You can breathe easy: the new Bengali release Shaheb Bibi Golaam is not a re-imagining of Bimal Mitra’s novel Shaheb Bibi Gholam or Abrar Alvi’s 1962 Hindi-language classic Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. Rather, the August 26 release is a triptych about crime in Kolkata, starring Anjan Dutt, Swastika Mukherjee and Ritwick Chakraborty.
Journalist and filmmaker Pratim D Gupta’s second venture is markedly different from his debut Paanch Adhyay (2012), which was centered on a couple. Shaheb Bibi Golaam has been released in Bengal and all over India with English subtitles. It weaves together the stories of a contract killer (Dutt), a housewife who moonlights as a prostitute (Mukherjee) and the romance between a taxi driver (Chakraborty) and a woman (Mittra). In a interview with Scroll.in, Gupta cites foreign influences rather than local ones, such as the multi-strand narratives Pulp Fiction and Babel.
How did the three stories in ‘Shaheb Bibi Golaam’ come about?
I had these three images that used to haunt me a lot. One was about a musician who is singing a song in a nightclub. During the interlude, he goes and kills someone in the loo and then comes back and finishes the song. It wasn’t how I eventually used on screen. In the film, he is shown as a cello player who is also a contract killer.
The second image was of this completely suppressed woman, both emotionally and physically, in a domestic scenario. She would howl in the shower. The third image was of a taxi driver driving a car with a drunk girl in the back seat and he is looking at her through the mirror. I didn’t think these three could be part of the same story, but they formed the genesis of the eventual story.
Were the stories inspired from real-life events?
Yes. The stories of Bibi and Golaam are straight out of the newspapers. Bibi is the story of a housewife and a mother who is part of an escort club when her child is in school and she has a small window of opportunity during those hours. The Golaam story was inspired by the sensational Rizwanur-Priyanka case that took place in Kolkata some years back. I have also heard of a contract killer called Haathkata who lives in Behala. He was the inspiration for the Shaheb character Jimmy in the film.
Anjan Dutt has never played such a cool-headed yet brutal character before. Was it easy to persuade him to play a contract killer?
He has always played the very needy and desperate type, the typical check-shirt, top three buttons open, torn vest inside kind of character from parallel cinema, in Mrinal Sen’s and Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s films. He has never been in anything mainstream as such. I have always thought of him as a fabulous actor. I have known him for a while and I wanted to present him like a cool dude. I hope Bengali audiences are excited to see him like this.
Your film has no similarity with the 1956 production. Tigmanshu Dhulia’s re-imagining was titled ‘Saheb Biwi aur Gangster’. Could your film have been called ‘Shaheb Biwi aar Contract Killer’ just so it would not be confused for a remake?
That’s right, it has nothing to do with that film, but actually what happened is that the title came much later after I was struggling to give the story a name. I toyed with names like Trikaal and Teen and one fine morning, this title just stuck with me because the characters are pretty much just that.
People will be able to understand by looking at the posters itself. I was very confident that when they see the poster of a man in a leather jacket holding a rifle and a taxi driver wearing a sehra [floral headdress], they will know that it is a different story.
The movie is derivative of elements seen in foreign films, such as the unconventional non-linear structure featuring multiple strands. Were you inspired by anything in particular?
Paanch Adhyay too had a novel structure. It was a love story in five chapters. I love playing around with structure. One of my favourite films of all times is Pulp Fiction (1994). John Travolta gets killed in the middle of the film and he is shown walking away from a diner in the last scene. What just happened? It was mind-bending.
I wanted viewers to watch a film that goes back and forth. They should get caught up in the intriguing structure. Simple and linear narratives are boring nowadays. Flashbacks are dated. While Alejandro Inarritu does a lot of multi-narrative plots as you see in Babel (2006), which is intercut, and Amores Perros (2000), which starts with an event and goes back, what I have done is something new. One story ends and it rewinds and takes you back to that point from where another begins. I don’t think there is any one particular film that has exactly this structure.
The films of Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers and Inarritu inspire me, but I wouldn’t blindly copy paste. Another strange example of this is that a few weeks back, I was watching my film at a preview theatre when a scene in which Javed [Ritwick Chakraborty] goes to a laundryman to borrow a suit reminded me of a similar scene in Kishen Kanhaiya (1990), in which Anil Kapoor does the same thing. Inspiration could come from anywhere.
You are also a journalist and critic with ‘Telegraph’ newspaper. Is there a conflict of interest while making films?
I don’t write about Bengali films, I don’t review them. If I review a film that has, say Anjan Dutt or Swastika Mukherjee, then there would be a clear clash of interest. I am very conscious of this because it does not sound right that I am writing about them and promoting them in my reviews. I keep both the worlds apart.
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