The Hindu : National : All set to face the challenge

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Wednesday, Sep 07, 2005

National

National

All set to face the challenge

Special Correspondent

Director Rituparno Ghosh is planning to make a bilingual film on Draupadi

Rituparno Ghosh

KOLKATA: Director Rituparno Ghosh is planning to go where even India's best-known filmmaker Satyajit Ray had feared to tread. He has announced that he will be making a Hindi-English feature film on Draupadi. Mr. Ghosh is willing to face the challenge, saying that to him the Mahabharata was not a religious text but an epic.

"It is the most difficult film that I have made .... Ray had also thought of it once.... the complexity of the relationships in the epic are difficult to communicate," he said.

With a film on Draupadi around the corner, star names can never be far behind. Sushmita Sen, Bipsaha Basu and Rani Mukherjee are the names suggested in the grapevine. But the award-winning director is unwilling to confirm and only said that she would have to be dark. But he disclosed that he would draw actors from the South, Gujarat and other provinces, to reflect the demographic hues of the epic.

The shooting is expected to start by March 2006 and is planned to be done mostly in the city. "It will not be a spectacular costume drama. Rather it will be a stark film which will explore the various moods of the characters and the intricacies of the relationships of the characters in the epic."

Mr. Ghosh said that B.R. Chopra's small screen depiction did have a "definite impact on viewers" but his effort would not be a takeoff either from B.R. Chopra or that of Peter Brooks.

He had been reading up voraciously and had also consulted international experts on the Mahabharata to understand the international psyche on the epic better. The film would not be longer than two hours, he said.

Mr. Ghosh has signed up with Saregama Films, an R.P. Goenka enterprise for this movie, making Draupadi his first such venture. Mr. Ghosh's films have never lost money. It remains to be seen whether he can replicate his magic for the RPG with his epic venture.

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