“If my characters are allowed to change, why can’t I,” asks filmmaker Imtiaz Ali.
The second season of She, which explores the bottom of the seafront of Mumbai through the eyes of a cop who discovers his sexuality and confidence while working undercover as a sex worker, hits Netflix for a second season on Friday. Came back And comparisons with his previous films, which include Socha Na Tha, Tamasha and Highway, are inevitable.
“I got a lot of response for pointing in a direction that people didn’t expect. They were surprised but almost everyone had a positive reaction. Stories like She and Highway have been written long ago, just others came first,” Ali told PTI in a Zoom interview.
He remembers very well his first “light story” which also became his first film – Socha Na Tha – and is happy that he is able to change tracks and has other, darker areas to say as well.
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The director said it is important to move between the two extremes in genres without losing balance.
“It is not that Imtiaz Ali of Jab We Met would not have written She. Actually quite the opposite. If my characters are allowed to change, why not me? Of course, there will be a change in the way I write, but I think that would not have been possible without Jab We Met. I think these are connected,” Ali said.
The second season of She, directed by Aditi Pohankar, is directed by Ali’s brother Arif Ali and produced by Tipping Point and Window Seat Films of Viacom 18 Studios. It sees the protagonist discover his newfound confidence and sexuality. She is bound by duty to the police force, but also grapples with her attraction to the drug lord and murderous hero.
According to Ali, the second season will see his central character Bhumi go through a more inner journey. “This season has two things as a theme, one of them is the temptation of darkness, we even have a theme music for it. There is something very relatable about darkness, about sin and about being wrong. It liberates him in many ways. The second theme, which I found interesting, is that in life sometimes survival becomes a choice. You have to choose whether you want to survive or not. And in the second season, the land decides to survive.” Xi’s story came to Ali when he was walking the “streets of disrepute” in Hong Kong.
“…this idea of the great evil world of the underworld, prostitution and authorities mingling together in the narrow streets of a big city like Mumbai. As well as that kind of dangerous situation and the idea of intimacy in feminine power. I think of it as a woman. Wanted to search from inside the mind and not to objectify it…,” said Ali.
The first season of the show was trending in the top-10 most watched shows in India before the second season premiered. Ali said, it makes him feel like he is part of a community where both the producers and the audience are waiting for the same thing.
“It is a matter of satisfaction that an OTT show has legacy value. If you make something you know it can be seen after about 20-30 years. There is no such feeling in TV. It’s kind of ironic that a show is played only once on TV. It used to be said to TV directors like me, ‘Whatever you do, it’s a picture with a show. So don’t work too hard on it’, said Ali, recalling his early years in television. Unlike TV, the director said, an OTT show has a “nearly unlimited shelf life”.
“Some people are watching She for the first time, some are watching the show again… Shows like Narcos are explored around the world in different years. So a show that doesn’t do well in the first few years is May win a gold medal in the third or fourth year. A filmmaker is happy to know that if you make something, it has the potential to be discovered later by the audience.”