In this episode of THR Talks, Anupama Chopra engages with the legendary filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who shares his profound insights into the world of cinema. With over two decades of experience, Bhansali reflects on the duality of his artistic journey—feeling both blessed and cursed by the craft he cherishes deeply.
00:00Filmmaking is a dear most thing to me in my life, it's my God, it's my mother, it's my father, it's my lover, everything is cinema.
00:12You have to understand that I am very cursed and very blessed. I am very loved and I am very hated. I am very successful and I am very unsuccessful.
00:30And when you have somebody to talk to, you're not lonely. When you're not lonely, you don't get tired very fast. You don't feel exhausted. You don't feel low in life. And art should be created out of loneliness, yes, out of angst, yes, but out of great joy. So now I'm a little, I'm a joyous filmmaker, I'm a happy filmmaker.
01:00Hello, everyone. Welcome to THR Talks. This is the first on-ground event for the Hollywood Reporter India.
01:18And I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to kick it off with an artist who has mesmerized audiences for more than 25 years.
01:27I think he has changed the aesthetic of Indian cinema. And I would say that there is more beauty in our lives because of him.
01:39So please put your hands together for the incomparable Sanjay Leela Bansali.
01:57So Sanjay, I'm going to begin.
02:03One second. How many of you love me?
02:09You can go for it now. I'm okay.
02:11I'm going to start by diving into the deep end. Okay, with something you said just after Guzarish.
02:20And your words were,
02:22I didn't realize how tired I was until the film was over.
02:27Then my body just gave up.
02:29All my films are a process of self-annihilation for me.
02:33With every film of mine, a part of me gets left behind.
02:37Is this still the process?
02:41No, that has changed.
02:42With time, everything changes.
02:44Tell me what happened.
02:45After Guzarish, if you realize, I was very rejuvenated.
02:49I realized that black didn't work very well at the box office.
02:53Then Savariya didn't work well at the box office.
02:57Then Guzarish didn't work well at the box office.
03:00So maybe it was in one of those, that state of mind where I said that I'm feeling very tired.
03:06I'm feeling I've left behind a lot, which has not been seen or understood or acknowledged.
03:12So then you got up and said, well, let me get back to my Bhuleshwar, basic melodramatic self.
03:21So came Ram Leela, Baji Rao, Padmavat, Gangu Bhai, Hiramandi.
03:26I just am not tired anymore.
03:29And I've yet left a lot of myself in each work that I do.
03:34It's very intense.
03:36It's my work is like a work like a mazdoor.
03:39All those big sets and the opulence and the beauty that you see, it comes out of hours
03:47and hours and months and years of hard work, which you enjoy.
03:51It's not that you have to just do hard work and labor.
03:54You have to enjoy.
03:54You have to be inspired doing that work.
03:57So I've been very inspired.
03:58I've enjoyed doing war sequences for a change and action sequences for a change.
04:04And very, very big, after Devdas, the big song, dance routines.
04:10So there was so much of life that came into me and all that I wanted to pay tribute to
04:16great characters like Baji Rao, like Padmavat, like Gangu Bhai.
04:20And I chose those characters because they are a part of, they help me express through my film
04:26a part of something that I was, that I am, that I've seen, that I've experienced.
04:30Otherwise, I won't make those films.
04:31So part of me still is left behind.
04:35I do finish seeing some chapter which closes.
04:38Then after two films, I realize it has not gone.
04:40Those moments of your life which you grow up with, which inspire you to make a particular
04:45character or a particular film, you feel you've said it, you've done it, you have purged.
04:52But then you've not, because it again comes back to you in some way.
04:55And you realize that, yeah, Gangu Bhai, I know I made two mistakes.
04:59I know I left two things behind unsaid.
05:01We'll try and solve it somewhere.
05:04So a part of me is always going to get exhausted, given.
05:08But I have now started enjoying because I got the love of the audience.
05:12When your work is seen, is understood, it is, the audience is interacting with it.
05:19They've understood your way of filmmaking.
05:20They grant you that place, that, okay, we are an audience.
05:24We may not like your film sometimes.
05:25We like your film sometimes.
05:27But I found that dialogue.
05:29And when you have somebody to talk to, you're not lonely.
05:32When you're not lonely, you don't get tired very fast.
05:34You don't feel exhausted.
05:36You don't feel low in life.
05:38And art should be created out of loneliness, yes, out of angst, yes, but out of great joy.
05:46So now I'm a little, I'm a joyous filmmaker.
05:49I'm a happy filmmaker.
05:50How lovely.
05:51Oh.
05:55And speaking of a dialogue with the audience, Netflix recently released What We Watched,
06:02which is what people watched in the first half of this year.
06:07Hira Mundi folks, the only Indian series in the top hundred of Netflix.
06:11How amazing.
06:16So that's definitely a dialogue.
06:18But let's talk a little bit about this process of creation.
