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Antim: The Final Truth, a remake of the Marathi film
Mulshi Pattern (2018) that featured him in a pivotal role. In a chat with BT, Mahesh talks about how he convinced Salman Khan to break the mould, why he feels Aayush Sharma has Sanjay Dutt-like qualities and more. Excerpts:
Mahesh, you shot Antim: The Final Truth during a very challenging phase of your life — it was at the time when you were battling cancer. At what stage of the shoot did you discover your health condition?
For two years, I was actually getting myself treated for a condition, an overactive bladder. But when I underwent a cystoscopy, I was anticipating that it might turn out to be cancer. I knew that I would have to undergo chemotherapy and surgery, post which I would need a few months to recuperate. In my case, the chemotherapy didn’t affect me much. I needed three months to recuperate post-surgery, so I wrapped up most of the work on the film. We didn’t want anyone to know that I had been diagnosed with cancer, but a few days post my surgery, the word spread. It was out of the blue that I had some sort of an attack, which triggered extensive treatment. I had to take a gap in the shoot for treatment. I had to let Salman and Aayush know that I was diagnosed with cancer. Salman advised me to go abroad and get it treated, but I decided to get myself treated here. Salman was very concerned, but when he saw that I was okay with the treatment, he came around it, too.
Antim: The Final Truth is the remake of Mulshi Pattern, in which you had featured. What drew you to direct the Hindi remake?
Around five years ago, I acted in
Mulshi Pattern, directed by my friend Pravin Tarde. Pravin was to direct the remake, but then, he moved out of the project. Eventually, Salman offered me the film. I agreed, but on the condition that I would write it, too. Even when I was working in
Mulshi Pattern, I had a different perspective on the story. I had to hold myself back from expressing my opinions to Pravin at that time because he was the director, and it had to be his vision. So, this time, when the film came to me, I first spoke to Pravin and then took on the film. I wrote the movie with my take on it and started shooting.
How different was your take on the story from what was seen in Mulshi Pattern?
The story revolves around a young gangster and a cop who is against the gangsters and wants to wipe them out of the scene. The officer wants law and order to prevail, and then there are powers that try to stop him. The film builds on the clash between Salman and Aayush, two ideologically opposite individuals. The cop’s role in the original movie was not all that long. However, when I thought about the clash in the new version, I felt that the cop’s role needed to be longer. The approach to the narrative was also going to be realistic because I don’t make fantasies. I spoke to Salman and he agreed on a few of the pointers that I suggested. One of them was that I wanted the action to be raw and real, which meant no one would hang from cables, no flying in the air kind of action and nothing unreal. It had to be more of hand-to-hand, regular action. The characters look like they belong to Maharashtra. Aayush’s introduction scene is a high-power scene in which he is wearing a
ganji in Govinda style. Salman was a bit concerned about it, but he agreed when I told him why it was necessary to have him look that way.
While Salman is playing a police officer, his role in this film seems to be fairly different from the parts he has done before. Did you specifically focus on bringing out a persona of Salman’s that the audience has not seen before?
I had to tell Salman upfront that what he was doing to himself was pushing him into a professional graveyard. It happens when an actor gets stuck in the rut of trying to serve what the audience wants. I told him that we should try and do something different. The thing with fans is that they love an actor in a role, but if they see him do it too often and for too long, then they start getting irritated. An actor feels forced to do what their fans like. When we decided to make this film in a realistic space, I had to ensure that we didn’t lose track. I’ve seen that in our films, actors want to enact their lines. When the script says ‘angry’, actors want to shout, whereas I feel that emphasising or shouting does not underline the anger a character is feeling. I made him underplay the lines.
Aayush’s debut film was an all-out romantic film. Did you have to convince him to step out of his comfort zone?
In Aayush, I had seen a kind of fire in his eyes, although he has an innocent face, which is a deadly combination. When Aayush and I started working together, I told him to be honest to the genre. I had seen a kind of restlessness in Sanjay Dutt’s eyes back in the day; I see the same thing in Aayush today. I had advised Aayush to stay as close to the original film as possible to get the tone of his character right. I asked him to follow my instructions to the T, and he did. What you see in the trailer is not even a percentage of what that boy has delivered. In reality, I had seen characters like what Aayush has played in this film when I used to do theatre in Pune. Aayush has tremendous screen presence and control. I refrained from giving him anything typical — song, dance, romance. No tropes of commercial films, and he has come out shining.
What made you bring about this change in Salman and Aayush?
Today, I have evolved as a director, but I am also scared when I see how brilliant and prepared the younger directors are. I feel like I need to be better prepared to compete with them. World cinema has come into our living rooms. There is a new kind of audience thanks to multiplexes and other avenues. Today, actors like Salman and Shah Rukh Khan have to do something different to evolve. Aamir Khan, for instance, has evolved with a careful choice of characters. Tere Naam is one of those rare Salman films where you see how deeply he can immerse himself into a character. He has done something out of the box previously, he just needs to do it more now. With Antim, Salman and Aayush are tapping into a lesser-known territory. If this film works, I will approach him with bolder content and different subjects. I hope people accept the film because then Salman will believe that people are ready to accept him in a new avatar.
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