Andhadhun

Star(s): Ayushmann Khurrana, Tabu, Radhika Apte
Indian/ International Crew: Konrad Bajno - First Assistant Director (Poland)
Language: Hindi
Line Producer: Maciej Zemojcin- Line producer (Poland)
Director/Producer Director: Sriram Raghavan Producers: Sudhanshu Vats, Ajit Andhare, Gaurav Nanda, Ashok Vasodia, Kewal Garg, Sanjay Routray, Odette Mayfair-Joy Production Companies: Matchbox Pictures and Viacom 18 Motion Pictures

Film Location Analysis

By Kaushik Bhaumik

Around the 2-hour moment in the film we see a dissolve from a car going down an empty highway in India to a slow downward pan across the Main Square of Krakow with the Cloth Hall on the left and the Gothic towers of St Mary’s Basilica. We see the square filled with people, milling around the square and around a tented market set up around the statue of Adam Mickiewicz, one of the Three Bards of Poland, author of Pan Tadeusz, considered as the last great epic poem of European literature (made into a film by Andrzej Wajda in 1999). A low top-angle shot on the side of the Cloth Hall carriage sees an ornate horse carriage for tourist revels pass by and we cut to a straight mid-shot of the carriage move across the camera sight and reveal Sophie bidding a young man goodbye with a kiss at the end. She is dressed in a smart white shirt, jeans, and a beige light jacket. She enters Szewska Street, strolls down looking at various shop windows. There are people walking up and down the street. Suddenly she stops and stares at something with wide surprised eyes. The camera pans to the right and we see a poster for ‘A-KASH & the Aznavour Ensemble due to play at 6.30 pm at the Piec ART Klub on 4.08.2020 (Aznavour being Raghavan’s homage to Francois Truffaut Tirez sur le Pianiste that starred the legendary French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour in the title role of the ‘Pianiste’. Indeed, Raghavan had originally titled the film as Shoot the Piano Player, the English title of Truffaut’s film which did not work as no one was interested in a Hindi film with an English title). We hear the song ‘Wo Ladki’ sung by Arijit Singh start playing over the scene. The composition by Amit Trivedi turns the film’s ‘piano theme’ into a song. Significantly it is composed around a sonata structure that melds well with the great tradition of Polish classical music, above all the music of Chopin. Sophie enters the club, goes through low-lit doorway, and climbs down a dimly lit staircase into a cellar bar. The camera follows her at first from the back in mid-shot, imbuing the sequence with a sense of foreboding. As she descends the stairs in low lighting and the fact that she enters a cavern charges the air with a distinct Gothic feel (a pop sentiment globally attributed to eastern European locations). She walks through the crowded bar and a cut reveals the crowd in the bar listening to a quintet consisting of a violin and cello player, a drummer, an accordion player, and a pianist performing the ‘Wo Ladki’ song. We are in neo-noir land, the dim lighting and shadows invoking the noir-ish feel to Truffaut’s film as well as countless jazz club scenes in classic noir films. We don’t see the pianist right at the beginning. A mid-long shot from the depth of the club pans across the back of the violin player to reveal Akash on the piano, wearing dark glasses framed in a halo of darkness with bright light thrown on his face, singing the song. A Ray Charles meets Kevin Spacey cheeky villainy moment. The blinding light on Akash’s face conveys Sophie’s shock at her discovery of Akash, a revelation. Cut to Sophie on the other end of the room surrounded by the audience staring at him, lit up in orange as the white light intensity of her shock dies down and turns to warm orange of her being disoriented and angry. After a few intercuts between Akash singing, the ensemble playing their instruments and Sophie staring in disbelief, the song ends. The audience bursts into cheers and applause and Akash thanks them. The applause continues as various members of the audience come up to shake hands with Akash. Sophie also shakes his hand and Akash recognises her from the feel of her hand…apparently. She says to Akash ‘You are fooling people here as well’ to which Akash says, ‘It’s a long story’. They then decide to have coffee and we cut to the pavement of Szweska where Sophie and Akash are seated in front of the Piec Club. They are served coffee and Akash tells Sophie what happened, and we now see the denouement of the Indian part of the film culminating in Simi’s death in the car accident. We cut back to Piec frontage and Akash explains that after his escape he did not have the courage to come back to Sophie and he escaped to London with the help of a friend. A waitress picks up a rabbit hair-knobbed walking stick and brings it to Akash. Akash and Simi are standing on the pavement of Szweska with crowds of people walking up and down the street. Akash invites Sophie to a concert of his, the following evening at the Main Square to which Sophie says she is flying back the next day. But she says she will try. Akash bids her goodbye and starts to walk away but is held back by Sophie saying ‘She (Simi) ruined so many lives. He should have listened to Dr. Swami and taken her eyes’. Light piano music starts playing. We see Akash walk away and Sophie staring at his receding back. Akash steps through the arched corridor of the Cloth Hall on to the Main Square. The light is falling, and darkness descends on the square. We see people dining under umbrellas on the square. Akash turns and walks towards us apparently using the walking stick to navigate his way as a blind man. We see a beer can lying a little distance away from his trajectory. Suddenly Akash takes a wide swing of his stick and sends the can careening away to the right of the screen as the camera pans to follow the can’s trajectory coming to a halt framing the Basilica and Mickiewicz’s statue in front. Blank screen. End credits start rolling.

