‘I’m running to keep up with the audience’

Sujoy Ghosh says the Japanese novel that the film is based on was one he identified with when a screenwriter friend had gifted it to him. Pic/Getty Images

It was a doomed love story and I loved it because the only other love story I could think of in comparison was King Kong," filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh tells us about his upcoming Netflix film Jaane Jaan, which is based on the 2005 Japanese novel The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino. It's a book brought to him years ago by friend and screenwriter Kanika Dhillon. He recalls being drawn to it instantly. "You don't know whether it's a good story or a bad story, but it's a story you have identified with," he explains. "It really got to me because I saw characters in that book who were big [and] honourable. It was something I was not used to. In Japanese culture, honour is a very big thing and [people are] big hearted. I wish I was like Naren [Jaideep Ahlawat's character]. I wish I had that kind of honour instilled in me, the values, beliefs and morals that he has."

Since Anukul, Ghosh's 2017 short film starring Parambrata Chatterjee and Saurabh Shukla, based on a short story written by Satyajit Ray, this is the first time that Ghosh has adapted a story for the screen. "I was dying to," he tells us excitedly. "These people are experts in what they do. They're born to write stories. I would love to have all my films based on books if I had my way." Aranyer Din Ratri, Bengali author Sunil Gangopadhyay's novel, which was famously adapted for the screen by Saytajit Ray in 1970 has been on his mind for long. "But it is too scary." There is the burden of responsibility and the need to be loyal and respectful to the source material because there is the looming sense of someone having worked very hard to put the story together. "I shouldn't be messing with a story just because I can." Rabindranath Tagore's short story Kabuliwala is a work he says he hopes to adapt one day. "I will do it before I retire," Ghosh smiles. "Have to do one Tagore, at least."

Jaane Jaan is set in the hill town of Kalimpong in the Himalayan foothills. It opens with Kareena Kapoor Khan's Maya, who is suspected of murder

Jaane Jaan is set in the hill town of Kalimpong in West Bengal, a location that Ghosh has used previously in 2016's Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh. But the Kalimpong of the new film is different. "That's how it should be," he insists. "Even the Kolkata of Kahaani versus the Kolkata of Te3n [which he produced] versus the Kolkata of Bob Biswas [which he wrote and co-produced] are different. At least I hope they are. That's the whole trick. You should shoot in the same city, but the city should also be a character. The city should reflect the story that you're telling. My world is very important; it should be a character in the film."

Misty and far away from the city bustle, Kalimpong in the Himalayan foothills, Ghosh tells us, lent itself perfectly. "I feel any character within a story is believable if the world in which they are is believable. Now, if you're showing somebody who's academically inclined, who wants a quiet life, who is looking to restart her life, you would need a world which is smaller. It's a smaller community where people know each other." His own familiarity with the terrain also undoubtedly contributed to his choice. He recalls a time when he and a friend hired a car and went to Kurseong and from there to Kalimpong and Darjeeling. "We kept falling in love with the places and didn't want to leave, and then my wife had to call us back," he laughs. "I could do a whole film by the banks of the Teesta."

While creative concerns and a director's sense of discipline remain largely the same while making a film for the OTT space, what changes for Ghosh is the way the film is presented. "If I know that you'll see my film on a mobile, an iPad, a computer or a television screen, my framing would change a little," he says, explaining that for a theatrical film he can include more wide shots. "I try to keep that in my mind, but don't let it dictate me. In Jaane Jaan, you'll know that the framing is a little different from, for example, a Badla or a Kahaani." The process he finds pushes him to think differently, an important requisite "to move with the times". "We have to learn to serve people who watch films on their mobiles. Whether we like it or not, they do."

Ghosh began his filmmaking career in 2003 with the ‘cool' indie musical comedy Jhankaar Beats and has since gone on to make several hit thrillers starring industry A-listers. The biggest change in his life he feels, however, is technology. "When I started out, technology was never a faculty of filmmaking. Now, it's as important as editing or cinematography or directing because you have so many possibilities if you know how to harness technology in your film, to create the world, to tell your story. And it's changing rapidly. A lot of my friends do some amazing things with technology and I don't know how to, but I would love to learn." There is also the matter of the audience's evolving tastes. Ghosh says that at the time when he started out, people were not that exposed to global cinema. "But now, I'm competing with the evolution of taste. When you see my film, your benchmarks are different. You're not just seeing a film, you're also assessing it. Technically, is it sound? How well has he shot it? How good is the VFX? If I give you a lazy film, you'll be able to spot it a mile away. Their expectations and demands from a film are changing, and I am just running to keep up with them."