Anurag Basu could very well be a character in his own film. Within a few seconds into our call, the filmmaker says, “Despite so many flaws, people are liking Metro… In Dino! That`s validating.” On being asked at the end of the half-an-hour long conversation, if he can list at least one flaw in the film, he replies, “I am not going to tell you. How can I talk about it in the release week? I will tell you later!”
Like his characters, it`s difficult to predict an end to Basu`s beginning. Like his characters, he is honest about what he shares and what he doesn`t. “When I hit the kitchen, half the people don`t know what they are going to get served.”
In this interview with mid day, the filmmaker-writer opens up on the “Basu way of filmmaking”, what he wants to tell people in love, and the wrong show size that Ranbir Kapoor sent him.
Surrounded by the constant noise of “big”, “spectacle”, “action”, “horror comedy”, did you fear if a love story would work on the big screen anymore?
Whenever I start making a film, I always ask myself, ‘What kind of film do I want to watch?’ That`s the first step towards making and writing a story. So this is how Metro came to my mind, that I want to see a film like this in the theatres. But that was two years ago. I hope there are many audiences like me, who want to see a film like this in the theatre.
It will be an understatement to call your process of filmmaking unique. Whoever one speaks to, says, ‘Dada has the script in his mind. He tells us briefly about our characters and some situations. Rest, we surrender to him…’ This has become such a big deal with Anurag Basu. Have you ever found yourself questioning this method or is this the only way you know?
I don`t know. This is how I am actually. When I hit the kitchen, I make the food the same way. Half the people don`t know what`s going to get served later. So I think this happens in everything in my life. So I just decide on a menu, I tell everybody, there are so many guests coming, I`ll make this. When the dinner is served, everybody says, ‘Oh!, you made this also, and that is also there!’ So I improvise on the go. This is both, my strength and weakness. And I don`t shy away from it. This is my personality, what can I do?
This can go either way. But your collaborators place implicit faith in you.
It`s horrifying because the day I don’t deliver, it will really backfire. I have to deliver every time.This trust sometimes is very scary. When I see these interviews of actors promoting the film and they say they have this blind trust on me and they have surrendered, all these words actually horrifies me because the only person to be blamed for the film not working is then me. Every time a film doesn`t work, everyone has an equal stake, right? But somehow, because of my way of working, it all comes on me by the end of it. That`s when it`s very scary. If something goes wrong, it will all fall on me.
Right. What’s the magic pill you have that you get the actors to deliver some of their best works with you? Aditya Roy Kapur and Sara Ali Khan have been criticised in the past for their performances— especially Sara— but she was such a surprise element in the film. You seemed to know how to use their strengths.
They are amazing actors. The thing that I have been criticised— keeping actors uninformed till the end— is actually my to take out good performance from them, to keep a blank slate in their mind and give them no information till the end and then see on the set whatever happens. Every director has his or her own way. This is my way.
When you give a lot of information to the actors— because everybody is creative— they will take their own creative journey. They will form the scene in their head. And undoing that becomes very difficult later on. That`s the reason I take this path. Everybody else is informed, otherwise. You cannot go on set with a hyperlink film without writing it. It`s impossible to go on floors with a Ludo or a Metro…, which has such a complex, interlinked, domino effect of characters and stories, without writing the scenes beforehand. So, everything is set and ready. My whole unit knows what`s happening. But the actors.
At which stage did you decide that the film would feature musical bits, which were very carefully concealed from all the visual assets?
From the very beginning, when this was conceived. In fact, Metro was conceived as a musical. It was always supposed to be this way. The first time when I sat writing the film, I wrote for a week or 10 days, and put it aside. Then Jagga Jasoos started, so the musical aspect of Metro automatically came into Jagga. After Jagga, I said, ‘Let`s make it the way it was conceived years ago.’
The comical bits! Metro… is hilarious. That’s also where the film makes a stark departure from Life in a… Metro. You have put these characters, who feel very real, in these hyper-exaggerated, comical situations. Was this tone also decided in the beginning itself?
I remember when I started writing Metro, the first thought about how the story would be, I captioned it— fish out of water kind of situation. That`s how I started approaching the story. So, it happened by itself. I wanted this tonality. Otherwise, how would I make it different from the earlier Metro, I scratched my head. I didn`t know how to make it different. This was the only way I cracked it, actually.
How much has your outlook changed on relationships and love from Life in a metro to Metro… In Dino? Is there something which you feel has fundamentally changed in you or the way you look at relationships?
The main theme of the film is that if you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you have to fall in love with the same person again and again. I cracked it only now, at this age and stage in my life! So, I`ve been doing this with my wife forever. I have understood this now in my life, at this age. So, the main theme of the film is inspired from my life.
