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Forty-eight years after Manthan released, the film’s restored version is all set to have a special run at the theatres. The re-release comes after Manthan’s cast received a red-carpet world premiere at the recently-concluded Cannes Film Festival alongside classics from Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa and Wim Wenders. Filmmaker Shyam Benegal is elated, accepting that the film never looked as good as it does today after a pain-staking restoration job.
The venerated filmmaker, 89, didn’t attend the premiere at Cannes, but is reliving the grand old days of shooting the film at a small village called Sanganva near Rajkot, Gujarat, likening the experience to ‘camping’. The analogy is not misplaced for the crew and cast of Manthan — Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Girish Karnad, Amrish Puri and Kulbhushan Kharbanda, among others — moved to the village as the film was made at a shoe-string budget — Rs 2 deducted from each farmer working with Amul, making all of them the producers of Manthan.
Now, almost five decades later, Benegal is ensconced at his Mumbai office, Sahyadri Films, surrounded by books and posters of films he’s made in his lifetime, a pile of printouts of mail stacked in front of him. The director smiles as he welcomes us, joking he’s ‘deaf for the day’ because his hearing aids conked off that morning.
Director Shyam Benegal and DOP Govind Nihlani on the sets of Manthan. (Photo: Film Heritage Foundation)
Did you watch the restored version of Manthan? How did you feel revisiting it after al these years?
Normally what happens is that when I make a film then it’s done. Full stop. I get on with something else. But here something has been revived, it is brought back. Now, this is a completely new experience even for me. I have never seen it as good as it is now. I never realised Govind Nihalani’s work was so good (laughs). I never realised that these actors had done such a wonderful work altogether. It then suddenly struck me, more than anything else, was how difficult it was to make this film because we didn’t have… everything was recorded on spot, it was sync shooting. But the funny part of it was that we were not prepared for any of that when we went there to shoot. We were shooting with a camera which was very noisy, so we had to make a mattress to lodge the camera in so it wouldn’t make so much sound. One thing or the other kept happening, it was like reinventing photography. It was quite ridiculous, the way we were working when we were shooting. It was for the first time, only after the film was restored, did I appreciate all of that.
Smita Patil and Naseeruddin Shah in a still from Manthan. (Photo: Film Heritage Foundation)
What pleases me and heartens me a lot is that this is the first time one has seen the film, I mean the print of the film, as good as it is now. Even when we shot the film, we never got a print of this quality. It is extraordinary, really. The restoration is so fantastic.
Do you have any memories from the set that stayed with you all through the year?
Of Naseer… half the time I was very worried about him because he used to smoke a lot of weed at that time and I used to get very worried whether he is going to do his work properly or not, whether he is going to fly off the handle. But when I see the film (today) it is all in one piece and that’s what amazes me, really.
Naseeruddin Shah in a still from Manthan. (Photo: Film Heritage Foundation)
Then Naseer and Smita, they were asked to wear the same costumes for all the shoot days, without changing. Naseer took it quite literally, he never changed. He was in the same clothes from the day he started shooting till the day he finished. Smita, although she wore the same clothes, was very diligent about washing them. She had two sets of clothes so she would wear one and wash one, things used to dry pretty quickly.
Smita Patil holding a baby in a still of Manthan. (Photo: Film Heritage Foundation)
I think I met that child (who was in the film). He is grown up and has children of his own, probably on to getting a grandchild. I remember him coming to see me in the office. I didn’t know who he was and he told me he was from the film.
What were the challenges you faced wile shooting the film?
For me the most important thing was that we were shooting in a village called Sanganva. We were entirely left to our own devices. It wasn’t very easy to go to town and come back every day as the closest place would be 50 miles away, so it wasn’t possible to keep travelling up and down. So what used to happen was that we were staying there as a kind of self contained unit. We were cooking for ourselves, we stayed in two houses and one of those houses was owned by the man who owned the Royal Opera House in Bombay. There were about three bedrooms in it and a big hall so we could all out our bedding down and go to sleep at night. We would roll them up in the morning and double it as our workspace. We stayed like we were camping. We were like that for about 45-50 days so we got used to that except the winters, they were dreadful. During the day we would be beset by flies and you had to keep the flies out and burn incense sticks to keep them away so we could shoot (laughs).
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