We wanted to avoid basing our Indian character on cliches, says Bachaana director Nasir Khan

“Those expecting a lot from the movie are the ones who would be disappointed but not the average cine-goer who hasn’t seen a clean entertaining flick in a long time,” Nasir Khan says when asked about the audience reaction regarding his film.

“It’s a light-hearted on-the-run film where the Indian heroine and the Pakistani hero join hands and keep the audience engaged for 100 minutes. It was meant to entertain the audience who kept guessing as to what would happen next and in my opinion, that’s the success of any entertaining film.”

Bachaana revolves around a Pakistani cab driver Vicky (Mohib Mirza) and an Indian girl Alia (Sanam Saeed) who are on the run from the police as well as gangsters. Be it in a jungle, underwater or in confined places, the duo manages to outrun the chasers and take the audience on a ride through Mauritius — an odd choice for a film setting.

“We chose Mauritius because it’s a beautiful place and not many Pakistani films were shot there in recent times. As we wanted the film to have a fresh feel and also give new visuals to the audience, we decided to go ahead with Mauritius and it worked.”

We tried to model Sanam Saeed on an Indian girl belonging to the middle-class from Aligarh. With Aligarh, we could make her Urdu sound normal and with the help of dialogues, clothing and mannerisms, she looked the part.

Filmmaker Nasir Khan says he doesn’t care what critics have to say about his film as it is doing well in cinemas.The film marks the film debut of both Sanam Saeed and Adeel Hashmi who are shown as a married couple on their honeymoon in the beautiful country.

On one hand, Sanam Saeed looked more Pakistani than Indian (especially in the first half) while Adeel looked menacing as per the character’s demand. There was however some issues with the way he walked, to which the director doesn’t agree. “I wanted to shoot Adeel in a stylised manner and although some people didn’t like the way he moved, others found it refreshing. We were making him play against the type which was a big risk; that’s why the walk made him look cool and stylized."

"As for Sanam, we tried to model her on an Indian girl belonging to the middle-class from Aligarh; she wasn’t shown to be a Mumbai or Delhi girl because they are too Indian. With Aligarh, we could make her Urdu sound normal and with the help of dialogues, clothing and mannerisms, she looked the part.”

Bachaana’s cinematography is its stand-out feature; DoP Asrad Khan deserves special mention for capturing the natural beauty of Mauritius on tape. There is an underwater sequence as well and some of the scenes required stunts, which is something you don’t see in Pakistani films. Mohib’s character jumped from the roof of one building to another; both Sanam and Mohib jumped into the river to avoid capture and then there were the action scenes, which looked stylish compared to the local dhishum fighting.

There were moments in the story where common sense could have solved the issue but the director wanted to play with the ‘suspension of disbelief’ factor. “I am happy that people are finding Bachaana to have the Pakistani feel and what we really tried to do was give both the Indian and Pakistani characters a balance. Generally in Indian movies the Pakistani characters are based on false notions and clichés. So we wanted to avoid that and succeeded in it too. When we saw the movie with an Indian audience in Dubai, they were also entertained and didn’t feel it had any political or cultural bias.”

Nasir Khan feels that Bachaana has given him the chance to learn film-making and he plans to use this in his next venture. “Currently I am working on a few ideas which will be shared with media as soon as they are finalised. I will try to use the Bachaana experience in my next project and hopefully the audience would love it too. Yes there were no song and dance sequence in the film but that’s because the lead pair was on the run and didn’t have time for anything except running. I have also tried not to change the plot to ensure that a product was placed in the movie because our audience isn’t stupid; they can smell a product placement from far away,” he added.

Originally published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, March 13th, 2016