'Pretentious cheez nahi banata': Dibakar Banerjee on Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!

New Delhi: As someone who constantly experiments with his films, director Dibakar Banerjee is hopeful that his latest offering Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! will create a space for itself in the audience. Having lived with the project for a while, Dibakar is relieved now that the movie is garnering good reviews and positive word-of-mouth. [caption id=“attachment_2190579” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Courtesy: Dibakar Banerjee page, Facebook.[/caption] “I am going through that stage where I am letting this film live through. You get to know the real value of a film after six months. I don’t lie, I don’t pretend and ‘pretentious cheeze nahi banata’. If that has a value, then ‘Byomkesh’ will also have a life,” Dibakar told PTI. The filmmaker said his movies mostly generate strong reaction initially be it “Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!” or “Shanghai” but then viewers like something that is “familiar yet unfamiliar”. “It is a family film, something that can be watched with children. A new set of people are going to watch ‘Byomkesh’ this week and we will get to know their reaction. I have been to theatres to gauge viewers response and I am happy they are enjoying it. I have used the familiar and mixed it with something new.” The movie is an origin story starring Sushant Singh Rajput where Dibakar has taken Saradindu Bandopadhyay’s famous literary figure and given it a new spin. He admits it was a risk to reinterpret Byomkesh. “It was a gamble but it was a calculated one. The taste of Indian movie watching public has to be changed and that can be done only by giving them something new. I have been trying to do that since my first film ‘Khosla Ka Ghosla’. In Kolkata, only 10 percent had extreme reaction, 90 per cent people enjoyed it,” he said. The director, who owns the rights to Saradindu’s 30 odd stories, has left the space for a sequel but said a lot depended on the destiny of Byomkesh. “We are definitely thinking about it but we will have to figure out how and when. After the film completes its run, we will get to know the kind of audience it had. We will announce then but not now. This was the first, out-of-box adventure. We need to understand the full amplification of it.” PTI