Sanjay Gupta, who has directed films such as Kaante, Jazbaa, and Kaabil, recently supported director Sandeep Reddy Vanga against the backlash he has been receiving for his controversial film, Animal. Sanjay applauded Sandeep’s conviction, and said that he has made a lot of people uncomfortable, which is probably what has worked for the film. Sanjay also suggested that Javed Akhtar’s criticism of Animal isn’t wholly justified, and insisted that the veteran screenwriter is still looking at the world through ‘rose-tinted glasses’.
In a chat with Siddharth Kannan on his YouTube channel, Sanjay said that Sandeep has “completely disrupted the wagon.” He added, “He has made a lot of people very uncomfortable. We are the land of the Kamasutra and Khajuraho and we will don’t talk about sex education. We are inherently hypocritical race.” He shared that in a recent conversation with Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, they realised that Animal had changed the film industry. “Recently, I had gone for the trial of a film and there I met Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, and a few others. Animal is all anyone can talk about right now. Now life is pre and post Animal,” he said. Sanjay said that his upcoming script has a “shadow of Animal. I think ‘what would Vanga do’ in a particular scene.”
The filmmaker mentioned that there were sequences in Animal which were very similar to his film Zinda. The 2006 film starred Sanjay Dutt and John Abraham and was an unofficial adaptation of Oldboy. “There are sequences in Animal which we have shot in Zinda, almost 20 years ago in 2004. The exact same sequences, with the hammer and 30 people fighting.”
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When asked about Javed Akhtar’s thoughts on Animal, Sanjay said that Javed might be right, but he insisted that the screenwriter was still looking at the world through “rose-tinted glasses.” “He is not accepting that the society has already changed. We are not the same people we were 10 years ago. We don’t have the same compassion. We don’t have the same patience. Look at how we are being manipulated, look at how the media is being manipulated. We will not go back to normal so I don’t think it is right to blame the film for the society and vice versa,” Sanjay said. At the 9th Ajanta-Ellora International Film Festival, Javed had called Animal “dangerous,” and said, “If there’s a film in which a man asks a woman to lick his shoe or if a man says it’s okay to slap a woman… and the film is a super hit, that’s dangerous.”
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Sanjay also went on to support Anurag Kashyap, who endorsed Sandeep Reddy Vanga publicly. “Anurag is defending Vanga and he is very right. He is saying criticise the film, not the filmmaker. In Animal, people have a problem with Sandeep Vanga,” he said.
Animal was heavily criticised for its violent and misogynistic content. The film still managed to make over Rs 900 crore at the worldwide box office.
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