Mumbai, August 27: Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah is one of the most progressive artists in Hindi cinema. So when he talks about something, the world sits down to take notice.
The senior actor, who donned the director’s hat for the second time with his short film ‘Man Woman, Man Woman’, feels that mainstream cinema in India has not fully lived up to its responsibilities as an artistic medium. .
Speaking to IANS, he said, “Our mainstream cinema has ruined audience taste forever. Director Satyajit Ray mentioned this in his book ‘Our Movies, Their Movies’ which he wrote 50 years ago. He wasn’t running.” Below Indian films but it was just a comparison of Indian directors with international directors.
The actor said that Ray wishes our audience were more “discerning,” and stressed the importance of audiences questioning the filmmaker.
He added, “Satyajit Ray said we need angry fans, we need curious fans. It’s not always right to appease the tender feelings of the public.”
The actor awaits a positive change in the mainstream cinema as he also stated: “It has been more than 100 years since our cinema, our mainstream cinema continues to make the same type of films, many of the stories you find in mainstream films can be found in Indian epics like” Mahabharata” which is one of the greatest written epics. Every movie you watch in India contains some reference or that from the Mahabharata”. Either that or Shakespeare. All the clichés in mainstream Indian cinema are heavily borrowed from Shakespeare.”
The actor and director then directed the conversation towards the artificial intelligence that has swept the world off its feet. Amidst the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), many questions have raised people’s interest about the future of art and artists and how things will progress in the future given that AI only takes a few minutes to do the tasks that humans spend days working on.
People aren’t sure how things will turn out in the long run.
But Naseeruddin has the answer. He predicted that moving forward in art and literature there would be a certain political awakening.
“I feel that art and literature will become more politically aware as time progresses and due to the advent of generative AI. It certainly won’t be enough to just paint a beautiful sunset,” he told IANS.
However, he feels that music will not be affected much by AI in the bigger picture, “Music has changed since the 1960s and 1970s, metal music, rock music and then rock evolved into industrial rock and alternative rock.”And other formats. It’s not that music needs AI to undergo change, it’s just that music is one of the fastest self-evolving art forms.”
Talking about “Man Woman, Man Woman”, which is being produced by Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films, the senior actor said that after making his first film “Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota”, he had already decided that he would not direct another. never.
He shared, “I still think I’ll never make another feature film but this was something else. It’s based on a real-life incident where a very dear friend of mine, 65, met a 70-year-old.” “A person, a widower on a dating site, they fell in love with each other and after a while they decided to get married. I have never seen my friend so happy in life. This marriage brought happiness to her life.”
The ‘Sparsh’ actor wrote 10 drafts in a year and took input from his son Vivaan Shah and wife Ratna Pathak Shah both of whom also starred in the film.
“Older people have the right to fall in love and romance,” he added.
As the world becomes more connected due to the Internet revolution, many things are constantly changing socially, economically and politically. However, the actor feels that despite access to knowledge now, the generational gap has not diminished.
“It’s still the same,” he told IANS. “However, the dynamics between generations have changed. Parents today are not averse to asking their children questions. It’s not an ‘I am the father and I know it all’ thing anymore.”
He said, “The world is changing quickly, so there is nothing wrong with asking for information from your children, who have better access or perhaps better knowledge in a particular field or about a subject. Through learning we all become better. My son Vivaan knows that” I used to know a lot about movies More than me, I thought I knew a lot about movies. But because of the Internet revolution, young people have better access to information.”
Finally, talking about his classic ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro’ he said, “It’s a movie I really like now but I didn’t like it while working on it because I was coming from a very pure point of view.” View while working on it.”
He continued, “It’s not that the process of working on the film was too tough. I’m used to working on films that are very demanding or have a very tough work environment like ‘Paar’ and ‘Manthan.'” The main reason for that was that I was I did method acting and all that stuff in those days because I was a fresh graduate from film school, it was only 5-6 years since I graduated from film school.”
“I wanted logic, real feeling and all that was required to become a character. But then I realized that director Kundan Shah was right about the film, he knew what he was making and exactly what he wanted from his actors.” He said.
Source: IANS
Disclaimer: This story has not been edited by the WBSETCL team and is auto-generated from syndicated feed.
