Bollywood star Sidharth Malhotra on his hardest movie yet: ‘Shershaah’

Gulf News

Sidharth Malhotra opens up about war film ‘Shershaah’ and how it has been years in the making. ‘Shershaah’ brings to life the story of Captain Vikram Batra, who died in the Kargil War in 1999.  Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/3lVObwh  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  #UAEnews #Bollywood #SidharthMalhotra

Transcript

00:00You cannot sugarcoat war. So, of course, we need to put factual, you know, facts onto it in as to who are we fighting.

00:11Bollywood biopics, especially when it comes to patriotic films, they're often going to be

00:16jingoistic a bit, there's a bit of chest thumping, I guess that's just there in the DNA. How will

00:21this film perhaps, were you careful that it's not, it's a very brave story, but it also deals

00:26with negatives like perhaps, you know, the war, the trauma, what an army person goes through as well.

00:34Consciously from the writing board, we've made an attempt to not digress from Captain Vikram

00:41Batra's story. We are not here to make a statement as to what happened, who did it, how and why.

00:47People already know that it's a factual war that was fought in 99, there's enough documented in

00:53public domain about it. We were predominantly wanting to tell you the journey of this soldier,

00:57the family that he comes from, the boy that he was before, the boy that he became,

01:02you know, on the battlefield, the sacrifice that he made, what that implies towards the family,

01:09towards his loved ones, is to get the human side of the story, is to get human side of war.

01:14You cannot sugarcoat war, so of course, we need to put factual, you know, facts onto it,

01:21in as to who are we fighting, but I can assure you every interaction with the enemy in the film

01:28is documented, is whether in the interview that Captain Vikram himself narrated or documented by

01:35his comrades or is in, you know, public domain for people to see. So, I feel when that comes in,

01:43it's something we were devoid of, we never needed that or consciously we believe that it's not,

01:50it's not something that will aid to this or that's not what we are aiming for in this film.

01:55What's your take on war after acting in a film? I'm sure you haven't glorified it like you said

02:00earlier as well but it's a reality. What is your thing? I mean on gun violence, has it altered

02:06your viewpoint and your perspective? For sure, I think even through this film without digressing

02:11from the main story, I feel if an intellectual audience looks at it from a subtext point of view,

02:19you will see that there are no winners eventually in battle. There are some interesting scenes that

02:25are written in, you know, in the first half and the second half of the film where you're not

02:30spelling it out but you're saying what the actual issue is, everybody's trying to get one up from

02:36each other, no one's really winning, you know, in battlefield. It's, these are from small victory

02:43to the other but see it's a larger conversation, it's a much bigger subject and it's involved so

02:48many other factors onto it but that being said, you know, we cannot sugarcoat war but we'll

02:56hopefully try and show people the human side of it and that I believe that eventually or that's

03:02my personal take that, you know, eventually there are no winners or losers in war. I mean both sides

03:10you know, suffer the same.

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