Shakespeare, first shots and a cinematic universe of spies: Vishal Bhardwaj on 'Khufiya'

The man behind Maqbool, Omkara and Haider says he's a little troubled by Shakespeare's imprint on his work and might wait another 10 years to get back to the bard. But the Vishal Bhardwaj-William Shakespeare connect might just be too strong for that.

A scene in Bhardwaj's latest film Khufiya, an espionage thriller, has a scene showing a theatrical production of Julius Caesar.

A possible hat tip to Shakespeare in a film about betrayal?

"It wasn't by design," Bhardwaj told PTI in an interview.

"I get very happy that a lot of things happen on their own. If you analyse it later, you'll see that a depth has been created in it on its own. Yes, it was because Brutus is known for his betrayal and 'et tu Brutus' is a famous line. I wanted to name the film Khufiya: Operation Brutus' at one point," he said.

The filmmaker, who translated Shakespearean tragedies Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet into celluloid classics, said he held back because he did not want people to assume he had gone back to Shakespeare again.

"I'm also a little troubled by his imprint on my work. I will now take time to go back to Shakespeare. I will not rush. It's already 10 years (since his last adaptation Haider in 2014) and I want to wait another 10 years before I make something," Bhardwaj said.

His newest venture is a spy thriller for Netflix that he wants to turn into a franchise.

The opening scene of Khufiya, set in 2000 after the Kargil war with Pakistan, almost didn't happen, Bhardwaj said.

The dreamy opening about a woman with a red umbrella emerging from the rain with Tabu's voice playing in the background got edited out and survived because of the insistence of his friends.

"When I started filmmaking, I read a quote by a big filmmaker who said a filmmaker is known by his first shot. I found it really interesting... Which is why the first image or how I open my film is the most important thing for me," Bhardwaj said.

"When I wrote this script, I wrote the opening lines for the winters of Delhi. I wrote these lines in the very first draft, drawing an image of a beautiful girl walking through the mist. But that scene got edited out in the subsequent drafts as we felt that it does not hold or there should be an action scene," he recalled.

His friends and former assistants, directors Abhishek Chaubey and Honey Trehan, read that scene in the first draft and loved it. And when Bhardwaj started making the film, they kept asking whether he had retained it or not.

"I felt like I was forgetting how I began and probably I should not leave that. But when we came to Delhi to shoot the film, it was the monsoon season. I had to rewrite that scene and create a new image of the girl walking through the rain, holding a red umbrella... The scene survived because my friends had read it and helped me bring it back. It is one of my most favourite scenes," he said.

The film stars his favourite Tabu, with whom he worked with in Maqbool and Haider, and actors Ali Fazal and Wamiqa Gabbi.

Bhardwaj said he based Khufiya, about the hunt for a mole in the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) led by Tabu's Krishna Mehra, on Amar Bhushan's book Escape to Nowhere.

The director of Kaminey and 7 Khoon Maaf hopes to move towards comedies.

"Actually, I want to make comedies... Trilogy of comedies... I worked a lot on 'Twelfth Night'," he said.

According to Bhardwaj, Shakespeare's much loved Comedy of Errors has been adapted too many times in Hindi cinema -- Gulzar's Angoor, David Dhawan's Bade Miyan Chhote Miyan and Rohit Shetty's Circus.

For now, however, he is keen on creating a cinematic universe beginning with Khufiya, which released on Netflix on Thursday.

"I want to create a Khufiya universe, where we bring old and new spies in this story of espionage. In fact, outside India, the film is called 'House of Spies". We will see it as Khufiya here but someone watching it in London will see it as House of Spies,' he said.

He would like to repeat the cast too.

As someone who started his journey in showbiz as a music composer and later turned to direction, music has always been an important element in Bhardwaj's cinema.

In Khufiya, he has come up with songs such as Dil Dushman, Mat Aana and Rang Na Rangaa, and made them an integral part of the story.

The filmmaker said music is inherent in the story of Khufiya and he even created a character of a spiritual guru, who is different from the caricaturish portrayals in past movies.

This character, played by Rahul Ram, helped him bring back sufi songs of Rahim and Kabir, Bhardwaj said.

'We also created a ghazal that is linked to Tabu's past that connects like a triangle with Wamiqa's character. Then there is a whistle theme that we used for the promo. I created the theme very quickly as we wanted to launch the film soon after we finalised Ali for the movie,' he added.

Bhardwaj said he composed the tune during a trip to Mussoorie from Chandigarh.

"I told my music producer, who was travelling with me, that we have to record it as soon as we reach there because it has to go in three days. So I conceptualised the theme on the way and completed it by the time we reached Mussoorie," he added.

Khufiya also features Ashish Vidyarthi, Navnindra Behl, Shataf Figar and Atul Kulkarni.