Written and directed by first time feature filmmaker, Anusha Rizvi and co-directed and cast by her husband, Mahmood Farooqui, Peepli [Live] is the story of two farmers, Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) and Budhia (Ragubir Yadav) who discover that an accumulated debt has left them vulnerable to repossession. Their farm is all they have, but with no money to repay their government loan, the family is faced with destitution. Natha's wife is furious, while his elderly mother boils with unabated fits of rage, and the implications for his young children are clear. When the brothers hear of a government program designed to assist the families of farmers who take their own life, they plan to save their farm in the only way they feel they can. What happens is a story that resonates far beyond the small (fictional) village of Peepli, where the film is set, in rural India.
As a debut, Peepli [Live] is extraordinary in its integrity. A deftly woven narrative that unfolds with no nostalgia for India's rural poor, it is a densely rich film that revolves around the stark, profound divide between rural and urban India. For Khan, Peepli [Live] is, at its heart, a film about this growing separation and how India, as a society, “tends to focus and concentrate all our energies, our wealth and our resources towards our cities and in the process ignore our villages and rural India, where the bulk of our population is.” It's also a film about survival told through the medium of satire to evoke “how each one of us in our society is doing what we feel we need to do in order to survive within our circumstances.”
Khan's significant body of work includes producing and starring in Oscar nominated Lagaan: Once Upon A Time In India, Deepa Mehta's Earth, the mainstream Hindi-language 1996 classic Raja Hindustani—for which he won his first Filmfare Best Actor Award after seven nominations—and the popular, Rang De Basanti. The actor is known for his social conscience, but is quick to stress “I don't see myself as a social activist. I see myself as an entertainer. When a person buys a ticket he's not coming to get an education in social studies, he's coming to be entertained. That's what I see as my primary responsibility to my audience.”
Yet is seems that Khan cannot entirely separate his on-screen personas from contemporary politics and Peepli [Live] is no exception. While the film is entirely a work of fiction, Khan believes the source material is firmly based in an everyday reality that many Indian nationals experience. “All that you see, the moments, the characters, what happens in the film is pretty much how things are in India,” he says. “All of it is accurate. But it is not the only reality. Satire takes one point of view. So, are all politicians like this? Is every media person like this? Is every person in the administration like this? Not really. I think there are a lot of people in our system who are trying to do a lot of good work.”
Of Peepli [Live] he says, “I think Anusha's intent is to sensitise people and get us to think. When I read the script, sure I found it funny! The lines are funny and the characters are very vibrant but it's also very heartbreaking. I think that Anusha, in a sense, is also celebrating how we are as a society. With all our problems, we are still vibrant, and we still survive.” Although Khan insists Peepli [Live] differs from mainstream Indian cinema—often known as Bollywood, which is a term that he is “uncomfortable with”—it does share a characteristic of the mainstream cinema form, that is, of hope. As Khan explains, “As a society of people making films, and [being] in the entertainment business, we have retained that hope. As an audience and as filmmakers we're not cynical as yet, about life.”
Peepli [Live] made its international debut at Sundance, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema—Dramatic, and was more recently awarded Best First Feature Film at the 31st Durban International Film Festival in South Africa. These accolades are welcome endorsements for the creative team who made some risky decisions at casting stage. In a cinema dominated by stars, Peepli [Live] is an anomaly. While the casting net was set very wide, many of the performers who secured roles were affiliated with the Indian theatre company Naya Theatre rather than the film industry. The film marks lead actor Omkar Das Manikpuri's debut. Khan confides that the team had initially been “flirting with the idea” of him playing the role of Natha in order to bring additional “eyeballs” to the film. Khan was even going to do a screen test to see if he was the right choice for the part but concedes once Manikpuri tested, it was clear he was perfect for the role.
Peepli [Live] is the fourth film for Aamir Khan's production company, after Lagaan, Taare Zameen Par—which Khan himself directed, and Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na. Former journalist, Rizvi first approached Khan to read her script in 2004 when Khan was filming Mangal Pandey. He eventually called her to read the entire script aloud over the telephone and “loved it straight away!” As a producer he says, “It is entirely her voice that I'm trying to support. I've tried to support the cast and crew and the creative team of the film, to try and make the film the way they see it”. Khan reiterates his passion for the collaborative nature of filmmaking and his love of the filmmaking process. While he was acting the lead in Rajkumar Hirani's 3 Idiots at the same time that Peepli [Live] was filming, he was available for consultation and was deeply involved in the editing of the film during post-production. “For me, cinema and filmmaking is my passion. It's my life. It's what I do everyday,” he says. “So what's also important for me is the process of making the film. It is as important as the end result. I pick films that I love and that excite me and that move me as an audience while I am reading the script. If it if it connects with me, if it touches me, if it moves me, makes me laugh or cry and really excites me then I know that this is what I want to do.”
Peepli [Live] opens nationally on August 13.
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