Q&A WITH VIKRAMADITYA MOTWANE

The filmmaker and producer has become the talk of the town for his recently released Amazon Prime Video period series, Jubilee - a period piece that resurrects the sepia-tinted golden age of Hindi cinema. He opens up about his world and his journey into the past, while reflecting on the contemporary state of Hindi cinema

- Ananya Ghosh

With work as distinctly different from one another as Udaan (2010), Lootera (2013), Trapped (2017), Bhavesh Joshi Superhero (2018) and AK vs AK (2020), Vikramaditya Motwane is more of a chameleon filmmaker than an auteur. His style never overpowers the script. It is difficult to figure out the Motwanesque in a movie. "My style is not as important as what the film or the series best served as. Also, I love experimenting. I am such a fan of so many different styles - I love period dramas, big action thrillers, survival dramas - that I want to try out each. Maybe in a way, I am trying to find myself as a director also," says Motwane, as we catch up for a quick chat.

Currently, the filmmaker is basking in the success of his epic period series, Jubilee. Although, in its essence, it has a similar lyrical quality as his heartbreakingly beautiful cult classic Lootera, and he has previously co-directed season 1 of one of the most popular Indian web series, Sacred Games, with Anurag Kashyap, Jubilee is a unique piece of work. In fact, Indian OTT has seldom experienced such a sprawling spectacle before.

Much like Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time.... In Hollywood, where he fictionalises the tragic end of Sharon Tate, Motwane's Jubilee is a fictional tale that uses a real incident as its core material and builds a fictional world around it, placing it in a geopolitical context. In Motwane's, the timelines of the real and reel don't overlap perfectly, that is by design, and it is what makes the series such a delicious watch. We talk to the director about his blast from the past that has taken the present by storm. Excerpts:

What made you pick up the Himanshu Rai-Devika Rani-Najmul Hasan incident to base your story around and then, set it in the backdrop of the Partition a time when Himanshu Rai was long dead?