BizAsia meets Imtiaz-Alia at ‘Highway’ London press meet

Director of ‘Highway’ Imtiaz Ali and the gorgeous leading lady of the film Alia Bhatt made a pitstop in London on 14th February straight from the Berlinale Film Festival in Germany where ‘Highway’ had it’s first screening, more than a week before it’s official release.

The film was screened exclusively for the press in London and Ali and Bhatt joined afterwards for a brief press conference about the movie. Minus lead actor Randeep Hooda, the pair took on questions about the film, the plot of which revolves around a lady being kidnapped and the journey that is had together and the relationship changes encountered between her and her captor.

It is a lesser known fact about ‘Highway’ that Ali shot this movie, which he has already produced under his company Window Seat Productions, with huge proportions being shot in improvisation of the dialogue as there wasn’t a binding script for the duration of the film. Talking about this Ali said, “Well there wasn’t a script but there was a line. I knew what would happen after what. I tried to not specify too many things. The woven script kept changing depending upon what we would stumble upon in the journey. When you’re making a journey feel I think it works better if you are at those places and you actually go there… So I tried to keep it open. And since I had good actors – very efficient and very experienced – it helped.”

Bhatt talked about how she prepared for the role of a a bride-to-be who gets kidnapped, “I didn’t have to prepare for it actually. There’s a similarity between me and my character and that is that we’ve led very protected and very secure lives, we’ve not seen much and not really done much. Basically, it’s a life that is lacking adventure. Also, I felt that the more raw and untouched I was, the better. That’s because the journey is so overwhelming that whatever would happen naturally would be my reaction and that would just get captured on camera. The only thing I did do was to try and improve my diction a little. Other than that I didn’t really prepare”.

Ali spoke about how he achieved a balance between what to show, what to emphasise more on in the movie and also what to leave in the background, “I was trying to make the movie in the way that I would like to see it and not really spoon-feed or fall prey to over-explanation. I think there is something cinematic is lost when the movie becomes verbose. I didn’t want to be too obvious because I feel that people always get it… and I knew that the simpler I made this film, the more reflective it’s going to be and that’s when the journey and the music come in.”

Bhatt shared an exciting moment which she found one of the most memorable moments when shooting for ‘Highway’, “There were many moments that weren’t in the script. Sometimes we’d take a couple of shots and Imtiaz would come and tell me that we’re not going to keep that. One day he said that we had some time. There’s a scene in the film shot near the river in Kashmir where I climb on top of a rock where I laugh and then I cry. He said let’s go there and he told me to do what I want. I didn’t take it seriously and I thought it was one of those shots which we were taking because we had time but not because it would be in the movie. That ended up being my most favourite shot in the film because I don’t know what I was doing. All that you see there is what my state of mind was at that time.”

‘Highway’ is presented by UTV Motion Pictures and has a soundtrack composed by A R Rahman. The movie is slated for release on 21st February.

Look out for BizAsia‘s interview with Imtiaz Ali and Alia Bhatt and also our review of ‘Highway’.

Photos courtesy: Shyama Sudra