Mahesh Bhatt has reunited with director Vikram Bhatt after almost a decade for the film Judaa Hoke Bhi. The romantic horror stars Akshay Oberoi and Aindrita Ray in lead roles. The Free Press Journal caught up with the legendary filmmaker for an exclusive chat.
The festival of Guru Purnima was just celebrated, and Mahesh Bhatt is known to be a mentor (guru) for many in Bollywood. When asked what the word means to him, he shares, “In our country ritually when any student moves much ahead to his guru then the guru touches the feet of his students to seek his blessings and says you have freed me. This has been my role. I always want my students to be held on to my shoulders and take on to those heights that I can never reach. A guru frees you from yourself. He never likes to keep you as his own slave.”
Bhatt feels that the audience’s heart is emotionally affected when they cry. When asked if those emotions are missing these days, he says, “Our ustaads told us this. I remember when I assisted Raj Khosla saab he would tell us to go and watch our films with the people and watch their reactions. You should watch the faces of the audience. Never look at the screen. The moment tears fall down their cheeks, it surely means that the film has made a place in their hearts. Emotions are now missing because more people think from their heads and less from their hearts. We think too much and feel too little. It’s time to make movies for people who feel and not for not to intellectualise it.”
Opening up about the film’s title, Bhatt shares, “Judaa Hoke Bhi, suggests a love story. Radha Krishna may have separated but yet not separated. Great love stories are more intense when there is the absence of the beloved. The flowing love, like the seawater, gets more intensified when you separate from your lover. During such moments, good cinema and good music are born.”
When asked to describe pain in the absence of a beloved, Bhatt reveals, “Well, the journey of life has to go through many seasons. Yeh jo aapka honeymoon phase, jo WhatsApp par shuru hota hai... it finishes on WhatsApp only. This is not romance. Love stories are not born in the virtual world. Just trying to show off and feel content is easy. Relations are made in real life. For such a relationship, we need to have that intention to carry it on. When in a relationship, one needs to be able to tolerate the ups and downs in the relationship. One needs to have that intent of holding each other’s hands.”
Bhatt had made a directorial comeback with Sadak 2; however, he has no intentions of doing so again. “Direction, I’m done with it. Vikram Bhatt is my heart and does more effectively, and we will have the dazzle through his directorial venture, which I cannot pretend to have,” he concludes.
