Prakash Jha’s stunning drama Mrityudand, starring Madhuri Dixit and Shabana Azmi, is the focus of Subhash K Jha’s This Day That Year feature series. We also hear from the director about the cast and what went into the making of the film that released in 1997.
Prakash Jha has never made a better film than Mrityudand. Set in the violent heartland of rural Bihar it featured sterling performances by Shabana Azmi, Madhuri Dixit and, surprisingly, Shilpa Shirodkar as a troika of powerful women fighting off brutal patriarchy in Bihar (though not one shot was filmed in Bihar).
To this day the film exudes the scent of directorial brilliances and exceptional performances. In Mrityudand, Madhuri gave her career’s best performance. It is to Madhuri what Mother India was to Nargis.
And to think Madhuri was not the first choice for Mrityudand! It was the very talented Pallavi Joshi (now married to director Vivek Agnihotri) who was first signed by Jha to play Ketaki the bahu in a feudal family who takes to the gun when her husband is killed in an internecine feud.
The untold story goes like this: Mrityudand was originally planned as an arthouse product with Shabana, Pallavi and Shirodkar who wanted a change from her glamorous image.
Madhuri and Shilpa shared the same secretary Rakesh “Rikku” Nath. When Riku conveyed to Prakash Jha that Madhuri was interested, the entire project changed from small to big with Anand-Milind’s songs and other commercial trappings seeping into the product.
Overnight Pallavi was out. Madhuri was in.
When I asked Prakash how he dealt with the sticky situation he replied nonchalantly, “Nothing. I just sent Pallavi flowers.”
Quite a ‘phool’ish way to appease the conscience!!
The other incident connected with Mrityudand that made behind-the-scenes (undisclosed) history was the fall-out between Prakash Jha and Shabana Azmi. Shabana had a ball shooting for the film. But when it was released, she was horrified to see that her best most powerful sequence was edited out.
She never worked with Prakash Jha again.
Jha told this writer, “Thank you for remembering Mrityudand. Yes, it indeed was a turning point in my life. I remember those days when Mrityudand, the script of which was sanctioned by National Film Development Corporation, like my earlier two films, Damul and Parinati. But I realized, you know, those days, suddenly the prices and the costs had gone up and it almost seemed impossible to make the film in the sanctioned budget of NFDC and, you know, I had written the script in a kind of more realistic language of cinema and kind of story.”
Prakash Jha doesn’t deny sacking Pallavi Joshi overnight. “You’re right, I had spoken to Pallavi Joshi because she was a lovely actress and she was up and coming those days and she had done some wonderful work. But I realized I just couldn’t make the film and couldn’t recover the cost because while NFDC was giving us just 10 lakhs, it was going to cost me about 35 to 40 lakhs to just make the film. Even with that kind of budget, that kind of infrastructure and I almost had given up when accidentally I met Subhash Ghai, who casually asked me what I was doing and I spoke to him about this story. He was so impressed, he said you should have someone like Madhuri Dixit for this film and make it, you know, like a commercial film. I had no idea about, you know, how to make a commercial film or how to get to Madhuri. Subhash Ghaiji set up my appointment with Madhuri and she was shooting and I narrated the story to her and she liked it and that’s how Madhuri came on board. Recently, about a month back, after I had spoken to you about her on her birthday, I had a lovely chat with Madhuri. I had sent her a message and she called back and we really sort of chatted warmly and I hope to be able to work with her again.”
Adding, “If I was to make Mrityudand today, I don’t think I would change anything because, you know, the film represented a particular time of our society and that’s how my films are. My films basically are about how society moves the way it does and if I understand the equations, I share it in form of story. The way I did my films later on after Mrityudand , whether it was Gangajal or Aarakshan or Rajneeti or Satyagraha, all the films are basically representative of the time and society as it was at that time. So, thank you very much for remembering Mrityudand and I can’t believe it’s 27 years, you know, it just seems like yesterday. Thank you, Subhash and God bless you.”
