Mumbai, May 30: Ananth Mahadevan’s film Red Alert that’s slated for a July is based on the Naxal movement; Vinod Khanna plays a Kobad Gandhy-like character
When Mumbai filmmaker Ananth Mahadevan started work on his Naxal film, Red Alert-The War Within nearly three years ago, the idea came to him after reading a real-life report in a newspaper.
“Today,” says Mahadevan, “It is unfortunate that Red Alert will be releasing at a time when there is an upsurge in Naxal violence and urban Indians have realised that the movement is not just at our door but practically inside it. I don’t want headlines to drive my movie, thought.”
The film is slated to release on July 16. When the director set out to make the film, he didn’t believe Naxals would make a great subject. But a newspaper report about a common man with no clue about the Red movement inadvertently drawn into the violence, lured him. “thought to myself, here is cinematic material. It is uncanny now, how many real life incidents of violence are mirroring scenes in my film.”
Mahadevan says the coincidences stretch to the characters too. In Red Alert, there is a Kobad Gandhy-like character, urbane, suave, leading the Naxalite movement, played by Vinod Khanna. “When I created ‘Krishnraj’ for the film, I had no idea about Gandhy. A year or two later, shocked Mumbaikars read about Kobad Gandhy in the papers.”
The filmmaker says that we should remember that the Naxal movement was a bourgeois, upper class movement. “In 1960s-70s Kolkata especially, professors and students were part of the movement. It is not restricted to the poor or have-nots.
Most people are angry with corruption in the government,” Mahadevan added.
Mahadevan says the film has a gritty feel, with dialogues that are far from fabricated. Real-life from footage and reports make sure the lines are volatile.
Another coincidence
In what is yet another co-incidence, The Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) is holding a talk on the Indian State’s War on People on Wednesday, June 2, at 5.30 pm at Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh.
The press release states, ‘Arundhati Roy and Gautam Navlakha will be speaking on the occasion. Both of them have visited and stayed with the Maoists in the jungles of Bastar.’
———-Agencies