'Lagaan' inspired to capture essence of storytelling via cricket: Sharan Sharma on ‘Mr & Mrs Mahi’

Mumbai: Filmmaker Sharan Sharma says he sought inspiration from Aamir Khan-starrer “Lagaan” while crafting the story of his new film “Mr. & Mrs. Mahi”, a human drama set against the backdrop of cricket.

Sharma's movie features Janhvi Kapoor and Rajkumar Rao as the titular couple -- Mahendra, a former cricketer, and Mahima, who is a doctor. After Mahendra spots the cricketing talent in his wife, he encourages her to chase her dream and becomes her coach.

"There’s so much cricket to watch in general, so I’m not going to a theatre to watch cricket, I go there to watch a story. We didn’t want to show the sport like how we see it on TV... We shot it like a scene, the idea was to show the drama of the scene. This was done brilliantly in ‘Lagaan’.

"In ‘Lagaan’, you were following the story, you were not sitting and watching the match. Our inspiration from ‘Lagaan’ in terms of coverage, and the focus was on storytelling, that’s what we were trying to take,” the director told PTI in an interview.

"Lagaan", a period sports drama from director Ashutosh Gowarikar, was about a cricket match between a group of untrained villagers and their colonial masters. It won an Academy Award nomination for best foreign language film and went on to become a blockbuster hit and a classic in the history of Indian cinema.

Sharma, who made his filmmaking debut with 2020's "Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl", starring Kapoor, said he was very particular about each and every detail related to the sport in the movie.

"If I’m getting a chance to make a film which has cricket in it, I would want to give my 5,000 percent, otherwise I wouldn’t be happy. We took the hard route, I’m not too bothered by delays, nobody remembers how much time you took to make a film,” added the director.

For the director, cricket is life and life is cricket and his love for the sport often bordered on obsession.

“Every aspect of this film is a love letter to the sport. No effort was left to do our best,” he said, stating they got cricket equipment like bat, gloves of the same company that was used by his idols M S Dhoni and Virat Kohli. He revealed that he had been pursuing the idea of making a cricket-themed film for a while but was unable to land on the right idea.

It was his "dream to be a cricketer”, Sharma said, extending gratitude to producer Karan Johar for enabling him to convey that love on screen through the film.   “The basic idea came in 2019 that often when a girl gets married, sometimes there’s a full stop on her dreams but what if a girl gets married in a family where she is given wings." The filmmaker also saw certain clips of Indian cricketer Jemimah Rodrigues.

"I found it endearing to watch somebody like her with a soft demeanour but very explosive (on field). I found that contrast interesting and exciting.” The director is happy that his lead actors Kapoor and Rao instantly agreed to star in “Mr. & Mrs. Mahi”.

Sharma said he wanted the character of Mahima to be a mix of someone who is “lost and trusts people in her life”. For Mahendra, he wanted to portray the character as a man with a “kind heart but insecure”.

“Both the characters are from the observation around me, not one particular person but different people. Janhvi herself was a version of Mahima a few years ago. We wanted to tell the story of a girl, who eventually over the course of the film finds her own voice. About Raj’s part, he is definitely grey. I don’t think we can label the person as bad.” Produced by Zee Studios and Dharma Productions, “Mr. & Mrs. Mahi” released in cinemas on May 31.