Anurag Basu recently won the Best Director for Ludo at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, opened up about backing uniques anthologies, the importance of music in his films, and how he looks back at the failure of Jagga Jasoos.
Filmmaker and one of the top directors Anurag Basu said that he doesn’t see anyone or anything as white or black. “Everyone is grey and that’s the area from where human stories come from.” Basu, whose film whose main lead was Ranbir Kapoor Ludo emerged as one of the most loved films in the digital space in the last year, won him the Best Director award at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne 2021 recently. The ceremony happened virtually this year, though Basu wishes to attend it in person the next time. “Now I’ll need to make a better film to get recognition there and fulfil my dream.”
Recently there was an exclusive chat with indianexpress.com, wherein that interview Anurag Basu revealed his ultimate objective or his goal of making the film Ludo. “I especially wanted to highlight that good or bad is very subjective. All this is perception. We are storytellers. We take the highest ground and start judging people and relationships. In Ludo, I didn’t want to do that.”
Ludo is a dark comedy the main lead of the film is Abhishek Bachchan, Pankaj Tripathi, Rajkummar Rao, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sanya Malhotra, Pearle Maaney and Rohit Saraf. Anurag said that a film like Ludo got all the love from the audience and that proves that their understanding and acceptance of unique subjects has changed.
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“We always underestimated our audience. When I made Life in a Metro (2007), people loved it. But that was more complicated as I shot it 15 years back. The audience has definitely grown in a decade. I never thought with Ludo, I was making something risky. Yes, you need a little concentrated viewing. You can’t see it while you’re texting or chatting,” Basu shared.
Anuraj Basu’s phenomenal films be it Ludo, Life in a Metro, Gangster, or Barfi, all of his films stand out for their color palette and the most important part is that of the city landscape playing an integral part of the story. For the fantastic filmmaker, lol of those elements eventually find their place in the screenplay. “We have stories and to communicate these stories together, a lot of things come into play. If there weren’t the color palettes, the film would look more complicated. I don’t think I have any style,” Basu said.
The film Jagga Jasoos was one of the most brilliant and one of the richest on the canvas. The film Jagga Jasoos starred Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif. But it seems that they failed to strike a hit with the audience when it was released in 2017.
Anurag Basu said that the film received well when it had its OTT debut in 2019. Basu said that the audience understood it better there. “I won’t say I made it flawless but Jagga is not everybody’s cup of tea, and the audience it was made for, maybe didn’t come to the theatre. Through OTT it reached the right audience and got appreciated. Suddenly one day, I saw my Twitter full of fan reactions. Though I don’t know if it had been released today, it would’ve worked better or not. If I had made an exceptionally universal film, then it would’ve worked at any given time.”
