The remake of Rajesh Mapuskar’s National Award winning Marathi film ‘Ventilator’ in Gujarati was announced a while ago. The Gujarati remake is being directed by Umang Vyas and is adapted to the language by acclaimed scriptwriter Niren Bhatt.
Excerpts of the conversation recorded with the very talented and lovely Juhi Chawla-Mehta on her role in the film.
She will be seen playing Boman Irani’s part in the film. Read on :
With Bollywood makers taking a fancy to the critically acclaimed regional cinema, was taking up the Gujarati remake of Marathi film Ventilator a conscious decision? How did it come through?
Jackie Shroff & I regularly stay in touch as we have many things in common from discussing organic food produces to the business of films. It’s during one of these message chat, he asked me if I’d be interested in doing a Gujarati film, he also told me the makers of Ventilator were contemplating having me in the film. I checked with my manager, and she confirmed she’d been in talks with the producer for a while but nothing had materialized, so she didn’t think it necessary to share it with me then.
That’s when I decided to give it active pursuit considering my avid interest in doing atleast one film in every regional language of India. Until now, I have acted in Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali & Punjabi. That’s how I became a part of the film Ventilator.
Had you earlier watched the Marathi film Ventilator? How did you like the film?
Even though I hadn’t seen the movie, I had heard rave reviews of the film. I had a notion the film was about the dreaded ventilator in the ICU and after the suffering with my brother in recent times, that was the last thing I ever wanted to relieve. However, to my surprise when I did see the film, it turned out to be very different from my anticipation and it had nothing to be afraid of.
It is about the family surrounding the person who is unwell. It’s a lot about a typical Indian family which has many members & how they all behave. It’s really funny, also emotional & so relatable that you feel this might be actually happening in all Indian families.
We learn you’re in a guest appearance, how many days did you shoot for the film?
Since I was also busy with the KKR match in Kolkatta, I had to make amends to my schedule. They had got the date with little difficulty because my role is with the entire cast of Ventilator, you can’t inconvenience so many people so I changed my plans & headed out to Ahemdabad.
How was your experience shooting, what does your role look like?
It was lovely to be on the sets again with Jackie Dada, it is a long scene. In the original film, this role has been enacted by Boman Irani ji & I just did the Gujarati version. The whole day we were shooting. Once we started we did the master shot, we literally ran through the whole scene once & then they did Jackie’s shots & then we did my shots non stop. I was shooting until 9.30 late into the night. It was fun. I thought I would be required to speak a lot more Gujarati but fortunately-unfortunately my dialogues are in Hindi spattered with Gujarati in between, so it was easy for me to perform.
My role was with the entire cast, it was lovely to meet all of them. They’re all well know artists either from Gujarati stage or films. ” It was a great experience working with them”, she concluded.
