A film that approaches the legendary (albeit controversial) 20th-century Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto primarily through the chronicles gathered from various sources, chiefly his family based in Lahore, and — in a novel attempt — through his writings, mainly his short stories and letters, may “not be called a biopic.” Or, that’s how actor-director Sarmad Sultan Khoosat would like to describe it.
At a promotional event of Manto, his latest offering — in fact, his first for cinema! — held at The Last Word, Khoosat was in no mood to take one extreme position or the other. Somewhere in the middle of the exclusive session, where he was joined by actor Sania Saeed, musician Jamal Rehman and Meesha Shafi, Khoosat even declared, “I am no Manto, please!” There were laughs.
The choice of The Last Word as a venue for a film that is based on the life of a literary genius — and rebel — was a clever one. A swanky little bookstore, built atop one of Lahore’s more popular cafés, it attracts the city’s reading ‘elite’, so to say. No wonder, most people at the event seemed to know Manto from Adam.
Their familiarity with the writer’s recurrent themes, his explicitness, his alcoholism as well as his increasingly arrogant and complexed personality in the later years of his life was quite evident from the questions they asked the team Manto.
Conducted by Aysha Raja, the gregarious lady behind the bookstore who is herself an avowed reader, the event began with Khoosat divulging details on the very inception of the movie idea and how it was initially conceived as a “20-part TV serial.
“It’s a 124-minute long chunk, edited from the 900-odd minutes of the serial footage,” he said, adding that the film version required a different kind of presentation and editing. “Eventually, I don’t mind if it looks like a telefilm or an indie movie; it’s my Manto movie!” he boomed. The crowd cheered him.
As for the music part, Jamal Rehman said, “When you’re doing soundtrack for TV, it’s different. Film is another ball-game altogether. Having said that, it was doubly challenging, trying to recreate the sound of old Lahore. The footsteps, for instance.”
Khoosat recalled the difficulties he faced while trying to “move” like Manto. “We have no video archives for reference. I had no idea how Manto would walk like or his mannerisms, except whatever I gleaned from my research material.”
Meesha Shafi especially mentioned the screen rendition of ‘Thanda Gosht,’ “It’s all silence. And it’s mostly red. So, the footage is very sensuous, without us showing anything. At the same time it’s so dark.”
When prompted by Aysha Raja as to why she picked up the part (of Safia, Manto’s wife) and not any of the other, decidedly more dynamic female characters in the film, the ever so articulate Sania Saeed said, “I had played several characters from Manto’s short stories on theatre. So I wasn’t craving for such a role. But, it was actually Sarmad’s call. He was adamant. He was, like, ‘You ARE Safia, period’.
“But see, Safia is a foil to Manto’s complexities. Someone like him needed someone like Safia. I think portraying that was quite difficult for me as an actor.”
Khoosat butted in, “Let me say this once and for all that my ‘double role’ — as actor and director — in Manto would not have been possible without the support of someone like Sania and, of course, Nimra [Bucha] who plays my alter ego in the film.”
