Mumbai: During an exclusive conversation with filmmaker Kiran Rao, where she opened up about her film ‘Laapataa Ladies’, which has won 13 Filmfare Awards. Also, she shared insights on the brave decisions made during filming, production design, and landscape choices. After that, she highlighted the challenges of shooting with trains, ensuring safety, and coordination. She also addressed Western bias towards Indian cinema and shared directorial notes for Ravi Kishan's pivotal scene. In the last, she shared some creative process and vision for the film and also shared themes of storytelling.
00:00So, with 13 Filmfare Awards in the kitty of La Pata Ladies, what's the mind space like?
00:06We are over the moon. We are so happy. It really shows appreciation for our film and who doesn't like winning awards.
00:13Absolutely. And when you set out to make this film, of course, it's a very brave story and an offbeat one.
00:21People in metro cities, they generally, from what all is going around currently, they prefer action or drama or over the top films, tentpole films.
00:30But you had that conviction with La Pata Ladies that this is the story you have to tell and I will tell it the way I want without making any compromises or making any accommodations commercially in terms of commercial point of view.
00:41While you were making this film, what were some of the brave decisions, if I may say so, that you had to take, keeping aside all the noise that the market forces tend to influence you with?
00:51So, one of the big decisions I think that is quite brave and considered pretty disruptive in the market today is to cast newcomers because most films rely on what a big star pulls in in terms of the box office.
01:06And we really felt and I had the full support of Amir in this was that we should cast for the role, we should cast to make the film feel authentic because this is the kind of story
01:19that's very naturally dramatic and has a lot of, you need to immerse yourself in that world because it's something quite unusual happening, it's outrageous and you'll only believe it if those
01:32actors are very believable.
01:33So, casting for new talent was one of our big decisions and I give full credit to Amir for this, Amir Khan the producer.
01:41Some of the other challenges and some of the other big decisions was shooting on location.
01:49We were actually making this film during Covid, which honestly is not the best time to be shooting because there were many restrictions.
01:58We had lots of background actors, we were shooting on real railway stations with live trains passing us all the time.
02:04So, these were some of the big challenges.
02:07One of the later bigger challenges was releasing in cinemas.
02:12A film like ours with no stars, which is not an action film, like you said, not a tentpole film, traditionally would just now in this market go straight to OTT.
02:22And I think the conviction of Jio Studios as our producer partners was that this film is going to do well in cinemas.
02:31So, I give full credit to Jyoti Desh Pandey of Jio Studios and Amir for taking that decision because then the film ran for a hundred days, it did really well.
02:42It was running in cinemas even after it came on Netflix and actually Netflix gave it the push in cinemas as well.
02:48So, those were some of our big decisions.
02:50Okay, okay.
02:51And one thing that I really love about the film, apart from the performances and the story of course is the way the visual texture of the story has been designed.
02:59I distinctly remember Sparsh's suit, that brown colored suit that he wears for his wedding.
03:04All these little nuances, the walls are a certain way, the urban homes.
03:12Tell me what was the process behind the production design and how long did it take for you to put it all together?
03:17I am so happy to hear that. Thank you. A lot of this film I felt would work only if it really, we created this world that was like you said, textural, it felt real.
03:29It had some of the beauty of Indian villages without being unrealistic, without trying to prettify it or make it glamorous or also not be too culturally specific, but draw from the various kinds of local art and craft that we have.
03:46So, Vikram Singh, my production designer and I worked for at least six months prior to the film.
03:55We were not just immersing ourselves in a lot of photographs of villages from the last 20 years because some things have changed in the last 20 years.
04:03And we wanted villages that were on the cusp of change, not too remote and not too much stuck in time.
04:15And the kasbah which she comes to do her printing and all of that, that also we wanted to mimic what a small town close to a village would be.
04:25So, a lot of time went into visual research. We studied a lot of photography.
04:30We also studied a lot of local art forms, especially traditional painting on the outside and inside of village homes.
04:40And we also wanted a certain color design palette for the film, which was also partly representative of the colors of India, but not the way everybody imagines Indian villages that are all hugely colorful and not too dusty and dirty either.
04:58So, it was a balancing act and it helped that we went a lot to locations, we hunted a lot in Maharashtra for villages and finally found the villages that we loved in Madhya Pradesh.
05:10And I am so happy to say that we were able to find a lot of that mud construction and a lot of the fields abutting the house, which are not just big commercial acres and acres that are manned by machines, but very close to the house kind of fields.
05:28And so, we managed between real locations and a lot of design as well.
05:33And there are two more questions related to just the production of the film. First is that the landscape that has been shown in the film is very arid, a lot of warm colors in there compared to something you would find in Ratnagiri or all these areas, lush green and everything.
05:48How integral was it for you to pick that sort of landscape for Lapatha Levy?
05:54You know, we were trying very hard to create a fictitious state called Nirmal Pradesh.
05:59And in our minds, it would be somewhere in the Bundelkhand region, somewhere between UP, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, that belt.
06:11And from whatever I could see, there were many, many areas that were very typical to Gangetic planes, which were much more lush.
06:22And when you come into the more central India belt, it is a little drier.
06:29So, we ultimately realized that look, this is actually a topography that can work in any of these states.
06:35So, when we were creating our own state, we wanted something that was not very typical, not very tropical, green, not too dry, like say you would get in Chambal or Rajasthan or somewhere.
06:46So, we went for something in between. But you're absolutely right. It has a drier quality to it.
06:51And that's also because we found our locations more or less around Bhopal. And that was kind of the landscape there.
07:00Okay. And in one of the previous questions, you spoke about how the trains were passing at regular intervals.
