‘Uttam Kumar transcended the battle between being a star and an actor… he mixed each and have become a cultural and social icon for the Bengali race.’
IMAGE: The Oti Uttam poster.
Srijit Mukherji, the prolific Bengali director, has all the time been a fan of Uttam Kumar, the beloved Bengali performing legend who died aged 54 in 1980, leaving tens of millions of Bengalis grief-stricken.
“It is considered one of my best regrets that I used to be not working on the time when he was, so I couldn’t work with him,” he tells Subhash Okay Jha.
“On his start and dying anniversaries, the media retains asking what I might have made with him. So I assumed, why not give it a shot? That is how the germ of an concept got here,” he says, referring to his new movie, Oti Uttam.
“I grew up watching Uttamda‘s movies and understanding what an important star-actor he was and in addition understanding that past a star-actor, he grew to become an important social phenomenon. Simply communicate to any Bengali. The sort of glow that comes on to the face will let you know that he has gone method past being only a famous person.”
IMAGE: Director Srijit Mukherji. {Photograph}: Sort courtesy Srijit Mukherji/Instagram
Uttam Kumar seems within the movie by pc graphics, and the thought got here to Srijit on seeing how related the actor stays until date.
“I feel the truth that he transcended the battle between being a star and an actor… he mixed each and have become a cultural and social icon for the Bengali race. I feel his persona attracted me from a younger age.
“Oti Uttam is a modern-day fairytale. It’s a rom-com. Additionally it is tributes to the charisma of Uttam Kumar. It’s in regards to the ghost of Uttam Kumar being introduced down by planchette and the way he helps a fan of his to reach love. In fact, there have been lot of technological hurdles that I needed to work round.
“Given the useful resource constraints of the Bengali movie business, to do one thing like this for the primary time within the historical past of Indian cinema, to chop out current footage of Uttamda and place it in a brand new movie… I feel we’re fairly proud of what now we have achieved.
“It is a novel idea and I’m comfortable that it’s occurring in Bengali cinema.”
IMAGE: Director Srijit Mukherji shares a put up by Amitabh Bachchan about Oti Uttam and writes, ‘Thanks @amitabhbachchan sir, this implies loads to us!!!’ {Photograph}: Sort courtesy Srijit Mukherji/Instagram
Recreating the actor by pc graphics was not straightforward.
“Oh, it was a protracted arduous activity,” Srijit says.
“Oti Uttam took six years to be made. The very first thing I did was to put in writing a rom-com which assumed that Uttam Kumar was alive. Then I went by nearly all of his movies to seek out dialogues that I might use in my movie.
“As soon as I received a match, I changed that dialogue with a dialogue in my movie, so this course of was undertaken until I received a match from 56 Uttam Kumar movies. Then got here the powerful a part of getting the digital satellite tv for pc rights of those clippings, not simply his dialogues however clippings of his silent reactions or only a stroll. These grew to become the constructing blocks on which I might construct a script.
“Then I began capturing and modifying concurrently. The supply materials was so grainy at instances that some photographs of Uttam Kumar seem like unhealthy particular results. We solved this drawback by placing a disclaimer within the credit score titles. However the audio was nonetheless noisy. For that, we used synthetic intelligence.”
What does he take into consideration the everlasting Uttam Kumar versus Soumitra Chatterjee debate in Bengali cinema?
“Oh, I have been an Uttam advocate in all Uttam-Soumitra arguments,” responds Srijit. “In fact, Soumitra Chatterjee is the best actor of Bengali cinema. However Uttam Kumar is way more than an actor.”
“When you get into the superstar-matinee idol area, it is extremely troublesome for an actor to denude himself of his model and mannerisms and play character, which Uttam Kumar did with a number of panache,” Srijit provides.
“Additionally, the sheer variety of mediocre scripts that Uttam uplifted together with his performing prowess is one thing even the nice Satyajit Ray acknowledged.”
Oti Uttam releases on March 22.
