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Naseeruddin Shah returns with a new film on relationships and happiness
Updated On: 27 August, 2023 07:23 AM IST | Mumbai | Jane Borges
Seventeen years after his last directorial effort left him frustrated, Naseeruddin Shah returns with a tender short film about relationships, casting family and friends
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Director Naseeruddin Shah with spouse Ratna Pathak Shah and son Vivaan Shah, who star in his new short, Man Woman Man Woman, at their Bandra West residence. Pics/Pradeep Dhivar
In the early noughties, when filmmakers were successfully experimenting with ensemble casts and multiple plot threads, Naseeruddin Shah, with a reputation for being sagacious in his choice of films, joined the fray with his directorial debut, Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota (2006), a 9/11 hijack drama that was a collage of four inter-twined stories. We meet the 73-year-old at his Bandra West residence, on a day when the sun and rain clouds are playing hide-and-seek. Shah is dressed in a multi-coloured checked shirt and was only minutes before our interruption, deep into a book; he looks back at the film as a mixed bag. “I was hurried into it [making the film],” he remembers, “And I didn’t get the time to consult anyone about the screenplay.” In hindsight, he says, “I should have.” “I should have waited,” he repeats, “But the producer kept this carrot on a stick in front of me, and said, ‘we’ll launch it on your birthday’. I got tempted by the idea, became rather sentimental. It was released on my birthday… Not that it lasted very long at the box office.” If there’s any disappointment, Shah coats it with his dry humour.
Several years followed, during which theatre, and big and bit roles in the movies served as Shah’s creative fuel. “I was nervous about making another film,” he says. “I preferred [directing for] theatre, which is a living thing. You can keep adding to, subtracting from, improving upon, and it keeps evolving as you keep rehearsing and performing. Whereas a film is fixed in stone. Once it’s out, you cannot revise it.”
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