Mumbai: When you have won the national award and made a hit series called Paatal Lok for Amazon Prime Video, your career should pretty much be set for meteoric rise. But for Hindi and Marathi movie director-cinematographer Avinash Arun Dhaware, the success’ morning-after has been a mixed bag.
After Paatal Lok came his directorial venture School of Lies – with lukewarm audience response. And after the fame of winning the national award for his Marathi movie Killa, Dhaware crashed and went into a shell of depression.
The film industry can be a brutal place. The effort to stay on top of the game after success is a lonely one.
“It is an insecure profession. While many appreciated my work, I couldn’t look at myself as a director. I didn’t know how to accept the love coming my way. I was diagnosed with depression,” he recalls.
For five years after Killa, Dhaware did not direct. Instead, he found solace in being a cinematographer. From Ajay Devgn, Irrfan Khan to Vicky Kaushal, he shot the who’s who of Bollywood across ghats of Benaras in Masaan to the sombre mood of Goa in Drishyam.
Although he bounced back three years ago with the pandemic blockbuster Paatal Lok on Amazon Prime Video, it is his latest directorial — School of Lies — that allowed him to take all kinds of creative risks, exploring themes like juvenile crime and institutional sexual abuse. However, the web series has not been able to match up to the director’s previous mega hit project. But Dhaware is unfazed.
“Not a day has gone by since its [School of Lies] release that someone or the other has not messaged me about the show. I knew it would be a slow burn but after Paatal Lok, I knew I would get just one chance to take all kinds of risks,” Dhaware told ThePrint, in the first-ever interaction after the show’s release on Disney+ Hotstar.
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Paatal Lok to School of Lies
Dhaware’s upcoming projects include Paatal Lok: Season 2 — likely to be released early next year — and a relationship drama called Three of Us, starring Shefali Shah, Swanand Kirkire and Jaideep Ahlawat.
An admirer of world cinema, Malayalam films, and Newton and A Death in the Gunj in recent past, Dhaware lives and breathes films as the camera has been his first love ever since he set eyes on it.
Paatal Lok was Amazon Prime Video’s answer to Netflix’s Sacred Games — both cop shows dealing with mythological overtones — and in many ways, it outperformed the latter. The web series centred around Inspector Hathi Ram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat), who reports to a much younger colleague Ansari (Ishwak Singh). A high-profile attempted murder case sets the tone for the neo-noir crime drama.
School of Lies takes off after 12-year-old Shakti Salgaonkar (Vir Pachisia) goes missing from his boarding school. As the probe begins, skeletons come crawling out of the school’s proverbial dungeons.
“Paatal Lok had immense scope to connect with the audience. We knew while making it that we are onto something big. On the contrary, School of Lies has no relief points in terms of comic elements. I knew it would be a slow burn and draw drastic reactions,” Dhaware explains.
Also read: Paatal Lok on Amazon Prime is to Delhi what Sacred Games was for Mumbai
Riding on nostalgia
Dhaware’s filmography reminds of a life that has come full circle, considering his first directorial debut Killa was also a story about children as is School of Lies. But the two worlds cannot be more different.
While Killa was a coming-of-age story — loosely inspired by the director’s personal life — a teenager who struggles with adapting to the life at a new school after his father’s death — School of Lies dives deep into power hierarchies and oppression in the corridors of a boarding school.
Early memories of life have driven Dhaware’s cinematic sensibilities as and when a new challenge presented itself. Born in Maharashtra’s Solapur in 1985, he moved to Talegaon near Pune with his family. Nature and the Konkan region were a major part of his upbringing, and, as he recalls, often subconsciously entered his work.
Whether it is the historical locales near Ratnagiri in Killa, or the gigantic palm trees of Konkan in Three of Us, or the eerie silence echoing in the jungles of Ooty in School of Lies, nature, nostalgia, and tranquility team up to emote a myriad of emotions in Dhaware’s filmography — from love, loss, and healing to fear and liberation.
“I spent 3-4 years of my childhood in Konkan where I had my first interaction with nature. I’ve always tried to find the child in me through my films, especially this one as I am attached to this region,” he said.
No one in Dhaware’s family was involved in performing arts, although his father was an avid consumer of films. Dhaware would tag along with his father for two film releases each week.
As soon as he graduated from 12th standard, he enrolled himself at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) for short courses in videography and Western classical music appreciation. He had made up his mind to join the institute after listening to Subhash Ghai during an interview. Simultaneously, he learnt photography at a nearby local institute and soon after, filming birthday parties, weddings and singing in orchestra became a routine job.
By this time, the camera had become his closest confidant. Dhaware chose cinematography because he never believed he could be a director.
“Kuch logon ko superiority complex hota hai, mujhe inferiority complex tha (While some have a superiority complex, I had inferiority complex),” he says. By the end of his time at FTII, he had secured a job that “paid him well”, around Rs 2,000 per day (in 2003).
Next goal: Big screen
It took Dhaware five years to reinstate his confidence and self-belief as a director. Being a confident cinematographer earned him meaty projects and a chance to collaborate with filmmakers like Nishikant Kamat (Drishyam, Madaari), Neeraj Ghaywan (Masaan), and Anurag Kashyap (That Day After Everyday).
At a time when new shows are released on streaming platforms every other day, the ‘thriller’ genre has been struggling to hold on to its audience. Dhaware and his cinematic world, where the silence speaks the loudest, has helped him cement his position as a master of thrillers. It was Paatal Lok in 2020, and School of Lies this year.
While Dhaware’s body of work boasts versatility, what ties them together is his jugalbandi with the camera.
But it is the first big screen project that he awaits the most.
(Edited by Prashant)