Industry is in mad rush to make expensive movies: Ram Gopal Varma
New Delhi: Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma said his 1998 movie ‘Satya’ was made with ‘honest instincts’ and not by clever design, something that should serve as a lesson for the film industry that is in a ‘mad rush’ to come out with big-budget and star-driven projects.
The gangster drama, which is still lauded by cinema enthusiasts for its execution and treatment, is set to be re-released in theatres on January 17. The movie, written by Saurabh Shukla and Anurag Kashyap, focused on the underbelly of the world of crime through the eyes of its titular character, essayed by J D Chakravarthy.
Varma, in a long post on ‘X’, said the movie, without any major cast or budget, achieved cult status and should serve as a ‘wake-up call’ for all storytellers of the Hindi film industry.
“‘Satya’ was made by honest instincts and not by clever design and the cult status it achieved should be a wake-up call for all filmmakers present and future, including us, its original makers. When the whole industry right now is in a mad rush in their requisitions for massive budgets, expensive VFX, gargantuan sets and superstars it might be prudent for all of us to take a hard re-look at ‘Satya’ and give a deep thought to why it became such a big blockbuster minus any of those above-mentioned requisites… That would be the real true tribute to ‘Satya’,” the 62-year-old director said.
Varma said when he set out to make the movie, the team had no ‘clue about what we were making except for a real gut instinct on the subject matter’. “On our talent fronts, each of us realised each other’s talents only after the film became a cult hit and then hearing the praise about each of our talents from others,” he said.
The filmmaker shared that the well-etched characters of Satya (Chakravarthy), Bhiku Mhatre (Manoj Bajpayee) and Kallu Mama (Shukla), were mostly copied from real-life characters.
Varma further said he realised that what they had made was not a gangster film but a drama about ‘human beings and the circumstances they are placed in either by force or by accident’.
