Haq director Suparn Varma reveals why he supports violence in Dhurandhar: ‘Stop beating down your own filmmakers!’
Haq director Suparn S Varma backs Aditya Dhar's upcoming film Dhurandhar and says audience should respect filmmakers' cinematic lens.
Filmmaker Suparn S Varma, whose courtroom drama Haq, received critical and commercial acclaim, recently took to social media to question those who are questioning fellow filmmaker Aditya Dhar's film Dhurandhar. Suparn accused some viewers of being biased towards action and violence in Indian cinema whereas they would appreciate it when presented by an international filmmaker.
In a candid chat with us, Suparn explained why he believes strongly about giving breathing space to all kinds of genres and respecting everyone's cinematic lens.
“I am of the opinion that everything is beautiful, so is violence. I mean Brian De Palma's Scarface is a great example. We've grown up watching these films. Today, if a Marco is made, we love that film. That is also gory. There are all kinds of filmmakers all over the world who use violence, and Martin Scorsese has violence in his films. I mean, why beat him (Aditya Dhar) down? ,” questions Suparn.
In Dhurandhar's trailer Arjun Rampal's character is seen hovering over a prisoner, who has hooked dug into his body. The gore and violence of this scene in particular invited criticism from netizens. The film shows terrorists in Pakistan plotting against India.
Suparn asserts that globally countries are at war and it cannot be ignored in cinema. Giving the example of North Korea and South Korea and other countries who have border tension, he says, "Perspectives change and what is in the history is in history. So I don't think this notion of, 'oh, it's violent' is ok.
He adds, “I think we need to celebrate Hindi films of what they are and stop beating down our filmmakers and rather support films for the passion that they're being made with, give things a chance instead of everybody having an opinion and just being negative for the sake of it and contrarian, I think it's highly unhealthy.”
Does he feel Indian audience is biased towards Western cinema?
“I think the bias is more than a Hindi film release because people are willing to keep aside logic with films whether it's Hollywood or other languages but when it comes to Hindi, they suddenly have a very different lens,” says the filmmaker who has also directed Rana Naidu franchise.
The filmmaker concludes, “So stop trying to drag films down to what your sensibility is. 'No, no,this film should look like this' Why? This film looks like this because the director chose it to succeed like that.”
