While Anurag Kashyap has made some of the best films that’ll go out to define contemporary Hindi cinema, Bombay Velvet isn’t one of them.
An on-screen telling of Gyan Prakash’s seemingly unadaptable book, Mumbai Fables, the Ranbir Kapoor-Anushka Sharma starrer remains one of the most expensive failures in recent memory, largely because of the scale it was mounted on (an entire town was recreated in a far-off place in Sri Lanka), the cost of its top star cast, and most importantly, the fact that it was an inconsistent and a confused film.
One reading of the film, when it came out, was that Kashyap is at his best when the resources are scarce. It’s probably when he thrives. But this was just a reading, an interpretation. Now, we have confirmation.
Just like you can’t generally expect Karan Johar to make a film in say, 10-15 crores (we’re not counting the short he made in the anthology, Bombay Talkies, where Karan wanted costume changes for the girl who played a beggar before somebody pointed out that homeless people, well, don’t have much of a wardrobe), Kashyap doesn’t work well with money.
Not too much money, for sure (Velvet’s budget was nearly 100 crores).
In the interview with Film Companion, Kashyap started talking about the clash he often feels between his cinematic reality and his actual reality and how he channels his real-life angst in his films.
Then, without naming names, he said, “When everything is going fine, that’s when I don’t know what to do. A lot of my friends, actually all of my friends, tell me that I should not be given budgets to make movies because when I’m given one, I don’t know what to do with it. When I’m given nothing, I actually create.”
Dev D, Ugly, Gulaal, That Girl in Yellow Boots, No Smoking, and even Mukkabaaz are just some examples of films made on a limited budget that have turned out to be his most compelling works.
You can catch the entire interview here:
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