Well, Imtiaz Ali is one abstract director. We have always seen his love for travelling to different places manifested in almost all his films, from ‘Socha Na Tha’, ‘Love Aaj Kal’, ‘Jab We Met’ and ‘Rockstar’ to now the full-fledged travel story, ‘Highway’. But very few people might be aware that Imtiaz, whose every film looks like a masterpiece, did not have a script for ‘Highway’!
“I had a story in my mind but we shot the film almost without a script. I knew what the purpose of a particular scene was but I did not have finished dialogues for it. So, these places influenced the script a lot. I let the story be rather than imposing myself on it. When you don’t have written dialogues, you have to come up with something that is not only interesting to watch but connects to a particular scene. It should flow like a journey. I often thought, ‘I hope I will be able to come up with something’. Those insecurities were there,” said the director.
There were some scenes when Alia had to say some particular lines while looking at the sun and when the team reached the location it would have started raining!
Adding to it, Ali said, “Alia kept asking me what she was going to say. And I did not have any dialogues. I told her, ‘Let us get there, we will think of something’ and she trusted me. What we captured there was more true to what she was feeling there than the dialogues I had written while sitting in my room.” Such surprises made the film quite memorable for the entire team and from the rushes of it; it totally looks like a dream.
