The man behind "Provoked"
by: Bishwanath Ghosh
- newindpress.com
Jag Mundhra looks like he has had a late night: his back seems to be aching for rest and his face, at the moment, appears somewhat older than his 57 years. But his eyes are as energetic as a 35-year-old's. “Hi sweetheart,” Mundhra answers a call just before we sit for an interview in his hotel room. “Hot? No, Chennai is not so hot. Actually I don’t know how it is in the daytime, because I am working with a night owl. We were up till 4.” The “night owl” turns out to be AR Rahman, who is composing the music for Mundhra’s forthcoming film Provoked.
“He had asked us to come at 2 o’ clock. That’s when he works, but he is truly a genius,” says the Los Angeles-based director, more famous for making “erotic thrillers” than for his thought-provoking and critically-acclaimed films such as Kamla and Bawander. But when I mention that Rahman’s music in Mangal Pandey has drawn flak, he says, “Yes, even Rahman is upset. He was saying how he is not at all happy with the way they edited his scores.”
Mundhra is expecting the composer to impart his Midas touch to Provoked, a film inspired by the book Circle of Light — the true story of a UK-based Punjabi woman called Kiranjit Ahluwalia who burned her husband after suffering beatings by him for a long time. The husband succumbed to the burn injuries and Kiranjit was sentenced to life imprisonment. She was, however, freed after a campaign by the Southall Black Sisters.
Kiranjit is being played by Aishwarya Rai — the chief attraction of Mundhra’s movie, which is in post-production stage and is set for release in September in the UK and in India. “We finished it in 32 days. Aishwarya could not believe it. I first met her only on March 8. At the time she said she did not have dates before April 2007. But after her manager read the script, she decided this would be her next film. I had sent her the script on March 22, and the print was ready by August 8,” he says.
With Provoked, Mundhra — who shot model Helen Brodie into fame by showing her topless in Monsoon — hopes to finally shed his image as the maker of erotic thrillers. That’s an image he hates. So strong is the image that he remained jobless for almost two years after releasing Bawander, the true story of a rape victim in Rajasthan portrayed by Nandita Das, in December 2001. “I kept getting erotic thrillers, but I refused,” he says, his eyes gazing at an invisible point far beyond the sights offered by the hotel window.
Women: they are always the theme of Mundhra’s films, erotic or art. Why? “I guess because their lives are more complicated. They have much more dramatic potential.” Needless to say, women are the protagonists in his soon-to-be-released film, Backwaters, and also a film that is still in his head, Baanjh (a barren woman), set in Uttar Pradesh.
I feel indeed sad that a filmmaker of his calibre should be classified as a soft-porn peddler. He has the brains, after all: Mundhra, a Rajasthani, was born in Calcutta and studied there, becoming a rank-holder in the Board exams, after which he went to IIT, Bombay, before moving to the US to teach advertising and marketing. So why this tag? I ask him about his filmmaking history.
“The first film I made was Suraag (1982),” he says, shifting on his chair and again looking at the invisible spot outside the window. My jaws drop. Suraag was a crime thriller starring Sanjeev Kumar, which had a foot-tapping song by Kishore Kumar and which I had seen as a child on Doordarshan. The song I had managed to get hold of, but I had failed to get hold of a CD of the movie in spite of relentless searches at the music stores. “That’s because I never sold the video rights. You see I don't live here. When I enquired about the negatives in Bombay, I was told they have been sent to Chennai. I have managed to retrieve them. Now I will get them cleaned,” Mundhra says.
After Suraag came Kamla (1985), the story of a woman being bought by a journalist who wanted to prove how women could be bought in India. It was inspired by an Express exposé, but the film ran into a court case, draining Mundhra of his financial resources. The two movies had prompted him to shift base to India, but the financial loss forced him to return to Los Angeles and take up teaching again. By then video films were becoming a rage and Mundhra’s filmmaking instincts began nudging him. But there was a problem: his name. Producers wouldn’t really trust an Indian so Jagmohan Mundhra became Jag Mundhra. He did video movies like Open House and Death Mask before another Indian gave him the real break there: Ashok Amritraj. With Amritraj, he first did Eyewitness to Murder and then Night Eyes, “the first erotic thriller I ever did.”
“Night Eyes was made for $750,000 but went on to make $30 million. It was such a hit that Ashok made four sequels. But the sequels were not directed by me because he refused to pay me more. He said Night Eyes had become a brand name,” says Mundhra.
Two things happened after that. One, Mundhra never had to look for work. Two, in his own words, “I got pigeonholed as a director of erotic thrillers just because Night Eyes became a hit.” Since then, he has made some two dozen erotic thrillers, not because he wanted to but more for want of work. “Even there, my effort has been to tell a story as well as I can.”
“I am very unhappy that they call me a porn filmmaker. All this only discounts the quality of my work. I have never made a porn film in my life. There’s more nudity in Elizabeth than in any of my movies, but nobody calls Shekhar Kapur a porn director. Just because I don’t have a Michael Douglas or a Sharon Stone in my film does not mean I am a porn director,” he says.
Mundhra may eventually shed his tag with yet another of his forthcoming films, Sonia, based on the Congress president’s biography written by the young political journalist Rasheed Kidwai. “I am not much for dynasties or the high command culture, but I don’t think it is Sonia’s fault. I find her a very strong woman, and at the same time very feminine, especially in the earlier part of her life,” he says.
“Imagine being thrown into a situation where everybody in your family dies, and when others call you names. And then the masterly act of turning down the Prime Ministership. I think she makes a good subject,” he says. Point taken. The choice of characters like Kiran Ahluwalia and Sonia Gandhi may finally help upturn Mundhra’s image as a maker of erotic thrillers, but it also reaffirms his obsession with women as his chief protagonists. Some things don’t change, do they?
