Filmmakers usually put up posters of their films in their room. Kabir Khan's cabin in a high-rise in the Mumbai suburbs is no different. He has posters of Kabul Express, New York, Bajrangi Bhaijaan and, of course, Tubelight up on the wall. However, the things that piqued our interest were the five cameras and three books kept on his table.
It is not always wise to speculate about a person's state of mind based on the objects in his room, but still we delve. The cameras, says Khan, have a special significance in his life. He became a filmmaker because of his love for cameras. “I have been collecting them ever since I was a young boy,” he says. “It is my passion and it is because of the love for photography that I am doing what I am doing.”
The books could be part of the research he is doing for his future projects. Vera Hildebrand’s Women at War: Subhas Chandra Bose and the Rani of Jhansi Regiment and The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945 are the books he is reading now. He is working on a war series for Amazon titled The Forgotten Army. The third book on his table is an autobiography of a former cricket star. “It shouldn't have been here,” says Khan. Is he thinking of making a cricket-based film? If so, he is not ready to talk about it just yet. Besides these, a couple of A4 sheets lay on the table with doodles, criss-cross boxes of all shapes and sizes, and straight lines leading to nothing, drawn randomly.
Khan's fascination for Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army is not new. In 1999, he made a documentary on INA titled The Forgotten Army. He misses the documentary format and wouldn't mind going back to it if he has an apt story for it. “Every story comes with its own preset format,” says Khan, who is enjoying himself working with a new format of mini-series. “There is a certain newness of storytelling that I think will happen,” he says. “At the end of the day, in any kind of mainstream cinema, there's a certain element of Bollywood storytelling that we bring in, right? But in the web-series, you don't need to. It can be more liberating. Like, the language for example—characters could speak in the language that comes naturally to them. Japanese characters will speak in Japanese, they needn't speak in Hindi. In mainstream Hindi films, unfortunately, the English characters sometimes start speaking in Hindi and you justify that the character can speak Hindi because his father or mother was from a Hindi-speaking region. ”
In India, it is the mainstream cinema that does good business. Though other formats have slowing started churning out money. However, it is still no match for the revenue generated by films. And, Khan is aware of this fact. “I think our audiences haven't yet reached a level where the acceptance is that high. There is a form of storytelling if you want to reach a wider audience, where you have to sometimes simplify. But having said that in a web-series, you can be more true to the way you want to say it,” says Khan. “When I say true, you don't have to be deliberately provocative. If I was to make Bajrangi Bhaijaan as a web-series, I would still retain the simplicity because that works for the story. For a Phantom, I would go grittier and edgier.”
For him, everything depends on the story the filmmaker wants to tell. If a script demands a light, humorous approach, he wouldn't mind taking it. “Humour can be more profound rather than saying it straight,” says Khan. A lot of films have been made on the holocaust, but Khan says his favourite remains the Italian film Life Is Beautiful, which is a comedy. “For me, it has more impact than a Schindler's List,” says Khan, who loves watching the web series House Of Cards.
Khan is known for unpretentiously weaving politically relevant subjects into simpler stories. The point, he says, is to not be preachy and say things in black and white. “You have to basically provoke thoughts,” he says. “But you have to make your comments. As a filmmaker, you have to take a stand. I think without ideologies, we are animals. I make mainstream films that can be enjoyed at face value without getting into the politics. You can see Bajrangi Bhaijaan and say it is a very sweet story of this little girl and a grown-up man, and an entertaining road journey, but there are so many messages. You don't need to reach out to those messages,” says Khan. “You can enjoy the 'chicken song' for the funny dance moves that Salman is doing. But you can also get into the context of the song being against the beef ban or the dietary habits of people. I think if you can reach the layers underneath the surface, you will enjoy the film more, and find it profound and engaging. But if you don't, even then you'll find the film entertaining. That's what I have done in Bajrangi Bhaijaan and that's what I have done in Tubelight.”
But unlike Bajrangi Bhaijaan that was a huge hit, Tubelight hasn't clicked with the audiences. Not many have been able to grasp his message of setting the film in the Chinese context, but Khan's intentions were clear from the beginning. “One of the chapters in our history that we don't know much about deals with the Chinese immigrants, more than 20,000 of them, who were living in India since the 1850s. In 1962 (during the Sino-Indian war), unfortunately, 10,000 of them were picked up and thrown into detention camps in Rajasthan. It broke their heart as a community and there was a mass exodus of the Chinese people from India. They went to different countries. We deal with that, too,” says Khan about the film that is loosely based on the 2015 American war drama Little Boy.
Lacing up the message and keeping it in the subtext make a film profound, feels Khan. “Nobody wants to see a preachy film. Everybody wants to be entertained. Through that entertainment, if you can provoke them to think and talk about certain issues, the battle is won,” says Khan, talking about his debut film, Kabul Express. Khan enjoys watching Mani Ratnam films for the same reason. “There is such an active political backdrop to his films,” he says, “but it is not about politics. The story is always about the characters.” And, Khan aspires emulate that in his films.
