The sheer beauty of Varanasi—the temples, the river banks, the aroma of incense—floods you as Pankuj Parashar—the man who’d have been ‘kink’ (remember Jalwa and Chalbaaz) goes into a heady but steady spiritual quest. Banaras works on several levels. As a film that takes us right into the heart of the holy city, it’s a splendid occasion for sights and sounds seldom heard in contemporary cinema.
Full and irrevocable marks to cinematographer Nirav Shah, music composer Himesh Reshammiya, and background scorer Surinder Sodhi for adding a luminous layer to this mellow drama of some lyrical beauty. These technicians are, at their best, creating a world of optical and spiritual salvation without hampering the flow of the romantic tale that takes hold of the director’s vision and guides him into a soul-searching exercise of considerable sensitivity and compassion.
Admittedly, director Parashar’s quest to fuse spirituality with romance runs into some roadblocks. Often, the ambience threatens to overpower the characters….or maybe that’s what the underlying theme is meant to be.
You can’t take away from the endeavour’s sincerity of purpose, its genuine desire to cross the boundaries between mass entertainment and intellectual discursion without making a song and dance of the unorthodox leap into the lyrical.
Of the song and dance, there’s no dearth. Urmila Matondkar, still glamorous and chic in her diligently acquired reputation for delivering controlled power-house performances, lends a glorious graph of growth, pain, and acceptance to her character. Put her in London or Banaras; her smooth effort to get under the skin of her character is a pleasure to behold.
Two themes emerge from Urmila’s fascinating picaresque character: the indescribable pain of losing love and how to sublimate it into areas of existence where the individual ceases to matter to herself.
The strong central performance is constantly aided by a knowledgeable supporting cast. Raj Babbar and Dimple Kapadia, as Urmila’s parents, bring a certain fresh, raw emotionalism to their clichéd parts. Dimple rips the screen apart in her moment of reckoning with her screen daughter when the older woman must confess to a crime so terrible that it makes Lady Macbeth appear akin to Mother Teresa.
But the mood of forgiveness and the sheer lightness of discarding the heavy mantle of pain and guilt run across this prettily crafted piece of cinema where the anxieties of going beyond convention are constantly diverted into debates on the quality of life and death.
The polemics are never allowed to get excessive. Parashar suffuses the spiritual canvas with interludes that caress divinity. But the weightiness of the theme is occasionally undermined by sudden plunges into banality. What you carry home is Urmila’s pain after her low-caste beloved (Ashmit Patel, with the long hair suiting the part, and never mind the heart) is murdered. Scenes where she re-visits her romantic bliss wrench your heart with their sincerity. The dying moments between Urmila and Dimple create a raging storm of rebuke and forgiveness. And how can you forget Aakash Khuarana as rational psychiatrist experiencing the mysticism of Varanasi with sudden and swift results.
Banaras is a film that could easily have fallen into the trap of over-mystifying the theme and appearing phoney in its spirituality. Providentially, you cannot miss the bona fide intentions of the people behind this film… Not even Naseeruddin Shah, whose cameo as ‘God’ is done with such contagious warmth it converts you into a realm of religiosity without compromising your state of supreme cynicism.
It doesn’t really matter whether Banaras clicks at the box office or not. For its tenacity of purpose and sensitivity of vision and for its genuineness of expression, you have to grant the film the space to have its say. This film deserves our respect.
Director Pankuj Parashar denies Banaras was a comeback film. “It’s all in people’s minds,” says the director. If you go through my CV, there are 2,000 things that I’ve done besides Jalwa and Chaalbaaz. It genuinely does not bother me what I’m known for or not known for. Banaras was always simmering within me. When I was at the FTII (Film and Television Institute of India), I made two films… one was a story-based fiction film, which was a comedy. It got me the gold medal. The other was a documentary on mental illness. I made it only when I was 21. Yes, I could have taken the serious route as a filmmaker then and there. But I was too sad a person… jobless, broke, misunderstood. I didn’t want to make solemn films. Banaras happened when I was ready for it. It had to happen when I was ready for it. Producer L.C. Singh walked into my life with a great budget and let me do what I wanted. I was given total freedom. We chose Javed Siddiqui to write the dialogues because we knew the atmosphere would be argumentative. We wanted that. It took me a while to get there.”
For Banaras, he teamed up with Jalwa hero Naseeruddin Shah once again. Pankuj is frank about his friend. “Naseer has become more sarcastic over the years. At times, it borders on being hurtful. But I give it back to him. Because he is become a director now, Naseer is becoming defensive. He thinks we’re all going to pounce on him. But I think I am his closest friend. When I called him to offer a role in Banaras, I said there’s bad news and good news. Bad news is that I am making a film. Good news is that Naseer is playing God in Banaras! I told him it was a ten-day role. He never asked about the money, never went through the script, just landed up in Varanasi for the shooting.”
Parashar’s precursor for Banaras was a documentary that he made called Enlightened Man. “What do you mean no one has seen that? 300,000 people saw it. We cannot base perceptions of success on one section of the audience alone. How can you say that a film, which gets appreciation in the multiplexes, is more important than one that’s seen by thousands and thousands of people all over the world?”
As for Urmila, who plays the central part, “She was my first and only choice. Please don’t slot her in a non-glamorous image for Banaras. Urmila is very, very glamorous in 70 percent of Banaras. And what is your definition of glamour? I think a woman without makeup in a white sari is extremely glamorous. But I chose Urmila for her acting. We had two or three others in mind. But we needed someone with a high emotional quotient. Urmila was perfect. One could never say from her initial films that she’d be where she is today. Urmila never tried to over-intellectualise her performance. There were lots of depths and dimensions to her character. Another type of actress would have just questioned and questioned… After the first day, we sent her a bouquet… she was that good. Urmila’s response, ‘Why are you sending me a bouquet now for my performance? You’ll have to do it every evening.’ I called the producer, L.C. Singh, and he wondered if she was an egoist. The next day Urmila explained, there were so many wonderful scenes in Banaras and such a pleasure to enact them. In Banaras, she goes into unexplored areas.”
Other experiences in filmmaking haven’t been too pleasant for Parashar. “There were several reasons for that. I can tell you off the record why Tumko Na Bhool Paayenge didn’t work. To make a film – comedy or serious – you need like-minded people. I need room to flower as a creator. I am too sensitive and shy to go to a producer and say; this is what I want to make. Maybe I wasn’t pursuing success as hard as I should have.”
