Bollywood actor Taapsee Pannu has dabbled in several genres over the years. But no one can do social dramas as intensely as her. This is because Taapsee has the ability to touch hearts with her versatile performances. Which is exactly what she did in her latest courtroom drama, Assi. The Anubhav Sinha film, which released in theatres last week, follows the story of a lawyer named Advocate Raavi, who takes on a powerful case involving sexual assault and fights for justice. But does a good story and a strong performance pull audiences to cinema halls the same way a larger than life film like Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar did? During a recent interview on The Right Angle with Sonal Kalra, Taapsee shared his views on the same.
During the segment Chief Managing Editor Sonal Kalra, Entertainment and Lifestyle, Hindustan Times, asked Taapsee Pannu, “The team of Assi has taken a beautiful but very bold step to actually make a film on such a subject which has been normalised, as you rightly said, in our mind somewhere in our subconscious. But abhi kya ho raha hai naa, when films, for instance, when a Dhurandhar does well, a completely different genre and everything, but when a big film does well, people start to believe that it’s only something larger than life either in intensity or violence or the scale of it, is what’s going to bring people to the theaters. In such a scenario to make a film which is going to be an uncomfortable watch, but a true watch, where does one get that kind of a confidence?”
Replying to the same, Taapsee Pannu shared, “I actually don’t understand that, how is it comforting to watch that violence that’s actually purely fictional, as they claim, and how it is not normal to watch this on screen. This is also violence, that is violence too. That violence is okay, you know, sometimes I, I don’t want to take names, but we get U/A certificate for the most violent of films. And our film is A, Assi. I understand it’s a hard watch and, you know, you need to have a certain age for a conversation, but I really wish we could talk to our kids because it’s them who are actually growing up and becoming these adults who either go through it or do this.”
The actor went on to explain, “There are reports of 10, 11, 13 year old boys in Delhi who raped a 6-year-old girl. It is not an adult crime anymore, it looks like. Juveniles are doing it as well. 10, 11, 13-year-old, how do they even know what this is? So for me, this is actually, extremely violent. So if people like to watch violence onscreen, let’s not, then demarcate, ‘Okay, this violence is okay, this violence is not okay.’ Then watch all types of violence. Also, I feel it’s nice to watch these larger than life big films. Of course, we enjoy them. But do you eat the same type of food every day? Do you eat a Mughlai or a Chinese or an Asian cuisine, or, you know… but you do want to feel like having dal chawal someday. Yeah, so it’s, I feel like all types of cinema has different flavour, different palette to it. If you like one and decide we’re only going to watch this one, our cinema is gonna start looking like template, and, and we’re not going to show the variety that our industry, our country is capable of producing. And then how will we compete with world cinema, which is like just challenging the norms and templates on a yearly basis. We will just make those fixed template films.”
Taapsee further stated, “Also I think there’s an ignorance out there for people to feel that, ‘Oh, this film is okay to be watched on OTT.’ You know, the ‘not the event films’, but I have been telling them during the course of the promotions of this film, the reality of the matter is OTTs don’t want these kind of films either, which are not big scale event-based. Their clear mandate states that they want to take only those films which are box office success. So, soon there will be a time that we won’t even have these kind of films, Assi kind of films for even OTT. So that’s the reality of the matter. So I understand you’ll say ‘Oh, every good film finds an audience.’ But I’m not sure in the future, very near future, actually. So if you really want to retain the variety in our cinema, and if you like the trailer, I’m not asking for a charity that ‘Okay, please come and watch my film.’ I’m like, just, if you like the trailer and you feel like giving it a chance, give it a chance in theater. Might just make more such, you know, breaking the template kind of films happen for our industry.”
Have you watched Assi in theatres yet?