Content is king, says Parambrata

From Topse to Mark Antony, Parambrata Chatterjee remains one of our most favourite actors through all these years. With his versatile acting and impressive attitude, Chatterjee has sustained likewise in films that followed after his first venture Hemanter Pakhi.

Known as the chocolate boy of  T-town, he has brought romance, nostalgia and drama to Bangla Cinema. Well, not only in Tollywood, he has made a mark in Bollywood with his Hindi debut Kahaani - a movie that sent shivers down everyone’s spine. 

A believer of telling simple stories of real people on screen, he conveys that being behind cameras happened by accident. In a disproportionately small period of time, he has delivered a series of hits such as Kahaani, Kalbela, Baishe Srabon, Chotushkone, Bhooter Bhabishyat, Hemlock Society, Hercules, Dosar among several others of varied genres. Well, if you haven’t seen these movies yet, then you have not watched much of Bengali Cinema. 

With Zulfiqar releasing around the corner, Chatterjee talks about his inspiration and preferences that set him apart from other actors in the history of Tollywood! 

I never realised that. But I understood fairly early that films are my true calling. I figured that out when I was in class VII. Well, to be honest, I always wanted to be behind the cameras and to become an actor was not something that I had planned. 

    

Primarily, it is my parents. I have grown up in an atmosphere of serious cinema and music. While my mother was a film archivist at the biggest film library in India, my father was a film critic and a journalist. Growing up in such an environment helped because I could pursue something which was not the usual choice of the kids of my age. 

I never had to face any opposition which other children of my age might have faced, and back in those days, it was pretty tough to come up with a choice like acting or filmmaking. As they were pretty much in the same zone, it was easier for me to go with my preference. 

   

To the film. The most important part is to look at the movie in a holistic manner, from a bird’s eye view. It gives you a proper perspective of what is expected out of you.  

 

A lot of them. ‘Joyobrata’ from Chotushkone, ‘Hercules’ and ‘Hemanta’ were tough to play. I have played ‘Mark Antony’ in my upcoming film Zulfiqar and that should be added to the list too. I had to constantly be in deadlocks in the movie which I think was pretty hard to pull off.

    

Oh! It’s going to be a big one. Zulfiqar, which is a double adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra’ set in the backdrop of shipping mafia in Calcutta, is scheduled to release amid Durga Pujo.

 

To begin with, one has to understand the language that we work in or the films that we are working in. As Bengali actors, we have a very limited market. It is limited within the Bengali speaking diaspora. 

Well, I would say not even the diaspora because if that was the case, then this industry would have been much bigger. Although Bengali communities living abroad take interests in Bangla movies, it is not enough to release a film internationally. Hence, the market remains restricted to West Bengal and bits and pieces in Bangladesh. Now, if we take Bollywood into account, everything is twenty times that of Bengali film industry  starting from the budget to the exposure.  

Nonetheless, I think the kind of work that is happening in the industry for the past 8-9 years given the resource constraints is remarkable. Although we need to be self-critical, the development is worth appreciating. 

 

I don’t think the budget affect much because logistically it cannot be too high. The market that we work in is not big enough for that money to get recovered. However, in the last ten years, the budget has grown considerably. I remember when I quit television to join this industry because a good budget then is deemed as a bare minimum budget now. So, the growth has been remarkable. 

 

Content is the king. For me, it is the film in totality. See, we can never predict what is going to happen in the end because there is a significant distance between the script and the final product on the screen. Sometimes it may come out as a shitty movie because the gap between the script and what comes out in the end is often not bridged. I think the script is the only thing that should be looked at and yes obviously preference to the one making it is given.  

 

Yes, but then not by living there. I am connected to Mumbai in several ways but in the age of the internet, one can put things in any language or any medium residing in any corner of the world. 

 

I think if the content connects with the audience, it doesn’t matter. But somehow the mystery around this grand art form called cinema or the uniqueness about going to the theatre and watching the movie is winged. It is bound to happen as films have become a different medium now from what it used to be 20 - 25 years ago. It is a lot more democratized, which is excellent in a way but the only downside is that the aura around the movie gets lost.

 

It happened right after I finished my masters in England in filmmaking. One fine day, I got a call from Sujoy Ghosh asking me to return to India immediately. So, I told him that I was coming back anyway and needed 15 days to complete a few trips that I had planned. But he insisted on making it in just three days and only after coming back I got to know that I have to start shooting for Kahaani. 

 

To begin with, I have Zulfiqar and a short film called Chocolate. Next, I have Mi amor, which is primarily in English. Directed by Suman Ghosh, it has been shot in Miami, and it deals with a couple discovering themselves in the city of Miami. 

 

Well, the films that I do are out and out commercial films. Films which are termed as commercial in our country are not commercial according to me. They are the cinema of a different kind, and I doubt whether they can be called commercial cinema at all because they hardly follow the structure that should be followed while storytelling. 

I have all my respect towards it, but I’m not into that kind of cinema. To be honest, that is not my understanding of cinema, and I cannot unlearn it. 

 

Let us be a little literate. Being cinema literate is imperative. In this case, I don’t mean that one has to study volumes of books, but one’s perspective of cinema, in general, should be much broader. This is not only for the actors but for anyone who works in this fraternity.