"Filmmaking is like a fever"
V. Gangadhar

MOST of the students in the journalism schools I teach in Mumbai want to write like Khalid Mohamed. He is the most discussed film critic-cum-writer among the students. How did he acquire this style? Why is he cynical? Isn’t he a bit like Mr Jingle in Pickwick Papers? These are some of the questions I had to handle. A film critic for over 25 years, 22 of which he spent with The Times of India, Khalid is now very much a film man. His stories Mammo, Sardari Begum and Zubeida have been filmed, while Fiza marked his directorial debut. Khalid is now directing Tehzeeb, starring Shabana Azmi, Urmila Matondkar and Arjun Rampal. In a recent 90-minute-long interview, Khalid Mohamed talks about films, film criticism, and his experiences in direction.

My grandfather owned two theatres in Mumbai and film-going became a habit, a high. To watch ‘adults only’ films, I’d force my cousin Salma to loan me her burqa and would sneak in for movies like Psycho. My friends in school thought I was an oddity because I loved Hindi commercial films as well as the more artistic ones like Raj Kapoor’s Jagte Raho and Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin. Then I discovered Hollywood with Jerry Lewis’ Geisha Girl and William Wyler’s Ben Hur.

In college I found a group of like-minded friends, who’ve lasted to date. We edited a film society journal called Close Up. We were only 15 but director Basu Chatterjee trusted us enough to give us the job. We’d also watch films made by masters like Satyajit Ray, Luis Bunuel and, of course, Jean Paul Godard and Robert Bress. Addiction to films at that stage was both juvenile and adult. I was steeped into Czech, French and Japanese cinema but at the same time did not want my friends to know I was writing fan letters to Shashi Kapoor and Sharmila Tagore. Yes, I was hooked to films for life.

Oh, I wanted to do so many things like becoming a lawyer. Failed to make it as an Air-India purser. I spent one day at an ad agency but was dissuaded from coming back by other employees who warned I’d be miserable there. For one month, I edited a transport journal, and was turned down by Star & Style magazine. By that time I’d completed my MA and then got into The Times of India as a trainee journalist.

Initially, I avoided film journalism as it was thought to be ‘inferior’. I was a reporter but did occasional reviews for Evening News and Filmfare. When Bikram Singh became Editor of Filmfare, I was asked to take over the job of reviewing films for The Times of India. I continued to be the paper’s film critic for the next 20 years even after becoming Editor of Filmfare. My association with The Times of India group lasted 27 years, eight of them as Editor of Filmfare.

Was it special, I mean, being the film critic of The Times of India?

I really don’t know. But please, I never felt self-important. What critics write doesn’t mean a damn to the larger ticket-buying public. There was a time when it was even believed that if the newspaper praised a film, it flopped and if a film was panned, it became a hit. That did have an element of sour grapes, though. I think the role of the film critic has begun to get appreciated for the past 10 years or so. In big cities, reviews are taken seriously by filmmakers and readers. Filmmakers, of course, always want to be showered with praise, but that is not possible in nine cases out of ten.

Cynical is the wrong word. Actually the worse the film, the better was my writing! You could be peppy, horse around a bit, adopt a tongue-in-cheek style. You can’t experiment too much while reviewing a serious film though. That is an entire discipline and craft altogether.

No, never. Occasionally, there was some unpleasantness. Bikram Singh had panned Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika but when I had my bit to say about his Junoon there was this knee-jerk reaction: "Oh, who does this upstart think he is?" It was entirely humbling for me though when years later, Shyam turned out to be a perfect gentleman and we worked together on Mammo. Only Shyam and Ramesh Sippy are absolutely professional in their reaction to criticism. On the other hand, there is Subash Ghai who can’t stomach criticism, even when he made trash like Yaadein.

No one ever dared to offer inducements for favourable reviews. But in the case of Filmfare awards, there would be carrots dangled by filmmakers. One would have to tell them coldly to take a walk. Fortunately, I did not have to depend on my income from journalism for a living.

I understand your point of view. But don’t forget that our stars have the toughest job, handling the most ridiculous roles ever created. Yet actors like Dilip Kumar, Naseeruddin Shah, Sanjeev Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan, overcame this problem, they excelled even in rubbish films. When I began directing films, I could see how actors added their inputs to the script and how involved they were in giving their best in front of the camera. Actors, by and large, are superior to the stuff they are given to do. Watch Kajol in Bekhudi, you will know what I mean.

Despite bad reviews, most of the stars still wanted to be interviewed and written about. If your daughter did something wrong, would you hesitate to blast her? Throughout my career I was harsher with my friends and softer on others. A critic has to be balanced, has to walk a tightrope. It’s not always easy, but it has to be done. Otherwise he’s finished.

I am a film-oriented journalist and not a film personality-oriented one. Filmfare used to be film-oriented to a degree once but is now a ‘fanzine’. I tried to keep it as lively, clean and entertaining as I could. But my heart belonged to the newspaper.

I’d like to think writing is my forte, while filmmaking is like a fever. Before directing Fiza, I’d done a body of work as a scriptwriter and on television series, where I grasped the technical aspects. When you reviewed films, you kept track of the assets and demerits. And when you directed, you tried to avoid the mistakes you had noticed in the execution of shots, the colour schemes, the set designs and the performances.

I have great respect for their talent. We discussed the script in detail before we shot, sometimes I acted out a scene in the manner I really wanted it. The stars, let me tell you, displayed immense grasping power.

It is natural that my films have a Muslim background. My women characters are always very strong. I draw them from real life, from my family. The film features Shabana Azmi and Urmila in a mother-daughter relationship. The mother is a famous playback singer, the daughter doesn’t want to linger in her shadow and opts for a life of domesticity.

Many of them, including Subash Ghai, who was asked by The Times of India to review the film, failed to understand the issue and the point of the film. I was dealing with communal schisms which are created by vested interests. But this did not matter to most of the critics whose reviews were extremely personal, more about me than my film. I was expected to adopt an extremely arty, abstruse approach. But being a votary of commercial cinema, I didn’t contrive at any particular approach. Journalists should have been supportive, like some of them indeed were, that one of their tribe was making a film. That kind of solidarity did not happen. The film did extremely well despite efforts at a misinformation campaign that it had failed at the box office.

I was shocked at the unnecessary and vicious anti-Muslim sentiments in a film like Hero. But apart from such table-thumping and rabble-rousing, Bollywood is still very much secular.

Well, the management said, ‘No more movies, no more film scripts, no more direction’. I had to make a choice and quit. It was a wrench, a difficult decision. Of course, I miss the newspaper, it was like home.