Even though both the films feature broken, unconventional, and incomplete relationships, the big difference between the two I felt as a viewer is that Metro… In Dino is more relationship and love driven, while the first one was more driven by the conflict within an individual and exploration of individualistic desires.
Even if people, then and now, looked for love, Life in a… Metro felt more about ‘What do I want?’ while this asked, ‘What do I want with him/her?’ This one also leaves you on a more romantic, hopeful note.
2007 was also such a different time. Today, we are surrounded by more uncertainty than ever before. We see tragedies, violence and grimness all around. Love seems to be the only thing that could give one hope. So, it also felt like you are speaking to the times we are living in. Do you feel the difference in the world of then and now has also evolved your thought process?
So, in the earlier Metro, I didn`t take a stand as a director in the film. It was just a mirror to the society. This time around, there`s a stand, that this is what I want to say. There’s a positivity. You have to keep trying. I am saying, ‘Don’t give it up.’ It`s all a cycle of life. That`s how the film ends. One’s end is the other`s beginning, and vice versa. I think this is the only stand I have taken as a filmmaker in the film, to add this small message somewhere, otherwise, the film is just a mirror to the society.
Why did you feel the need to add a message?
Because what`s happening around me is I feel like people don`t try in love. They give up very quickly. I am seeing this a lot around me. I tell them thodi toh koshish karo, give it a try, a little bit more. I think people, my friends, who tell me their stories, everyone’s problem has the same root cause. They give up too quickly.
One of the best things about the film is how you`ve treated your female characters, with agency, grace, and making space for them to fall. Can you talk to me about it?
How do I answer this question, because this film I will dedicate and give the credit for these stories to the women who raised me, loved me, outsmarted me, my daughters. The credit goes to all of them.
And this guilt that you`re not giving your women. It’s a very convenient trope in cinema. Even in 2025, when a woman falters, it`s not just her fumbling, it`s almost like, ‘You are not expected to do that because you`re a woman.’ But you just stripped them off any gendered expectation.
Most of the story comes out with what if. So what if it happens to me and my wife? What if she goes to Goa? What if I discover that? How will I react? Stories come to you when you put yourself and your dear ones in the character and start thinking how he or she will react. It’s very painful to put yourself in such situations. But most of the times, as a writer, you put yourself and people you really know in those characters. For example, I would think how my cousin would have reacted if she was Fatima.
I have a complaint to make, though. Fatima and Ali’s characters begin on an equal footing, but as the story progresses, it becomes more about the man’s coming of age, and Fatima`s character took a backseat and became an observer. In the scene where he comes back and accepts his flaws, honestly, it felt like the natural end you would give them is separation, even if briefly to come back healthier as individuals and a couple. It felt very convenient that they got back together, especially because their situation felt the most realistic. When you were writing, did you ever feel, ‘Maybe I can part them for some time, or maybe they don`t need to be together?’
No, I never felt like that. You`re not the first one to make this observation. Two-three other people have also told me this. So, I think, what you`re saying resonated with others. Sometimes a director’s wishful thinking about a character becomes dominant, and you feel, ‘Yeah, let’s do it this way’ So, that`s how the end of their segment shaped up. I think it was my wishful thinking about their story, that this is how it should end. Maybe it’s not (right). But their story was always supposed to end like this for me.
I want to talk about how your friendship with Pritam has come out in the film. There are 15 to 20 seconds of a scene just on Pritam`s close-up. You seem to be so much in love with him. Of course, story-wise, there is a metro band, which appears everywhere. But it also felt like Pritam was the co-director, or the film’s second voice.
It was! I said this before the release as well that it is Pritam’s film more than mine. It’s his baby as much as it`s my baby. He has poured his heart into this one. Pritam wasn’t ready to make an appearance in the film initially. He said, ‘I was new at the time of the old Metro. Now, I don’t want to do it. I forced him to do it, by telling him, ‘I will also make an appearance if you do it.’ That’s why there’s a cameo of mine in the film. I told Pritam, ‘We will all make cameos in the film. You don`t shy away from this thing.’ Vijay Ganguly (choreographer) has also made a cameo. Imtiaz (Ali, filmmaker) has also done it.
Will a third Metro… happen?
Not very soon, at least. A hyper-link film takes a lot of work.
There have been reports of you reuniting with Ranbir for a project. Are you guys talking about something?
Yeah, I hope it happens soon. I am dying to work with him. Woh bohot aadat kharab kar deta hai. We keep talking about working with each other. Baatein toh hoti rehti hai. Abhi dobara jootein bhejein hain usne. Pehle galat size bheje thhe.