‘Phule’ director Ananth Mahadevan on the controversy over the film, facing cliques in serious cinema circles, pushing boundaries with each film, and why he doesn’t belong in Bollywood
Ananth Mahadevan is the kind of filmmaker who earns your attention, not demands it. Over decades, across languages and platforms, he has determinedly built a body of work that refuses the easy sentimentality and grandstanding often seen in what we lazily call ‘mainstream’ Indian cinema. As actor, screenwriter, and director, Mahadevan, 74, has remained faithful to a different kind of cinema that rages against the idea of run-of-the-mill potboilers and underscores that filmmaking can still be a thinking person’s medium. If there’s a lesson to be drawn from his cinema, it’s that seriousness doesn’t always have to reek of self-importance. It can come, instead, with a kind of humility that Mahadevan has made his signature.
Despite his reputation as a cerebral filmmaker with a substantial body of work, Mahadevan has often been sidelined by the country’s self-proclaimed ‘serious cinema’ circles. “The so-called champions of offbeat or out-of-the-box cinema have formed their own cliques. They have their own supporters, who pat each other on the back and push each other. But they — for reasons I don’t quite understand — very conveniently ignore, avoid, or simply refuse to acknowledge my efforts toward trying to do something different,” Mahadevan tells The Federal over phone. “I am a filmmaker. I love my movies, but I don’t belong in this world,” he adds.
As a filmmaker, Mahadevan remains steadfast in his mission: to make films that can stand tall on the global stage, unburdened by the stereotypes often associated with Bollywood, as Hindi cinema is known around the world. Asked if his ‘outsider’ status comes from picking stories others don’t, and from not belonging to any arthouse group, he answers sharply: “I don’t even want to use the word ‘arthouse.’ It’s become a cliché now.” His films are frequently labelled ‘art’ or ‘festival cinema,’ but he rejects these labels: “I want my films to speak the language of global cinema.”
‘Row over Phule uncalled for’
Mahadevan’s latest film, Phule, which released in theatres on April 25, is a natural extension of his approach as a filmmaker and his worldview. In telling the story of Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule — two of the most radical, disruptive figures in Indian history — he resists every temptation that a lesser filmmaker might have succumbed to. The film attempts to showcase how two people brought about real change in the society through education. Phule, which received a ‘U’ certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) after some requested edits, including removing references to ‘Mahar’, ‘Mang’, ‘Peshwai’, and modifying the phrase ‘3,000 saal purani ghulami (3,000 years of slavery) to ‘kai saal purani ghulami’ (many years of slavery).
“The controversy was totally uncalled for,” Mahadevan says. Phule, to him, was never about provocation. “This film represents history — it doesn’t reinterpret it, nor does it have any agenda of its own,” he says. “When you set out to make a film on icons like Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule, you don’t think about any backlash. You’re dealing with a fearless couple who stood up to incredible odds in their time — fighting to bring sanity to society, promoting equality, and working to eradicate gender discrimination and the caste system.”
Phule was scheduled to release on April 11, the birth anniversary of Jyotiba Phule, but got delayed by two weeks after the outrage over its trailer. “People reacted based on a two-minute trailer or a few snippets, without even watching the full film,” Mahadevan observes. “Some communities (including Brahmins) started claiming that the film had wronged or misrepresented them.” How does this affect a filmmaker who approaches his subject with sincerity and a commitment to historical accuracy? I ask. “It throws you off guard. It disappoints you and makes you wonder: Have we really evolved as a society? Have we become more conscious as citizens? It makes you question the kind of society we’re living in. Have we actually progressed or have we regressed? Because at this point, it doesn’t feel like history anymore. It feels like the present. It’s as if we’re stuck in a loop, reliving the same unresolved issues a century later.”
