'We didn't want Jubilee to be a lesson on filmmaking'

Amazon Prime Video’s new series, Jubilee, is a grand, richly detailed, and incisive recreation of the Hindi film industry at the time of the birth of independent India. Deftly balancing the real with the fictional, it draws striking parallels at the time between political freedom and the notion of artistic liberty. Created by Vikramaditya Motwane and Soumik Sen, and written by Atul Sabharwal, Jubilee is helmed by Motwane, who joins us for a conversation about what went into the making of the ambitious series.

Excerpts: 

There have been quite a few films about making movies. Let us start with your favourites.

I think between [Federico Fellini’s] 8 1/2 and [Francois Truffaut’s] Day for Night, you’ve got essentially two masters doing their take on it. It's very difficult to think of two finer films about moviemaking, about what people in the industry go through. Most recently, I liked [Shinichirou Ueda’s] Japanese zombie film One Cut of the Dead. The idea of filmmaking, what happens behind the scenes, was so relatable. 

In casting your own gaze inwards into the industry, what approach did you decide to take?

It was always at the back of my mind to not get too indulgent, to not get too caught up in what we consider in-jokes. I think there's a fine line between letting the audience in on what you're trying to do versus being obtuse and “echo-chambery” about them. Both [scriptwriter] Atul [Sabharwal] and I wanted to make sure that the characters were compelling enough, dramatic enough to let the audience follow them, go on a journey with them. After a point, it didn’t matter whether they were from the film industry or outside, what era they belonged to. The prime example of that approach is in episode two, and it's a spoiler: when Sumitra exposes the negative. It’s one big moment and you're talking [about it] to a generation who has no idea what film means in the first place, what it means to shoot on celluloid. It’s not three or four years but almost 20 years that we’ve not been using film on a large basis. There was a lot of debate about whether it needed to be explained. Do you spoonfeed the audience about this entire process? Or do you just point out that she's doing something wrong and have them figure it out themselves? That was the key tenet that kept us going.

The period details go beyond the props, the sets, the art deco architecture, the cars and trams. You are laying bare the process of filmmaking from the past—the music, the song sequences, the edit, direction…

Yes, but always through the eyes of the characters. We were conscious of not letting it become a lesson in filmmaking. My favourite scene in the entire series [spoiler] is of Binod’s final take which Sumitra destroys. He's doing take after take, seeing Jamshed’s ghost. For me that's an example of a scene where you're seeing the process of filmmaking, you're seeing multiple takes being taken, you're seeing how a crew works, what happens behind the scenes, the magazine running out, the lighting effects. All those things are happening in the background, yet you ignore them, you're so caught up in Binod’s own desire to ace that moment. 

I think that the visual/production design should be about inhabiting a universe. There’s a tendency to love nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, there is a box that you put nostalgia into. But I have always felt that when you say period, it doesn't have to be specifically nostalgia, I think there's a little bit of going beyond that. I also think that the [series] format allows you the freedom to go deep into characters and storylines and interpersonal relationships and a lot of interesting things that you can't normally do in a feature film. I think that the magic of the series format is that you're allowed so much latitude and gravity. There’s so much material to chew on, you can build layer after layer. It’s wonderful if you do it right and the audience comes along for that ride.

There are some tantalising details—Bombay Talkies, Himanshu Rai, and the fact that Devika Rani did elope with actor Najm-Ul-Hassan—incorporated in the series… How did you negotiate the balance between the real and the fictional?

Atul got a company, Sanghamitra Chatterjee’s Past Perfect, to research for us. She made us a coffee table book and there were so many surprising things for us. The context was India and especially cinema between 1947 and 55. But the stuff we got back, for example about the Russians and the Americans, and about how the Russians had a liaison with Indian cinema, that was very interesting for us, something really cool to be able to put in. 

We would always talk about the show, and it was a bit of a joke, that “it's based on true gossip.” 

This is where being an assistant director of Sanjay [Leela Bhansali], on Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam was crucial. We shot it on film, we also edited it on film, we went mixing and dubbing and it was all in 35mm. So, I had this lovely, deep dive, I was immersed in this world of celluloid, which very quickly disappeared after that. So, there is a kind of love for the movies and a lot for the making of it and the people behind it. I found a similar kind of love for the movies in my collaborator Atul and for the oral stories that we'd heard over the years. So, that love for cinema distilled itself over 20 years. Whether it's an urban legend, little tributes here and there through movies or through stories, or a shot of Jay’s torn shoes while he's walking. It's not obviously paying tribute, but those who know would know [where it’s coming from].

