (2015)—“If the heart is beating, then you are alive. If things matter and you feel bitter, you are alive.”