Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar has been having a stellar run at the box office ever since its release on December 5. In its first 21 days, Dhurandhar earned over Rs 650 crore in India. The film has found a massive fan in filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma.
In an exclusive conversation with NDTV's Shiv Aroor, Ram Gopal Varma discussed why he believes Ranveer Singh-led Dhurandhar is a realistic adaptation of the Mahabharata.
What's Happening
- Ram Gopal Varma highlighted the "fundamental difference" between the characters of his 1998 crime film Satya and Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar.
- He said, "The fundamental difference between Satya and Dhurandhar characters. I think it's (Dhurandhar) somewhere between the characters of real life and Mahabharata, you know, because if you look at it, when a guy like Babu Dakait is introduced, in big font coming with the background score, it already psychologically kind of hypes up the man, even without you knowing what he does, which is pretty much what they've done with every character. So that is what I meant by psychological play of violence-the very word Dakait itself."
- He continued, "And I don't know if it's a surname or whatever the hell it is, but the moment that name came, that guy got etched in my mind. He was hardly there for probably 20 minutes. But I can't forget the face of Babu Dakait. That is what I mean by Mahabharata. Very realistic Mahabharata, for me. That was what Dhurandhar was about."
- Adding how he could see the work put in by Aditya Dhar on Dhurandhar's characters, Ram Gopal Varma recalled his conversations with Satya's lead Manoj Bajpayee.
- He shared, "I remember telling Manoj, there's a difference between the look and body language of a wild cat and a domestic cat. They look the same, but you can feel the difference just in the body language. That is what my brief was."
- "So likewise in Dhurandhar, every character-I could see that a brief was given by the director exactly [on] his body language, the way he sits, he looks, and everything. There was so much effort put into every character, unlike most of the time in Hindi films, they just change their clothes and put on one moustache or remove a moustache and change the hair a little different, and that's about it, which is not what happened in Dhurandhar," said the Satya director.
On Dhurandhar And Gadar, Both Set In Pakistan
Furthermore, Ram Gopal Varma drew parallels between Sunny Deol's Gadar and Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar, both with Pakistan as their backdrop. However, there are differences in their protagonists.
The director said, "He (Sunny Deol) says 'Dhai kilo ka haath', then he starts shouting and all that in the most unreal manner. And here, Hamza (Ranveer Singh) doesn't even speak most of the time. I mean, you don't even know what he's thinking or what he's up to and all that."
"That is a height, because a spy is not supposed to make his presence felt all the time-he's disappearing into the story. That's [the] hero, whereas in all the other films, the stories constantly keep elevating, pushing him up and things like that. That's the exact opposite of what's happening in Dhurandhar," added Ram Gopal Varma.
Difference Between The Godfather And Dhurandhar
Ram Gopal Varma also stated the differences between Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather and Dhurandhar.
He said, "Godfather is like a song, I mean, which they shoot in the bedroom, you know, between two people with all the flower suggestion and close-ups of hands and all that. Whereas Dhurandhar is like the Haaye Rama song-they're doing it out in the open in a public place, in broad daylight, but the emotion is the same."
About Dhurandhar
Released on December 5, Dhurandhar boasts an ensemble cast led by Ranveer Singh, along with Akshaye Khanna, R Madhavan, Sanjay Dutt and Arjun Rampal. The spy-action thriller follows India's Intelligence Bureau as it creates a deep-cover operative to infiltrate Karachi's dangerous Lyari underworld and dismantle a terror nexus involving Pakistani gangs and the ISI, set against the backdrop of the 1999 Kandahar hijacking and the 2001 Parliament attack.
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