Sanju by Rajkumar Hirani has been one of the greatest blockbusters of this year and well,Ranbir Kapoor’s amazing portrayal of the controversial actor can be counted amongst his career best performances! Despite the film making a good business at the box office, a few detractors were of the opinion that there was a deliberate attempt to whitewash Sanjay Dutt’s image by his good friend Hirani. The master director refuted this claim, of course, at the time of the release of the movie but opened up more about the same at the recent event. Rajkumar was speaking at the Indian Film and TV Directors Association masterclass event and he said that when he showed everything close to reality, people did not feel any sympathy for the main character. Hence, he added a few scenes which would make people feel a little empathy for Sanjay Dutt
He said, “During the shoot, I felt ‘What am I doing, I’m going wrong.’ In fact, when the first edit was ready and we screened it 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 further said, “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.” Wow! Now this is a big reveal for all fans of Rajkumar Hirani and Ranbir Kapoor.
