Exclusive: I didn’t watch Umrao Jaan’s remake; the audience won’t allow its contamination either, says Muzaffar Ali

“I was working for Air India while making Umrao Jaan. Mr. Ratan Tata was gracious and said, “Don't we have employees who play cricket and hockey? Let him make his movie.” After six months into the film’s making, I decided to quit the job because I realised the film will take almost 3 years to be made. But Air India was extremely generous”

Come next week, Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan will be back in theatres, 44 years after its release. On June 26, ahead of its premiere in Mumbai, the veteran filmmaker will launch a book dedicated to his celebrated film.

In a conversation with us, the filmmaker takes us down a nostalgic path as he revisits his timeless classic. Excerpts:How would you describe Umrao Jaan, a film that went on to become a classic?Umrao Jaan is a serious tragedy, a tale of entrapment. The story revolves around a woman’s helplessness and, at the same time, her resilience to face reality. When she wipes a mirror in which she sees herself, she comes to terms with what’s happened to her. It’s about the realisation of losing yourself. The whole Lucknow ambience was so compelling and romantic that it gave birth to the persona of Rekha.

Your story is rooted in Lucknow and it’s fascinating how you cast Rekha, a south Indian actress for lead and made Asha Bhosle, a Maharashtrian singer, her voice.Only Shahryar (lyricist) and I were from Lucknow. Farooq Shaikh was Gujarati, and the legendary music director Khayyam was Punjabi, yes. I wanted to break this myth of who’s from where. They belong to the world. When I chose Rekha, I realized that there was this resilience in her eyes which could make her fall and rise in the same moment.

She can be broken and not defeated. I couldn't see that in anybody else. I found in her a sense of total surrender. For this film, she knew something organic was taking place in her system to become what she could never become otherwise.

Had she been reluctant about it, she wouldn’t have reached where she did. She flowed with the wind. She was weightless. Ashaji and I had a lot of discussion, and she asked a lot of questions. Shahryar (lyricist) would complain, ‘why do you make me do women's poetry’? Mushkil nahi hai, kuch bhi agar thaan lijiye.

He created that kind of optimism for a woman who was abducted from her home. That was special.What inspired you to cinematically narrate this story, which is based on Mirza Hadi Ruswa’s 1899 Urdu novel Umrao Jaan Ada?A lot of our imagination is based on truth. So, Umrao Jaan, for the writer, Mirza Ruswa, was also a compendium of many characters he must have met in life. Coming from Awadh, I wanted to tell the story of this region.

I realized that many people who've come from Awadh have got lost in the ocean of Bollywood. They had these beautiful nuances, words and cultural imagination, which became a part of someone else's agenda. So, all these rich minds that went into Bollywood, they were not themselves, you know what I mean? Particularly the poets.

Even Sahir Ludhianvi was not himself, in that sense. All these people probably had as rich an imagination as mine, and that imagination needed freedom.

So, for me, it was that liberated mindset, which could create an authentic artistic statement. I wanted to tell the story of Umrao Jaan the way I felt it. Be it Umrao or the protagonist, who’s a taxi driver in my film Gaman (1978), the latter doesn’t realize that he would go to Mumbai and drive a taxi with no freedom and reason to come back to his village.

Umrao was also trapped in a situation where she couldn't get out of it, and she then was also unacceptable in her own home.

This was many people's predicament in Bollywood.

How did you navigate artistic vision and commercial expectations while making Umrao Jaan?This is a good question because we were all battling between art and commerce at the time. Umrao Jaan is not a box office potboiler. My film was costless; it was the most inexpensive film made at the time. I don’t think expensive, and opulence translates into emotion. Fortunately, I didn't struggle as much because I was working for Air India while making the film. After six months into the film’s making, I myself decided to quit the job because I realised the film will take almost 3 years to be made.

Mr. Ratan Tata was gracious and said, “Don't we have employees who play cricket and hockey? Let him make his movie.” I worked for them for 11 years. They were extremely generous. What were your views on the remake of Umrao Jaan made by JP Dutta starring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan?I didn't watch the remake but saw bits of it and I didn't find anything. I didn't want to disturb my own world of Umrao Jaan. I had no point of reference when I made Umrao jaan. My point of reference was me looking inside. The remake’s point of reference was my film.

They had to reinterpret it to make it look originally different and that’s not an easy step. The thing is that people don't understand the kind of layering that goes into a film that’s emotional and artistic.

You're telling the story of textiles, the story of sunsets and sunrises in Awadh. You're telling the story of this light going into Rekha's eyes and coming out as a tear, so these are the nuances that the story contains.

It is not my story now. I'm very fortunate that it has gone into a domain where viewers are the fortress protecting the film. They won’t allow any contamination. They want the purity of what Rekha could present to the audience. A melody which goes into people’s souls cannot be erased by some limb shaking music. If you were to make the film today, who would you cast as the lead?It's not easy for Umrao Jaan to find Rekha and for Rekha to find Umrao Jaan. There were layers of preparation that went into essaying this role. You must also be the right age. Kareena has something. Alia has something. They have a lot of magic, but I can't say till I open the book. I think actors today work in shifts. They have too many commitments, they're spread out too thin, so they don't immerse themselves in their roles as much as they should.

Also, it's not just them, everybody is in a hurry these days. Everyone’s attention span has depleted.