Art & Entertainment

Lakshya, By Chance?

Nouveau hip? No problem...but filmdom's cool dude still has to prove he's no fluke

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Lakshya, By Chance?
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Dil Chahta Hai (DCH)
Lakshya

Such a collective weight of anticipation can kill any spark of confidence in a filmmaker. However, Farhan looks far from burdened, in fact, he is the epitome of fashionable indifference even while admitting that he is "anxious, nervous" but not a wee bit more than he was with his maiden venture. Clearly, DCH ghosts don’t haunt him. "It (DCH) gave me a great platform and gave others the confidence to work with Excel Entertainment (the production house he runs with childhood friend Ritesh Sidhwani)," says Farhan. However, DCH is already a thing of the past for the duo. Cut to the new: Lakshya has been made at twice the cost and sold at double the price. Still, Farhan can afford to look unperturbed, laidback and so awfully cool.

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Prod him a bit more and he acknowledges that Lakshya does mark some radical departures from DCH. Although it does give as much importance to voguish haircuts (Hrithik dons three distinct hairpieces, Preity makes do with two). DCH was Farhan’s own story, it was about his friendships and associations. Lakshya is his dad, Javed Akhtar’s script, it does have a GenNow hero and it is also, in a way, about coming of age. Not in love and friendship but in life, not in Bombay-Goa-Sydney but at 18,000 feet above sea level, in a place called Kargil. "It required a distinct treatment but its feel is very close to that of my own generation," says Farhan. That was the reason why he picked the script: because he could connect with it and not because it happened to be the script his dad had written after a long hiatus of almost 12 years (the last film Javed penned was the AB-starrer, Main Azaad Hoon). For Javed, the collaboration has been based on mutual respect. "Creativity is paradoxical. You need commonality of aesthetics as well as differences to make it exciting," he says.

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Farhan’s CV displays diverse pursuits: assisted Manmohan Desai, cut a music video for Shankar Mahadevan’s Breathless, wrote the English lyrics for the ‘O Ri Chhori’ song in Lagaan besides, of course, writing and directing DCH. Lakshya now puts war aesthetics as his next endeavour. So if in DCH he could spontaneously draw from his own life, Lakshya has meant familiarising himself with an alien world, with the army ethos and lifestyle. "It’s an extension, creatively. He had to grasp something new, expand his imagination," says Javed.

Now isn’t the army a slightly slumberous subject for a guy synonymous with plu sensibility and peppermint-freshness? "It’s an atypical war movie," defends Farhan. A young armyman’s point of view. It’s about a meandering, confused yuppie, played by Hrithik Roshan. It’s about his journey to self-discovery till his own personal goal becomes one with the collective goal of the nation. AB plays the commanding officer who gives direction to his life, Preity Zinta is his inspiration and, of course, the reel life equivalent of NDTV’s Barkha Dutt.

Farhan insists the army is more a backdrop in Lakshya, his hero could have found self-realisation even in a corporate boardroom. However, having set the film thus, the Farhan-Javed combine try to give it a mellow context which is based on a simple postulate: a soldier doesn’t court war out of his own choice but goes to it when instructed by the government". It’s like any other job for him, just like going to the sets to make a film is for me," says Farhan."But it’s a job that has pride, sacrifice, high risk and a sense of nationalism." Farhan’s aim has been to show what a soldier goes through both in and out of the battlefield. Tough call, considering the armed forces is one of the least favoured and glamorous career options for yuppies—Farhan’s primary audience! "A country of 100 million people has an army that is short of 14,000 officers," admits Javed. "I hope people would understand that soldiers are people, not machines for our cause," he says. And it’s then, he feels, that the real process for peace and negotiation would begin.

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But don’t go looking for a Thin Red Line or Saving Private Ryan either. Lakshya wants to be introspective without shedding the inherent melodrama of a strife situation. So it does take sides, it does give a face to the enemy, it does portray the other side in the wrong. But no overt Paki-bashing and no jingoism, we’re promised. "The enemy is not shown as a fool, there is a healthy respect for each other," says Farhan.

The making of the film was as onerous for Farhan as the subject. It was shot for 115 days at a stretch in Ladakh, forcing Farhan to literally set up a military camp complete with oxygen cans, portable loos and walkie-talkies. The crew had ten foreigners, including the LA-based cinematographer, Christopher Popp.

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For all this, the film trade people are still sceptical of Farhan’s box-office draw. For them DCH was merely a "Mumbai-Delhi hit" and "media’s darling". Not that Farhan would care for their opinion. He is a rather curious Bollywood guy who wants appreciation as much as success. "If the film’s a hit and not recognised critically, it’d be such a waste," he says. It’s this trait that Javed regards as his biggest quality as a filmmaker: "He is not keen to achieve success. There is no desperation. He wouldn’t go overboard, wouldn’t resort to melodrama and cliches."

For now, Lakshya has been reached. Farhan gets set to launch sister Zoya’s light-hearted movie on the film industry called Luck By Chance. His own new film will roll in end 2005. Till then stay all ears tuned into his lyrics (again) in Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice.

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