Sanjay Leela Bhansali shares 'how careful one has to be to make period drama'

Ace director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who is known to make drama period drama films, shares how careful he has to be while making those films.

While talking to Mini Mathur, he said: “When you are working on a historical in our country, you have to be a little careful. So yes you need to get your facts right, and that is where my research ends. Because most of it is imagination, most of it is how I see the period. I do go and see the architecture, and I start dreaming of my own extra pillars, roofs, carpets. So research is done, but not detailed research. I find research very boring. As a filmmaker I am not set out to make a documentary. I want my impressions, child-like impressions, grown-up impressions, heartbroken lovers’ impressions… I want all that come to the film rather than documented research.”

Sanjay says that most of the films are based on his imagination because he finds research a boring process.

“Ya! Because if it is there in real then people have seen it in a documentary or in a series, but this is what they have not seen. So what is Devdas like? Obviously he is a literature character, but what are Bajirao or Mastani like? People have not seen Bajirao Mastani so I can take the liberty to do what I want. Nobody has seen them because it happened 300 to 400 years ago. So, what do I give them that makes them feel that they are seeing a film they connect to today. Fifty years ago it would have been a different film if we made Bajirao or Gangubai.

“So there is a certain modern approach to the way you make a film, the audience has to connect to it. They have to relate to this historical or a period piece. Even Gangubai, I think it was a film set in the 40s and the 50s. I have lived next to the brothels for thirty years of my life, one lane away from the brothels. I knew in and out what those lanes looked like, smelt like, what are the faces like. So I had my research and the rest was imagination. You can’t keep going and copying, make notes, making notes bore me completely.”

The Ram-Leela director revealed people stopped him from making Gangubai Kathiawadi. “People told me not to make Gangubai. It’s a female-centric film, it’s a female protagonist. In India, they do not got a female-led subject. The box office has never worked. She’s playing a sex worker and then there’s no hero. All the tick marks you would put to understand the audience and the scenario, I have ticked all the wrong boxes. But it worked. That’s the belief, he concluded.”

Sanjay Leela Bhansali has dropped the first teaser of his upcoming film Heeramandi, reports IndianExpress.