Subhash Ghai has been a legend in Hindi cinema for decades now. His films in the ’80s and the ’90s were on everyone’s watchlist. Some of his films like Ram Lakhan, Pardes and Taal have become cult classics over the years and I can’t even count how many times I have seen each one of them. There is a nostalgia attached to the filmmaker and his films and thus, when he returned to production this year with 36 Farmhouse, after a seven years gap, I was thrilled.
Over the last decade, Ghai has focused his concentration in majorly producing films, and direction has taken a back seat, with the 2014 release Kaanchi: The Unbreakable featuring Kartik Aaryan and Mishti being his only directorial during this while. But being an ardent follower of his cinema, I couldn’t help myself but ask the filmmaker if he plans to come back on the director’s chair. And he has a hopeful response for me.
He says,
“Why not? And why returning, it’s just continuing. Coming back is a bad word because I had been constantly working throughout. So, the day I feel like that ‘Subhash Ghai, this will be your best’, and best, not better, then I will direct that film. I don’t want to direct because of routine, to earn money or just because people are asking me to.”
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The filmmaker insists that he needs to feel that connect with the script to take up direction for it, but he hasn’t felt that in a long time, even during Kaanchi, and maybe that’s why it didn’t connect to the audience as much.
Ghai states,
“I tried making Kaanchi, but I wasn’t feeling good about it. Even while making it, I was thinking why my company was forcing me to do it because I didn’t want to. I’ll make a film when I find a script that I think will be the best Indian film of the year. If I have to make one last film, shouldn’t that be better than my previous work? I am just waiting for that script.”
