 "Jawaan: Director BVS Ravi says Sai Dharam Tej's character was modeled on his late father")
Writer-filmmaker BVS Ravi made his directorial debut with 2011 Telugu action film Wanted, which featured Gopichand in the lead. Six years later, he has returned to direction with Sai Dharam Tej-starrer Jawaan, which hits the screens on Friday. Ravi doesn’t mince words when he talks about the gap he took between the two projects. “Honestly, nobody gave me directorial opportunities. I wrote a very good story for Wanted, but I couldn’t make a good film out of it. I have to blame myself because when I made Wanted, I feel I wasn’t fully prepared for the directorial journey. I took a break and intentionally didn’t try to make another film. In the interim, I went back to writing, which has always been my forte. In 2014, when I struck upon the idea of writing Jawaan, I was convinced I can get back into direction with this project. I approached Sai Dharam Tej and he immediately gave his nod,” Ravi told Firstpost, adding that that they’ve come up with a racy thriller with all the necessary ingredients required for a commercial pot-boiler.
[caption id=“attachment_4236921” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] Sai Dharam Tej and Mehreen Pirzada in Jawaan. Twitter/@BvsRavifi[/caption]
In the last six years, Ravi worked on his craft, thanks to his association with filmmakers such as Puri Jagannadh, Ram Gopal Varma and veteran director K Raghavendra Rao. “Post Wanted, I joined Puri Jagannadh and worked as a writer in his company. At the same time, I also had a great relationship with Ram Gopal Varma and K Raghavendra Rao. The time spent with them made me understand the craft better,” he said. Quiz him about Jawaan and you can sense from his voice that he’s very confident about the film. When the project was announced, it was rumoured that Sai Dharam Tej plays a soldier in the film. Explaining the reason behind the title, Ravi said: “It’s about the man who stands up for his country in the need of the hour. Any person who stands up for his nation is a Jawaan, and he need not necessarily be a soldier. Sai stands up for his nation and he has to choose between his country and family.”
Elaborating more on the project and the inspiration behind it, he said his late father had a very strong influence on him. “He passed away a year and a half ago. Sai’s character is modeled on my father who stood for his principles even during the most trying situations. He was a man of honesty and goodness. I wanted to inculcate these qualities in Sai’s character and that’s how Jawaan was born,” he said, heaping praise on Sai’s commitment. “When people ask me why I chose him, I tell them he was the best option for the role. He’s given his career’s best performance and people will remember his work in the film for a long time. He got under the skin of the character very easily once I narrated the script. He gave a very intense and balanced performance.”
The film was shot in live locations in and around Hyderabad. Ravi can’t stop gushing about the experience. “I’ve always wanted shoot in real locations and this film needed such flavor. We shot the chase sequences on the buildings of the old city in Hyderabad. We shot a song in a very crowded locality near Charminar. It’s tough to climb the stairs with equipment and go to the place where we shot. I wanted the film to have that rawness and liveliness, which we could achieve only if we shot in real locations. Sai was very cooperative. During the day, he shot in the scorching heat and ran on the streets of Hyderabad wearing wet clothes on chilly nights.”
Ravi sees Jawaan as a great learning experience. Talking about his biggest takeaway from the project, he said: “Being a writer for so long, I always felt the need to express through words. This film helped me to understand that visual expression of ideas is more powerful. It made me realise a scene that I write for four pages can be actually captured in a couple of shots or even less. I learnt the art of brevity through visuals via this project.”
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