06:23Here's what I'm fascinated by.
06:25Don't look like that, Keir.
06:26No, no.
06:28I'm already thinking of how many times have I said it and I have to say it a little differently
06:32one more time.
06:33No, no.
06:34Here's my question.
06:35Okay, here's my question.
06:36Sajid, you've always said that it's very much a subconscious sort of flowering, right?
06:44You told me Lalish came to you when you were taking a shower.
06:49Images, characters, lyrics, music, it all just springs out of you.
06:54You're not a filmmaker who's fussed about research or rehearsals or even somebody who's extremely
07:05connected to being realistic in that very literal sense.
07:09What we see when we come to your cinema is the world you create, right?
07:13But making movies is so expensive.
07:16It's all about deadlines.
07:18The subconscious is so mysterious.
07:21It's so unknowable.
07:22Is there a contradiction there?
07:26Like how do you sort of make the subconscious work to what you want it to?
07:33It's a difficult question, isn't it?
07:38You have to understand where I come from in the first place.
07:41If you visualize a small little chawl in a 300 square feet, colorless, the walls had no
07:48color.
07:48And we had a family of four or five people living in a cramped place.
07:55The conversation that I heard early in my life was when my father had invested money in
07:59some film called Jhaji Lutera, which was released before I was born.
08:03But while I was born and I was growing up and I started understanding words, all I heard
08:08was that you don't need to put money in cinema, look at where we've landed up, how do we do?
08:14Yet the lure of cinema in my family remained so much that when my grandmother collected some
08:1810,000 rupees out of whatever she was finding, she went and invested in a film called Soneke
08:24Haath.
08:25That's 10,000 rupees to the producer who was my father's friend.
08:28We never got that back.
08:31But this child who was staying in that house realized that I started living in a dream world.
08:39The reality was very harsh.
08:41So I would never go anywhere near a realistic film or anything that is real or anything that
08:47is it has to be in my mind, that mind of the real world I rejected.
08:52I feel I'm that filmmaker who has painted those 300 square feet of walls into innumerable number
08:59of huge, beautifully painted, designed sets because that is where the dream started.
09:07That is the power of watching something that you, I get emotional when I talk about it.
09:13But that is where the filmmaker is born.
09:18Now what happens is that you are living in a parallel world.
09:23Everybody doesn't understand that.
09:25To go with my grandmother to get that 10,000 rupees from the producer, took hours and hours
09:30of walking back to Colaba, coming back all the way, she would carry a bottle of water so
09:35that if you are hungry, we would drink that water.
09:38But is this what cinema does to you?
09:41This is the film.
09:41My mother used to dance, beautiful dancer.
09:44She used to dance in that 100 square feet that she would get.
09:47So after that, my heroines danced in the biggest sets ever, shot in a Hindi cinema.
09:53So all that angst, which I was an intelligent kid to understand, to imbibe, to react, to translate
10:01it into a vision.
10:03I want those 10,000 rupees back with interest.
10:05So I have made very big films.
10:07I have earned the right to make big films.
10:13So the subconscious, or what remains in the back, is a lot of angst and chaos.
10:19Out of that comes all my work intuitively.
10:22It is, it is how I respond.
10:25I would not like to, but since I am here and this is the first and the last time I will be
10:30talking to an audience.
10:31You are going to have so much fun, you will want to do this every other month.
10:36Ask them, not me.
10:43So you realize how much power of communication from their affectedness child.
10:51So all that cinema that comes out of Devdas is a tribute to that alcohol bottle my father
10:56cherished.
10:57And then every film has a subtext.
11:01From that subtext comes out the natural expression.
11:05It is not, here is a story of a spy who goes here and does this and then there was action
11:11and there was beautiful dialogue.
11:12No, no, no.
11:13It is personal cinema.
11:15This cinema is uncomfortable.
11:17My films will never be the blockbuster that other directors would give.
11:20It's not about counting crores.
11:22It's about impressions of what came on to me as an artist.
11:27Can I put them back?
11:31Filmmaking is a very, very, it's the dear most thing to me in my life.
11:36It's my God.
11:37It's my mother.
11:38It's my father.
11:38It's my lover.
11:39It's my, everything is cinema.
11:42If I look at it, in some birth I may have been a poet.
11:46In some birth I may have been a musician.
11:49In some birth I may have been an architect.
11:50In some birth I may have been a painter.
11:53In some birth I may have been nothing.
11:56But in this birth I'm a filmmaker.
11:58And I now take all those experiences because I know that my soul is old.
12:02It knows a few things.
12:05And that is the subconscious from where things emerge.
12:08Because it comes from so many lives.
12:11It's abstract.
12:12It may be a little awkward for a lot of people to listen and say,
12:15what crap, what nonsense is it all?
12:16But this is the time to combine all those births and all that I know from the past
12:22into one art form which allows it all to come together.
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