Some empathy for Sanjay Dutt had to be created: Rajkumar Hirani on 'Sanju'

Despite its popularity, Sanju has many critics who say the Sanjay Dutt biopic glosses over the messier parts of the Bollywood actor's life.

And director Rajkumar Hirani admitted recently that the film does try to deliberately create empathy for the controversial actor who was imprisoned for nearly five years after being convicted for illegal possession of weapons in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.

Speaking at a masterclass held by Indian Film and TV Directors Association, Hirani said that he had to shoot additional scenes because the first edit of the film wasn't received well.

Hirani said that his initial plan was to depict the events of Dutt's life as they happened. However, he felt something was amiss: "During the shoot I felt 'What am I doing, I'm going wrong.' In fact, when the first edit was ready and we screened for people, they hated him. They said we don't like this man, we don't want to watch him."

"Because I wanted to do a true story, I didn't create any empathy towards him. I said let's not create empathy and show (him) as he is. But later I understood that he is our hero, we need some empathy for him," he said.

Rajkumar Hirani shared that certain scenes of the film were added to change the script.

"The scene where he tries to kill himself after the verdict is out; which he had mentioned to me but we didn't put in the film, I shot it later. It was not in the original script. I thought through this some empathy will come. The initial test reactions were like 'naah we don't like this guy...' Every film is a journey. Some things work and some don't. I still see flaws in the film but you try your best and hope your best is good enough," he said.

Despite this admission, Hirani denies that he's whitewashed Dutt's life in the film.

"Everywhere I go people say I have whitewashed him but I haven't. A journalist asked me, why did you whitewash Sanju and I asked what was Sanju's crime? I am not defending the man but myself and the film. He kept a gun, destroyed it too, lied to his father and was arrested. I showed it all, his drug phase and the way he treated people. So where have I whitewashed?"