India's avant garde filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee brand of cerebral cinema gets a new style and technique in DBB. The two time National award winner filmmaker gets up close and personal in a candid conversation. He says he is a cheap filmmaker, not arty as critics labeled him. Denies the influence of Baz Luhrmann in his funky, jazzy, pop videoish, abstract and dark treatment to DBB. His type of cinema and the desire to be in the coveted 300 crore club one day without any creative compromise.

Excerpts

When was the first time you came across DBB

When I was 12 years old. My parents told me not to read it's for grownups. That was a sure kick to steal a look at it when no one was around.

What was the impact?

Unforgettable. The quality of writing and the quality of imagery Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay has put has fascinated me - The city of Kolkata, the 1940's, Byomkesh and his adventures that all come alive. Once you start reading you will not stop till you finish. I believe this is the case with everybody who reads Byomkesh Bakshi.

You wanted to make DBBB after Khosla Ka Ghosla..why it took nine years to realize this dream.

After Khosla Ka Ghosla I was speaking to a studio and the studio was fairly interested in doing this film. But I feel to make a movie of this scale I needed to have few more films to my credit and graduate to this level to make something like DBB.

Can you name the Studio

The studio has done my previous films and they were supportive. Right now there's no point in naming them as Yash Raj is doing it. I did another film with them. So it was just like happening, happening and happening and I feel its destiny. I believe nothing can be better for me in doing DBB now as probably during that time I was not much prepared for it.

Your cinematic idiom adapted in DBB smells like Baz Luhrmann's 1996 remarkably divisive and fresh pop videoish adaptation of Romeo + Juliet (starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes) - the use of funk, jazz, pop, rock, dark elements.

Very interesting.. Since you have mentioned, honestly it never entered into my head when I was thinking how my adaptation of DBB will be and truth to be told here is that me and my wife have loved Baz Luhrmann's 's Romeo Juliet adaptation cause we love Shakespeare and the way Lurhman has done that in the film is lovely. We loved the art direction, we loved everything. What we have done in DBB is different. If you do Shakespeare you have to take the words literally and the only change is the visual change. In DBB I have taken the Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay's Byomkesh story and re-interpreted it to explain the beginning of Byomkesh which is not there ever.

The influence of contemporary music to a period based story, was it to give a kick to the current generation

When we see a period film, we see a caricature of the period. When a medieval Emperor gets ready for a war our source of his anger is a quote by a poet whose job is to embellish, hyperbolize what roughly, directly the Emperor might have said. He might have said,"Fuck the enemy' and the poet writes destroy the enemy the way an insect gets destroyed by a candle light". People will be people at all ages so I feel if we get into the core of the emotion and feeling directly then it is better, faster and easier to connect with the audience and once you get the connection the period takes a back seat it is at the background. When I started writing imagining Byomkesh i wanted to take the audience into the era of 1940's but with todays feel. I wanted the audience to be travel the two eras of 1940's and 2015 at the same time. So the contemporary music, sound is to make them connect with 2015 while they watch detective film set in 1940. We have tried to take our camera to the 1940's era but when the background comes it makes them grounded to the present. It's a twilight zone.

From where does DDB begins

His first case when he finishes his colleague. The journey of how he becomes a detective. In his college he is known for his inclination towards this things but this is his first true blue crime.

What kind of filmmaker are you - niche, arty, commercial

I am not arty at all. Though critics have tried to push me into this arty brigade. I enjoy have fun while making my films. During Shanghai I enjoyed the horror of contemporary India. Shanghai had the disgust rasa - Vibhatsya rasa - the political scenario shown during the film created anguish. I had kautuk rasa earlier in my films. DBB is the essential hunt we all of us want to be on. While reading Byomkesh stories during my teenage days my face used to mirror the expressions Byomkesh was going through. I have tried to transpose that feeling into the film and one you see it you are transfix. That's what I am trying to do. Some people may call it arty, some may call it commercial. For those who want me to explore such things on screen will call it commercial. For those who want me to make a pot boiler will call it niche. I am not the person you want me to become. I will always try to be different and that's what I am.

How you manage this push and pull of box office economics and creative satisfaction

By being myself and cheap.

Kindly elaborate

To be myself in making Byomkesh Bakshi and to make it with a cost 30-40 percent less than any Hollywood, Bollywood movie of this genre and style. It looks like a big film and any other Hollywood Bollywood film with such style, period, cast, planning, research will cost at least 30 - 40 percent more. It looks big but cost is small. Secondly, you start building an audience from Khosla, Oye Lucky, LSD, Shanghai, Bombay Talkies.. it takes time and after years you get something like Byomkesh and now you have a audience that knows you. A relationship is developed and that audience will come to see the film and it becomes a commercial success that's what we are hoping for.

So you never see yourself in the coveted 100, 200 crore club

Well it's a desire that my film does enter the 100, 200 crore club provided it doesn't ask me to compromise and do something I don,t want to do. People are making films which rake in 200, 300 cores probably they are making what they want to make. The day I make a film that satisfies me and brings in 300 crores will be made. Right now for me it is important to be honest and cost effective as a filmmaker and make a film which satisfies me and als