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WSWS : Arts Review : Film Festivals : 1998 Toronto International

An interview with the director, Santosh Sivan, and leading actress, Ayesha Dharkar, of The Terrorist

By David Walsh
9 October, 1998

David Walsh: What was the immediate starting point for the film?

Santosh Sivan: When we talk about someone like a suicide bomber, what comes to one's mind immediately is the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, which was actually the starting point for me to make the film. I was wondering what kind of person would actually be able to strap a belt of explosives on herself and then ...

I used to wonder, how would someone do something like this? And what possibly could make her not do it? From a very human point of view. Supposing she got exposed to all the laws of nature that a woman normally confronts, or a man ...

So I thought I could make a film like this. At the same time I realized that when one makes such a film you often end up glorifying violence. Most of the films that deal with violence end up showing a great deal of it and then say, at the end, "No, it's not right." So I was making a film on a very violent subject, but I wanted to have the audience go through a process so that they might say at the end, "No, I don't want to see this blast," even though that's perhaps what they came for.

I tried to avoid a lot of this and tried to simply tell the story of girl fighting for a cause, being brainwashed and things like that about the future of the country and all that, and ending up screwing up her own future. That is what made me want to do this film.

DW: What about the question of hero worship of "the leader"?

SS: It is very much there.

Here you have a group of young people, mostly teenagers. They are deprived of any kind of education, sex life, smoking, everything is considered harmful, and invariably most of them go off by the time they're 22. All of them are made to believe that being a martyr is the biggest thing to happen, and they're given fantastic funerals. It is like the ultimate high for a person in that kind of environment.

The film is made on a very low budget, in fact, nothing at all. And it is all acted by purely nonprofessionals. I want to make films that are very real, even though I make my bread and butter shooting commercial musical films, but when I want to make a film, I want to make it as real and as interesting as possible. So I have make it without those entertainment elements like fights, songs and all that, so you can do what you want. That freedom I get only when we make such films on a small budget, and say something.

DW: It looks very beautiful.

SS: I'm a professional cinematographer. It was filmed in 17 days, that's all we took. It was done in Madras. And a little bit in Karela.

I studied film. I'm very well known as a cinematographer. I made one film before, for children. Now I'm making another film for children. I wanted to do this film, so I said, I'll make a very serious film. I want to make quite a few more films, on my terms, which I will definitely get around to making.

DW: The farmer, the people she stays with, were excellent.

SS: All of these people are more or less real people. I tried to make sure that all my characters are very real, because I know people like this. So I'm able to detail them accordingly. I try to make it as real as possible, so it has some honesty to it. Not to put things in just for a laugh. Like when the kid, in the middle of the jungle, offers her a Coke. He actually said, "Coca-Cola." Taking it out it becomes more real. The fun is there because in the midst of all this there is Coke there. Which is also true, actually.

DW: What is the alternative to the present situation?

SS: That's why we concentrated on an individual. Because if you are going to correct the whole thing ... well, it's easier to talk about an individual than about the whole system. Show what she goes through.

DW: Conditions are very difficult for people. They are looking for a way to change things.

SS: A filmmaker cannot change anything, we can just draw attention to something.

DW: What is your perception of the situation in India?

SS: It is like an open sore. It's like someone raking up all the leaves and collecting them together, and the wind comes along and blows them all away. And again he does it, and again the wind comes and blows them away.

I don't think there will be war, it's too dangerous for them with this nuclear thing, it has ruled out that possibility. With all these nuclear blasts happening here and there, it has become all too lethal to experiment. But there are indirect methods.

DW: What is the current state of the film industry?

SS: It is going through a bad phase actually.

DW: Financially or artistically, or both?

SS: Artistically, it was never very good. ( laughs) Financially also. It is not primarily because the number of films has decreased, people are finding work on television, and so on.... But other reasons, because of the mafia and those sorts. Builders have lost money so now they are concentrating on film people to get their money, so there have been some killings. So people are saying, we don't want to make films, we don't have the money. This is a phase.

DW: Are there current filmmakers in India that you admire?

SS: A lot of people. The guy I shoot with, Mani Rathnam. I think you might have seen his films, including The Duo.

* * *

DW: What was your experience of this film?

Ayesha Dharkar: Quite intense. Not something you can drift into. She's not like a person you meet every day. She's the product of such unusual people. She's been with them since she was very, very young. She has been molded to be that way. It was also intense because of the way we shot it. I think that's good, because it packs in the experience. You can't do that for an extended period of time. Intense also, because I broke my leg doing stunts.

DW: Her commitment is real, but it is relatively shallow. It's not a commitment to a political program, but to revenge, blood ...

AD: These people are not that interested in the larger political reverberations of what they are doing. In fact, they don't even know what the impact of their actions is. I think if you are molded by that sort of society, martyrs become the patron saints of your organization. You're constantly fed, sort of brainwashed by leaders, by people who you look up to. I found a photo of five girls--18, 19, and lethal, they kill without any compunction at all. It's a job, and that's what they're good at. I had the impression that each of them wanted to be noticed, to be recognized for something. I think that's a very human quality. It's a peculiar mixture of selfishness, because that desire is so strong, and selflessness, because you're giving yourself up, for something you'll never see.

I think you're not human unless your choices are your own, and her choices are not her own. Her choice is for life, and not to destroy herself and whatever little humanity she has managed to muster or recover. There is hope in that.

Girls like her are actually sent by their families into organizations like this. They can't afford to marry them or educate them, so they send them into this kind of thing, and if they die, the family gets compensation of a certain amount of money. So it's almost like they're doing it for their families as well.

DW: What is the state of the Indian film industry from your point of view?

I think the Indian film industry is very interesting at the moment. It is still commercially very, very strong, that is the backbone of the industry. But at the same time in the last five years especially a lot of Indian filmmakers are starting to make films of this kind, no songs, strong subjects, and more like films as we know them. With less commercial responsibility, so that they can just make the kind of films they want to make. As an actor, I think that this is a good time to be around. I try to stay away from the commercial films because all the roles that have been offered to me ... the only information you can get about a character is that she is a "bubbly, young girl" who runs around trees, and has to decide how much to pad her bra. But in these films there isn't much work to do, there isn't anything to think about, so when a film like this comes along, as an actor it's exciting as well. And more and more films are being made of this kind.

I like Mani Rathnam very much, because while he stays in the commercial bracket, he still manages to include some depth. He communicates with a mass of people through his commercial way of making films, but then he manages to make them think about things as well a little bit.

Santosh is planning to release the film in Karela, where audiences are very cinema literate. Someone like a taxi driver, if you're talking to him, he'll say, "Yeah, that is very good camera work." I was a bit taken aback, that's not what you expect to hear. Usually people talk about actors. But there people really know something about films. I think it will be successful in a place like Bombay too.

DW: Do films like this make money?

AD: I have no clue. It's a very young, new thing that's happening. Because what happened earlier was you had this huge commercial thing, and you had the art cinema on the other side, which was fairly dry and made no money at all. And this is not quite as extreme as that, even though we are away from the commercial set-up.

 

See Also:
On what should the new cinema be based?
[17 June 1996]

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