Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar may have emerged as one of the biggest successes of the year, but its violence and perceived anti-Pakistan stance did not find favour with the jury that selected India’s official Oscar entry. Jury member and actress Tannishtha Chatterjee, speaking exclusively, said the panel was looking for a film with a more original cinematic language.
“Dhurandhar is a popular film and one can’t deny the fact that so many people have embraced it and there is something about that film. But when we are looking at representation from India, we look at a cinematic language which is more original,” she said.
According to Chatterjee, the jury did not find Dhurandhar’s cinematic language sufficiently distinctive. “Dhurandhar is a very sleek and well-made film. But is it an original Indian cinematic language? That’s the question. It borrows from different cinematic styles, which is fine, which is fantastic. But when you discover a film like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and a filmmaker like Ang Lee, that is when you have a film taking a country and its cinema to the global level. When you discover a filmmaker like Asghar Farhadi, you get to know what Iranian cinema is like. So those were the things we were also looking for,” she said.
Another jury member, speaking anonymously, said Dhurandhar was not considered Oscar-worthy. “The Ranveer Singh-starrer received exactly four votes from the jury. While a couple of people liked the film, the panel ultimately felt it wasn’t Oscar material and did not represent Indian culture in the specific way we were looking for,” the jury member said. The jury member also claimed the film seemed designed to appeal to “a specific section of people”. The panel, they said, almost unanimously chose the Marathi film Gondhal.
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