Ahead of the re-release of Ram Gopal Varma's 1998 gangster classic Satya on January 17, the veteran filmmaker took to his X handle to pen a long note on why the film attained a cult status and continues to be celebrated even today, and why it should be a textbook for today's filmmakers that are desperate to churn out movies driven by unnecessarily huge budgets, expensive stars, and visual effects.
"When the whole industry right now is in a mad rush in their requisitions for massive budgets, expensive vfx, gargantuan sets and superstars, it might be prudent for all of us to take a hard re-look at Satya and give a deep thought to why it became such a big blockbuster minus any of those aforementioned requisites," wrote the 62-year-old director, who called the note a "confession" and an "introspection".
Written by Saurabh Shukla and Anurag Kashyap, Satya revolves around its titular character, played by JD Chakravarthy, who is drawn to a life of crime in Mumbai's underbelly.
Satya is also responsible for making the career of Manoj Bajpayee, whose raw and intense performance as the character Bhiku Matre made audiences sit up and pay attention.
Interestingly, Satya co-writer Anurag Kashyap would give the actor another one of his iconic characters 14 years later in his gangster saga Gangs of Wasseypur. Satya also featured strong performances from Urmila Matondkar and Shefali Shah (Delhi Crime, Three of Us).
RGV added that the characters in Satya "felt so real not because of putting in a tremendous effort in character design but simply because I mostly copied them from real life characters."
It was a simple case of great films making themselves, he went on to add. "In short, we didn’t make Satya. It made us. It’s like we all gave birth to a baby called Satya and how it grew up and became what it became was never really neither in our intention nor in our control. I don’t remember a single time when any of us discussed whether Satya will work at the box office but we all seriously wanted it to work for us."
RGV recalled that despite not having a script, the entire team was "very true and honest" to their work. It took a while for him to realise that they had something special on their hands, and it was on the day of mixing. "When I saw most of the characters I created with so much love being killed like dogs — not that I didn’t know that before, but to see it in a flow along with music and sound stirred something deep in me — got me choked up and I had tears in my eyes."