‘Everybody Is a criminal!’

Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not
accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that
excites us, rather the idea of evil.
��� Marquis de Sade
Ram Gopal Varma would probably agree with the poet. Not only because the idea of crime excites him (strictly as a filmmaker!) but also because deep inside, Ramu believes that every individual is a criminal.
���I think everyone has a want to rebel, to cut the red light, to not buy a bus ticket while travelling... everyone likes doing something we���ve been told not to. Everybody���s a criminal in that sense,��� says the director, who���s made a living out of making hard-hitting films on crime. Drohi, Satya, Jungle, Company, Contract... are just some of the films the ace-director has churned out of his factory.
His fascination with the crime world began when Ramu was just in school. ���I was fascinated by the bullies in my class who were always punching and pushing kids around. That was my first exposure to crime,��� he says. He saw the goondagardi from close quarters when he was studying in college and those early experiences provided fodder for his first Hindi film Shiva that dealt with student politics at its worst. ���As a filmmaker, I���m interested in people who���re larger than life, unusual... whose mindset I would like to study and capture, these people fall in that category,��� he says. From student politics, Ramu moved on to make films on the underworld, with Satya proving to be a cult film in his career, followed by Company. His most recent crime related film ��� Contract ��� combined underworld and terrorism.
But Ramu clarifies that it wasn���t a conscious decision on his part to move in this chronological order. ���I would say it���s related to my exposure and understanding of the issue and a reflection of times. When I first came to Mumbai, I wasn���t aware of the underworld and it was post 1993 bomb-blasts that it came into limelight. Same way with terrorism, so for me, the subject matter I take is related to the times and my exposure to it,��� explains the maverick director.
Most films on criminals delve more into the workings of the crime rather than the workings of the mind. But it���s to Ramu���s credit that he���s been able to lay bare their psyche. And that, says the director, is what he���s interested in in the first place. ���Because eventually, the act will come from the psyche,��� he says simply.
It���s also to his credit that he���s managed to make ���realistic��� films on crime and criminals. But that���s exactly what he questions when he says, ���When people talk about Satya, they say it���s the most ���realistic��� underworld film but how do they know it���s real? They might think that I know some gangsters, so I have first hand knowledge of how they behave but they have never met underworld figures, so how can they say its real?��� He answers his own question, ���They feel its real because they can identify with the characters. Take Bhiku Mhatre for instance. He comes home to his nagging wife and because most wives nag, people identify with them,��� he adds. Situations too can be identifiable, according to him. ���In Company, the whole situation was based on the set-up of politics in my office. It had nothing to do with Dawood-Chhota Rajan rivalry. In any company, the politics will remain the same because more or less, all human beings operate the same way. In company, there will be someone who���s jealous of you, somebody who wants to climb the ladder... but when you set it up in underworld, it looks like the Dawood-Chhota Rajan story. It���s my understanding of human emotions rather than the mechanics of their
working, that part I get more or less from the media,��� he says.
Ramu���s latest crime related film Contract was the first time that he dealt partly, with the issue of terrorism. That���s because Ramu believes that the issue of underworld is now old.
���I personally think underworld is very dated. When Satya released in 1997, underworld was at its peak. It was topical and the media was talking about it. But today, you don���t know what Dawood is doing actually. Other issues have taken centrestage ��� political issues and international terrorism to name a few.��� And Ramu too has found new subjects to explore. ���One of the key things I feel went wrong with Contract was that it dealt with only an incident of terrorism. The issue of terrorism is very large and very complex and in terms of understanding ��� why it happens and long terms effects of it ��� you can���t symbolise it with one incident like in Contract,��� he explains. International terrorism is the subject that���s on his mind now.
���Terrorism, atleast Islamic fundamentalism as the world largely understands and knows today is more global. I���m planning something on the scale of that and that���s a script which is being worked upon,��� Ramu says adding, ���Crime is never going to stop. Its nature changes, its shape changes, its form changes, the people involved and detection methods change. As a filmmaker, I have to capture its new shape.���