07:06Now, that's a big thing from the production point of view. You have to keep everyone's safety in mind.
07:11What was that coordination like from the moment the train left the station or it left the outer crossing? How did it all work?
07:18What was that?
07:19We had, we had been assigned one track. We were shooting in actually two railway stations in Maharashtra.
07:27This was a station called Yevla was the station that people see as Patila in the film.
07:33And that's a pretty major station. A lot of the north-south trains passed through there. And the other station was a smaller station called Kanegaon,
07:42where we shot Moorthi station, which was supposed to be Deepak's village station where the final reunion happens.
07:48So, we had less to shoot in Moorthi. But Patila, we had entire pool and Manjumai's track was on that platform.
07:55And this was a rather major station. So, we were lucky that it, we were lucky in the sense that it visually looked like the kind of station we wanted.
08:06A little bit setback in time, but not as old as Kanegaon. But we were unlucky in that there was only one platform in this station.
08:13So, actually every time a big train would come in, we would have to, our train would have to exit the station.
08:20So, there were only certain hours in which we were allowed to shoot our train sequences.
08:25And like you said, a lot of it also meant that we were shooting with a live track next to us.
08:32And safety was a very big concern. It helped that we were in the Covid times.
08:37So, there was a big restriction on the number of people you could have within a certain area.
08:42So, actually a big number of people on our set were security. We had to lock off parts of the set because obviously they were live station with actual passengers.
08:54And we would have everybody very carefully monitored with badges and things before they even entered the train.
09:01Sometimes background actors were in the train. The train would go off to let another train come and then come back.
09:07So, things to coordinate, it helped a lot that production was tight and was very prepared for these kind of scenarios thanks to Covid.
09:16Still, we didn't get an Oscar for one of our feature films. Do you think there are certain bias that the West holds towards India or our cinema in general?
09:25I don't know about a conscious bias. I feel that every country when they award a film, they look at it roughly through their own lens.
09:36And while there is an appreciation for Indian cinema, perhaps a lot of the time it just doesn't tick the boxes of many of the voters there.
09:45It's like almost trying to convince people which they automatically do not gravitate to that kind of cinema.
09:55So, we do make all kinds of films in India and I am sure at some stage we will have a film that is gone and I have great hopes for Homebound this year.
10:04I think it's a great choice of film to have sent which a film that would resonate with the voters.
10:10I think it's also a question of there is a whole ecosystem around the Oscars and for us to actually plug into that we need a certain kind of understanding of distribution of how films actually go the Oscar route.
10:26And we don't make films thinking of that. We make films thinking of our audience and of the ideas that we want to share, the issues that we feel are important.
10:35So, someday I think that convergence will happen. But in general, I feel awards will only come if there is a natural recognition from that audience that is watching your film.
10:48For instance, we got an academy award in an international academy in Japan, which was, I mean, I was not expecting that.
10:58I was so delighted to hear it because it means that your film may not be commercially the biggest film in that place, but there is an appreciation of the world.
11:07So, I don't think necessarily that awards will always reflect what audiences think.
11:14It's a combination of things, but I do think the day is not far.
11:21And for my final question, the moment towards the end of the film wherein Pratiba's husband comes to take her back.
11:29That's the moment wherein the audience sees Ravi Kishan sir's character flipping completely.
11:34When you were writing the character on paper and when that moment came, when the scene came, what was your brief to him or the directorial notes that you have to do it a certain way?
11:43Or was it some additions from his side? How was it done?
11:46You know, this time at the Filmfare Awards, actually Ravi Ji referred to that time, the day before that climax.
11:55I was very nervous because Ravi Ji is very spontaneous and often, you know, he doesn't learn lines.
12:04He gets into the character and then he needs you to tell him the lines as you are going along.
12:09And that day we had a lot to do and I was very nervous about the nuance of this character when it flips because it needed to be very, very in character.
12:17It needed to be believable that this person has found it in him to do the right thing.
12:22And in order for him to completely own that kind of transformation, I needed him to know his lines.
12:33So the day before this climax, he was reminding me, he said, you know, you called me and you asked for time after rap the previous day.
12:42And I went to the van and I told him, sir, please, tomorrow you really please have to know all your lines because that's the only way you will really be able to play the part without thinking about it.
12:54Or thinking about it. And that is actually what he did. He said, I was at home and all night I had to study lines.
13:02And I learned everything and when I came to the set, I didn't need to think about it.
13:10It flew like water. It flowed like water and he was able to get into that character.
13:14So he actually appreciated the fact. But I remember that was what went into it.
13:18You know, it needed that level of preparation because I think he just did it. It was so what we call makhan like malai. It just flowed, you know.
13:28Very beautiful moment. It's the moment wherein the audience connects with him and he is deeply menacing without even saying or raising a finger.
13:34So I really love that. I love the film in totality, but that's one of my favorite parts from the film.
13:39Thank you. And actually, I was worried that people would be disappointed that he didn't hit him. He didn't hit Pradeep.
13:45Because he stands up. And you're like, abhi maarega, abhi maarega, but he doesn't.
13:49So we had to make it juicy enough for when he says, hise kanun kahte hai.
13:55So that is the thappad of kanun, you know. Yeah, I'm glad it worked out.
14:01So on that note, thank you so much for talking to us ma'am. If there's anything that I may have missed asking as a question or something that you would have loved to talk about, please feel free.
14:08I'm just delighted. I loved the questions you asked. It took me down memory lane. And honestly, this film has so many stories associated with it.
14:18I'm glad I was able to share some. And again, thank you. Thank you for the appreciation of the film.
14:23Thank you so much. On that note, thank you so much. And I wish you all the best.
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