Blurred lines: Will Abhay Deol return to the indie scene?

Why is Abhay Deol quiet on the streaming scene? It’s not about the money. The game’s changed, he says. So has the meaning of courage

There’s only one request that Abhay Deol’s fans have for him. Surprisingly, his DMs aren’t flooded with pleas to make Dev D 2. India just wants him to “Do more movies,” says Deol, laughing. Will he?

“You know, maybe in this current environment, it’s more possible for someone like me to work. Now more than ever,” says actor Abhay Deol. Hair and make-up by Walter Doroiraj (Apoorva Guptay)

Deol says he look for ideas that challenge the system because he cannot remove provocation from art.

“I can see where it’s coming from,” he says. “When I started work in 2005, there was hardly any experimenting going on. No one was looking for diversity of talent, of moving away from the mainstream formula. I put in a lot of effort right at the start of my career. I worked with directors who were in the early part of their careers. I think we had a good movement going and I’m just thankful that I was a part of it.”

Abhay Deol in Dev D.

“They weren’t even indie in the traditional sense of the term, just smaller studios, making smaller films for India’s multiplexes, where it was finally possible to screen more than one kind of film for one kind of audience. For a brief window there was more exhibition space than there was product,” Deol recalls.

Abhay Deol changed ideas of what low-budget movies could be, with films such as Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!

It’s not quite the same as what Deol did back in the day. “What I was trying to do with films like Manorama was to make people understand that Indians are also capable of that kind of acting and that kind of storytelling,” he says. The new platforms are not in the business of carrying that legacy forward. Their risks are more calculated. It’s small experiments, backed by big business. “You need creative minds and usually creative minds and business minds don’t co-exist.”

Slaughterhouse-Five.

1 Slaughterhouse-Five, 1972. The American comedy-drama military science-fiction film directed by George Roy Hill is based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Kurt Vonnegut. The film stars Michael Sacks as Billy Pilgrim, who is “unstuck in time” and has no control over where he is going next.

Don’t Look Now.

Don’t Look Now, 1973. A thriller adapted from the 1971 short story by Daphne du Maurier. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play married couple Laura and John Baxter, and the film focuses on the psychology of grief and the effect the death of a child can have on a relationship.

Stanley Kubrick’s 3 Paths of Glory.

3 Paths of Glory, 1957. An American anti-war film, co-written and directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb. Set during World War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of French soldiers, who refuse to continue a suicidal attack, after which Dax attempts to defend them against charges of cowardice in a court-martial.