There’s a fascinating story about your own family’s connect with early Indian cinema and the freedom movement. Your series is also very heart-warming in how inextricably it links the evolution of Hindi cinema and artistic freedom with that of the birth of independent India…

I've grown up with the story of how my family, the manufacturer of Chicago Radio, was at the forefront of the public broadcast systems and through that connected to the leaders of the independence movement. No one spoke about Andolan, the movie that they made. It was much later when I started working as an assistant director that my grandmother told me about it. I thought it was very fascinating to see how your love for the movies runs deeper than you know. My grandfather wanted to tell the story of India's independence. I understand why the film didn't work in its time; I think it was too close to the Partition. The ambition in that film was interesting. I think there was a similar ambition in a lot of filmmakers back then, in the kind of stories they were trying to tell and how cinema was politically linked. Raj Kapoor was making socialist films. At the same time, there were films about underdogs which were being made in a more capitalistic way, which is what Guru Dutt and Dev Anand were doing. They all existed in the same ecosystem. They were all talking about a country and its growing pains. It is something that we tried drawing from, in the series as well. It is a country growing up. We see it through Jay’s struggles at the grassroots and through Roy’s struggles at the top.

And there’s the assertion of the independence of the filmmaker. Roy talking about being a monkey, jumping about on his own, than becoming a horse that anyone and everyone can ride. How much of a monkey have you and your team been?

Amazon, especially Aparna [Purohit, head of India originals], have been amazingly supportive in this process. They go with the excitement of a creator on a pitch level as opposed to going very micro and trying to read every line. Even their process of feedback was fantastic, where you give them 10 scripts, and their notes are one line as opposed to large files full of notes. 

But I do think there’s a lot to do with Atul. I was doing Sacred Games while he was writing this. We had to push the series by a couple of years. He had time then to really work on the script, taking two or three months on drafts. So, a lot of material that was coming my way was just beautiful to read. I think that's the excitement that kept the crew involved as well. Everybody's reaction on reading the material was like, wow, this is great, I can't wait to get going. I think that excitement kept us going through the pandemic. It’s very hard normally to delay something and to keep it good. It's such hard work and you're giving a commitment of multiple months, sometimes years, to projects, that it's very hard to get people to stay on, if there's a break. But every single crew member said it's fine, we're on this. And I think that is a testament to the material that we had. 

A lot of care has gone in the casting as well.

Absolutely, we wanted Prasenjit [Chatterjee] and Aditi [Rao Hydari] right from the beginning, and they didn’t go through an audition process. I think the rest of it was a very arduous process, especially for Niloufar. We went through a lot of auditions. Hats off to Casting Bay because of the very inspired casting they did across the board and not just the main characters. Even the casting of Meena [Suhani Popli], for example, or Jay’s father [Arun Govil]. I think it was an inspired move to audition Apar [Aparshakti Khurana] for Binod Das. I had no idea who Sidhant [Gupta, plays Jay Khanna] was, I hadn’t seen his work. I had no idea who Wamiqa [Gabbi, plays Niloufar] was. She auditioned and I thought she was good. We did a look test with her and then I just decided not to cast her. It was during the pandemic that I had time to back and look at all the things—script, casting. I got onto Instagram because of a live chat I had done on it with you. Because of that, I stumbled upon Wamiqa's handle and I found that she was so chhichhori [playful, flippant] and I thought that it was interesting. While there's all this style and the way of speaking, there's something very human about her. So, we auditioned her again. 

What was the reason for choosing the thriller, noir narrative…

It’s a tribute of sorts to the filmmaking of the era. Like the scene in episode 4 [spoiler] when Maqsood [Narottam Bain] comes to Bombay, he's trying to meet Binod and he talks to Sumitra in the car. That whole scene plays out like a noir thriller moment where nothing is said, he's walking, she's looking, she's looking, he's looking, and he walks away... But for Pratik [Shah, cinematographer] and me, it wasn’t just about aping a style of shooting that happened back in the past. The idea was to stay within the realm of storytelling of the day, what would be possible in the 40s and the 50s but not to make it feel like we're being very strict with ourselves. So, the only rule was no hand-held camera. But, in shooting the film within the film we try to be as authentic as possible. It was a lot of fun to pay tribute, in a sense, to the songs from Pyaasa and Awara.  When you are doing your own version, it is always so cool to say, there’re a couple of shots that are very obviously paying tribute but the rest of it is our own interpretation of what became a generic song format afterward. 

Lastly, how does the Mumbai filmmaking community from back then resonate with you as a member of the industry now? 

I think what ties the filmmaking of that era with today’s is the ambition. That ambition of being able to try something that’s one of its kind.