‘I want to be a responsible filmmaker’
Jyotirao and Savitribai, he says, were committed to correcting social wrongs. “When people start protesting in a narrow-minded and trivial fashion against something that has happened in history, it often feels like a projection of some sort of collective guilty conscience — an unwillingness to admit to the faults of our ancestors or to be self-critical,” says Mahadevan. When the criticism took a casteist turn, Mahadevan felt compelled to bring up his own Brahmin identity. “Frankly, I didn’t want to do that. But when members of the Brahmin community protested, I had to put my foot down and say, ‘I’m a Brahmin, too, and an orthodox Tam Brahm at that; we must be self-critical. Mistakes were made. Why can’t we admit that? You can’t accuse me of denigrating Brahmins because I’m one of you.’”
Also read: 'Phule' film postponed, CBFC asks for 'caste references' to be removed
Jyotirao and Savitribai faced hostility from the untouchables and the downtrodden because the latter had been blinded by faith, says Mahadevan. “They had been blinded by a social system that brainwashed them into thinking they didn’t belong to general society, and they had no right to education, and all they had to do was get children married off during childhood. So, the duo had to undo the damage first. Only then could they think of development. They had quite a task on their hands. And whether it’s the oppressed community or the high priests of society, I guess they all behave the same way at some point in time. And they all need corrective measures.”
There is no self-pity in his tone, only a profound sense of dismay. It’s the horror of witnessing the erosion of reasoned discourse at a time when historical understanding is sacrificed at the altar of instant, often ill-informed, outrage. “If this film had been made in the 1960s or ’70s, I don’t think it would’ve drawn this kind of ire,” says Mahadevan. “I just want to be a responsible filmmaker — socially relevant, and above all, honest. As far as creative liberty and freedom go, I believe they should exist, but within certain limits. I don’t support gore, abuse, or insult under the guise of creative freedom. Too much is taken too far in today’s cinema or on the web,” he adds.
‘Not a conventional biopic’
Phule, says Mahadevan, is not a conventional biopic. “Normally, biopics tend to glorify the protagonist. He’s faultless and he’s a hero, and it goes on in a very bland way to episodically recreate the life that was lived,” he states. His approach with Phule was markedly different, driven by a sense of urgency and a desire to capture the resolve of Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule, two people who ignited a social revolution. He recounts the key moment when Jyotirao discovered the child bride Savitribai with a book, which led to his decision to educate her. This seemingly simple act sparked a radical strategy. “If the girl child wasn’t being allowed to be tutored by men because the high priest of society so ordained it,” Mahadevan explains, quoting Jyotirao’s logic, “women must educate women.” Together with Savitribai and Fatima Sheikh, they embarked on a journey to become India’s first women teachers, devising a new language of resistance against caste discrimination, gender inequality, the plight of widows, and colonial oppression.
The casting of Pratik Gandhi and Patralekha was a conscious decision to move away from the familiar trappings of commercial films. “Pratik morphed into the sketches while I was writing the script,” Mahadevan recalls with a sense of wonder. Lacking photographic references, his DOP relied on historical sketches for the characters. The look test, he describes, was “almost magical,” so much so that they recreated two iconic sketches for the film’s poster: one depicting Jyotiba leading the way with Savitribai following, books in hand, and another showing Jyotiba seated at a desk with Savitribai standing beside him. “It was crucial, he stresses, that audiences saw ‘Savitri, not XYZ’, avoiding the common pitfall in biopics where “the audience sees the star/actor and not the character.” He commends Patralekha for having “internalised the part.”
The conversation veers towards the politics surrounding biopics. In recent years, there’s been a wave of biopics lately — Savarkar, Tanhaji, Chhaava, and many more — with a certain ideological line. Does Mahadevan believe that biopics must toe a particular line to avoid backlash? His stance is resolute. “No. Then you’re being unjust to the subject, and history.” While acknowledging the validity of creative interpretation in historical films, citing Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood as a masterful reimagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, he insists that when dealing with historical figures like Jyotirao and Savitribai, the moral compass must be clear. “It is so clear as to what the protagonists want, what the antagonists are talking about, and where the fault lines lie. To dilute that clarity would be not only a creative betrayal but a moral one.”
