Hansal Mehta’s The Buckingham Murders, starring Kareena Kapoor Khan, was released in September this year. Interestingly, the film’s release coincided with the actress marking 25 years in Indian cinema. Although Kapoor has portrayed several diverse characters in her career, Jasmeet Bhamra from The Buckingham Murders was quickly lauded as her “career-best performance” by viewers and critics alike. Hansal Mehta feels this is just the beginning.
In an exclusive conversation with News18 Showsha, Hansal Mehta said, “I’ve always felt that Kareena is a vastly underutilised actor. She’s a big star, but as an actor, I feel there’s a lot more. There’s a huge reservoir that the world is yet to see. I feel this is the beginning and yes, when people say it’s a career-best performance — without sounding too vain — I also believe so.”
How did Kareena Kapoor land the role of Jasmeet? According to Mehta, the actress had already decided to do the film. “I signed the film in 2019 but had heard the story in 2018 when I was shooting Chhalaang. Aseem Arrora, the co-writer of Chhalaang, narrated the idea to me and then to Ekta Kapoor. Ekta then signed me for it. In 2020, during the pandemic, Ekta organized a Zoom call between Kareena and me. Kareena had read a 10-15 page treatment of the film and had already decided to do it,” Mehta shared.
Even before the film was released, the trailer was subjected to comparisons with Kate Winslet’s Mare of Easttown. The show follows Winslet’s character investigating the murder of a child, which is also the key plot of Mehta’s film. However, Mehta dismissed these comparisons at the time and urged viewers to watch the film before making judgments.
With Bollywood projects increasingly being compared to Hollywood ventures, does Mehta believe true originality can exist in a medium like cinema? He opined, “Firstly, originality is overrated and misunderstood. Secondly, this comparison with something else is a sign of the mediocrity of the person who is comparing it. It’s reductive.”
The director elaborated, “If there’s a story with a grieving mother, and you immediately say, ‘Oh, this is like Mare of Easttown,’ that is reductive and lazy. This film was written much before we ever saw Mare of Easttown or it ever came out. This film is its own beast, it’s a story by itself. People think they’re scoring brownie points, but they’re showing their mediocrity.”
The tides turned in Mehta’s favor after the film was released. It opened to massively positive reviews from critics. But one sentiment echoed in theaters: “This did not feel like an Indian film.” Several viewers also shared this opinion on social media. An Indian film, made by Indian storytellers with an Indian lead actor, “did not feel Indian.” Mehta thinks this is a good thing.
The filmmaker said, “I think it’s a good thing. Gajraj Rao sent me a lovely message saying, ‘You know, I felt I was watching an international film by somebody like Mira Nair.’ He said it felt like an international film because of the way the international actors have been directed. Yeah, because of the way the settings have been used. They’ve not been used for beauty as much as they’ve been used for telling the story.”
“Usually, what happens is the opposite. We go to these places and look at them with a certain amount of fascination. That is also fine — with a certain amount of glamour-tinted eyes. So here, the gaze is more internal. It feels like it’s been made by somebody familiar with the place. I take it as a compliment,” Mehta added.
“For a lot of my work, people have often said it feels like that because of the economy of expression or how I leave a lot of things unspoken. I believe that a lot of the truths in the film come through what is unspoken, not what is spoken. This is why a lot of people feel that my storytelling style is a little more European. But I take it as a compliment because some of my favorite filmmakers are from Britain, particularly Ken Loach and Michael Winterbottom. They have been the cornerstone of my love for films,” Mehta concluded.
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