Ranbir's note of despair

Ranbir Kapoor won’t have to learn sign language from scratch for his role as a deaf and mute character in Anurag Basu’s film. The actor, who assisted Sanjay Leela Bhansali on Black, spent ample time with Ayesha Kapoor and Rani Mukerji when they were being trained on the sets by a teacher for the physically disabled.
He had also visited several institutions for the hearing and speech impaired to research on Black.
The real challenge now lies in creating a musical score that would amply express the simmering discontent behind Ranbir’s silence in the film. Quite like what Laxmikant-Pyarelal did for Jaya Prada in the 1970s in Sargam, which coincidentally starred Ranbir’s father Rishi Kapoor.
While filmmakers Bhansali and Gulzar have made songless films like Black and Koshish (which had one song but it wasn’t filmed on the protagonists, Jaya Bachchan and Sanjeev Kumar), respectively about deaf and mute protagonists, Anurag Basu is going the other way with a full-on musical to bring out his deaf and mute hero’s emotions and feelings.
Consequently, music director Pritam Chakraborty is a worried man as he now faces the biggest challenge of his career in friend Anurag Basu’s new film starring Ranbir. Incidentally, the director and composer live in the same building.
Pritam says, “In ordinary circumstances, songs are just a supplement to the hero’s dialogue. In Anurag’s film, Ranbir’s inner world and emotions will have to be expressed through songs. The words and music will let the audience know what he is thinking. So my songs will have to mirror Ranbir’s exact thoughts.” And to think that Pritam thought he would have it easy this time.
“I thought composing a full-fledged musical for Ranbir in Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani was hard enough. But this is much harder,” adds Pritam.
Check out Ranbir Kapoor’s homepage
Follow us on Twitter for more stories