Pushing boundaries as a filmmaker
Reflecting on the trajectory of Indian cinema, his assessment is candid and critical. Except for some masters up to the 1970s — he lists luminaries like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, Tapan Sinha, Girish Kasaravalli, Adoor Gopalkrishnan, G. Aravindan, and Shaji N. Karun — he believes Indian cinema has largely fallen short of the standard it boasted of once. In the Hindi film industry, he acknowledges the contributions of other giants such as Bimal Roy and V. Shantaram, as well as the pioneers of the New Wave like Kumar Shahani, Mani Kaul, Shyam Benegal, and Govind Nihalani. “After that,” he admits bluntly, “I haven’t seen someone who is a complete filmmaker, with an ability to put India on the international map.”
For Mahadevan, filmmaking has been a solitary and arduous journey, marked by the constant struggle to convince financiers and corporate entities to support his brand of films. “I owe my cinema education to the masters of Europe, America Japan and Russia,” he explains, naming directors like François Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, and Agnès Varda. “When I look at their cinema — their language, their style — I realise we are nowhere close to the kind of thinking and creative visualisation they had. I feel very, very small.” Sometimes, he even finds himself questioning, “What am I doing? This is not cinema.”
Also read: What made BJP consider giving Bharat Ratna to Jyotirao, Savitribai Phule?
But he remains focused on his craft. With each film, he pushes his boundaries, “not to prove to anyone or anything, but to myself that, yes, I can improve as a filmmaker.” For his last Hindi film, The Storyteller (2022), an adaptation of a Bengali short story (‘Golpo Boliye Tarini Khuro’) by Satyajit Ray, he knocked at the doors of eight different producers just to see it come to fruition. It’s an exhausting process, but he deems it necessary given the entrenched mindsets he constantly confronts. He points out the hypocrisy even within the bastions of alternative cinema. “When I go out with my films to film festivals, they literally scoff, and go, ‘Aw, Bollywood!’ Now, I have to convince them: ‘come and watch it.’” Only after experiencing his work, he says, are they convinced that “this is international.”
‘A creative process, not technical’
As we wrap, he poses a poignant question: “Why,” he asks, “must Indian filmmakers still literally go to the world with a begging bowl, trying to convince them that we are capable of making world-class cinema. If an Iran with all its economic backwardness and war situations can produce masters like Asghar Farhadi or Majid Majidi or Abbas Abbas Kiarostami, why can’t a country like India think like that? This is something that baffles me. I have not found the answer, but I continue, my war continues.”
With his oeuvre — fiercely independent, but never compromised in its artistic vision —Mahadevan fights for an idea of Indian cinema that is bold, authentic, and unapologetically global in its aspirations. How would he distill the essence of his filmmaking? “It has to be for today’s audience. Your technique must match the times. You cannot work with outdated methods. But if you notice, in the old films, no one ever spoke about technique. They spoke about substance. They noticed the story, the subject. Without a strong story, a meaningful subject, or a point to make, even the most cutting-edge technique will fail. You cannot have style over substance.”
He adds that a filmmaker has to keep up with the latest technology — whether it’s VFX, AI, or any new development — and he/she should know how to use it, if they choose to use it at all. “But you cannot depend blindly on technique and assume today’s audience only responds to slick visuals. You cannot make something just to please Gen Z or else fear they won’t accept it. That’s where we are going wrong. Cinema is a creative process, not a technical one. You have to win hearts first before you win the eye.”
Mahadevan says one has to be very careful while addressing today’s audiences because their tolerance levels — in cinema and in personal relationships like marriage — have drastically dropped. “How do you address this? You have to be aware that you only get one shot to connect. And you must accept that India is too huge and too diverse a country for any overnight change — whether economically, politically, or socially. Entertainment is just a small part of that. You have to cultivate audiences slowly, carefully, even if you begin with just 0.1% of over a billion people. That small fraction matters, because it is the audience that will eventually grow and spread the word.”