Additional Information & Links

The Krakow sequence serves as the climax sequence for the film lasting around 9 minutes. It was shot in July 2018, a little before the release of the film in October of the same year. A couple of locations were used for the sequence—the Main Square of the city and the Piec Art Acoustic Jazz Club on Szewska Street. The Main Square of the city that we see now was rebuilt in the fourteenth century after the destruction of the city by the Mongols. The Cloth Hall (Sukiennice) on the main square, that the opening of the Krakow sequence catches prominently, was originally built as a Gothic building in the fourteenth century when Krakow was the capital of Poland and a member of the mighty Hanseatic League. It was rebuilt in the Renaissance style in 1555. During its golden age in the fifteenth century as a major centre of international trade it was the repository for many exotic goods from the Orient—spices, silk, leather, wax. Szewska Street (Ulica Szweska, trans. Shoemakers Street), coming off the Main Square, is a historic street of Krakow. Formerly a part of the Silesian Route (now the Silesian Industrial Monuments Route of touristic attraction—Heinrich Heine’s poem ‘Die schlesischen Weber/The Silesian Weavers’ written around the uprising of the weavers of Silesia in 1844 was published by Karl Marx in his newspaper Vorwärts and was translated into English by Friedrich Engels), most of the buildings on the street were built between the fourteenth and the seventeenth century.   

There are some interesting anecdotes, all relating to Ayushmann Khurrana’s time in Poland during the shoot:

• Khurrana was contacted by his Polish fans the moment he landed in the country wanting to set up a meeting with him. Khurrana was surprised to find out he had fans in Poland. A meeting was set up with the star in the hotel where he was staying, scheduled for after the film wrap-up. At the appointed time five of Khurrana’s fan met him, all the fans being students of Indology (at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, which publishes a journal named Cracow Indological Studies since 1995). Khurrana later said that this was the first time he had met European fans who understood and spoke Hindi fluently. When he asked his fans what made them study Hindi, they all said it was their love of Bollywood. They were big fans of Khurrana’s films such as Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (2017). One fan said she could watch the films without subtitles since she understood Hindi fluently. She also followed his poetry. (https://www.bollywoodhungama.com/news/features/wrapping-andhadhun-poland-ayushmann-khurrana-makes-fantastic-polish-memories/)
• Khurrana paid an impromptu video tribute to Kishore Kumar on his birthday on August 4, 2018. However, this was no ordinary tribute. The film’s climax sequence depicts a poster announcing Akash (Khurrana’s character in the film) booked in for a concert at the Club on August 4, 2020, which also happens to be Kishore Kumar’s birthday. Inspired by this coincidence Khurrana and his piano coach Akshay Verma jammed in the middle of the shoot to record Khurrana singing ‘O Mere Dil Ke Chain’ from the film Mere Jeevan Saathi, one of Kumar’s biggest hits ever. Here is Khurrana in his own words: Remember the concert that blind pianist Akash (Ayushmann's character) is a part of in Kraków, Poland? Well, the poster shows 'August 4, 2020' and remembering the same, Ayushmann shared the picture and wrote, "The date, climax." The coincidence here is—it is also legendary singer Kishore Kumar's birthday on August 4. Ayushmann on his Instagram also shared a video clip and wrote, "Happy Birthday Kishore da! This video was shot in July 2018 in Krakow, Poland. We were shooting the climax of Andhadhun and @akshayvarma04 and I jammed in between shots, as usual." [sic] (https://www.republicworld.com/entertainment-news/bollywood-news/ayushmanns-2018-film-andhadhun-had-an-august-4-2020-connection.html)
• Khurrana visited the remains of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Of his visit Khurrana said: "It was eerie and fascinating at the same time. I have read about the World Wars and could feel the energy of the people who died in the gas chamber there. The museum had their shoes, hair, their clothes." (https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/supplement/story/20181119-it-s-important-to-be-one-with-the-place-you-travel-to-says-ayushman-khurrana-1385091-2018-11-09) His Instagram post read: I visited Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp, where Jews, Poles and Romas were executed. Thirty million Jews, men, women, and children were sent straight to the gas chamber. This is the place where the biggest human genocide (holocaust) happened. It was an hour drive from the city of Krakow in Poland. I had this sinking feeling in my gut. It was so eerie that I didn’t interact much with my people on the way back to my hotel. It was depressing and fascinating at the same time. (https://www.instagram.com/p/BliljhhgAjV/?hl=en)
  

Andhadhun as part of Indian cinema in Poland: Bollywood shoot connection with Poland began as far back as in 2006 with major parts of Kunal Kohli’s Fanaa (2006) being shot there, Poland standing in for Kashmir in the film. Krakow itself has seen a number of Indian films being shot there—Aaazaan (2011), Yeh Jo Mohabbat Hai (2012) and the Tamil film Saguni (2013). 2015 saw Bangistan, a film on religious fundamentalism, being shot in and around Krakow and probably the most extensively shot Indian film in Poland. Parts of the Salman Khan-starrer Kick (2014) were shot in and around Warsaw and parts of Shaandaar (2015) were shot in Kozlowka Palace in eastern Poland. In both films, Poland stood in for England (including a bizarre cameo by a London double decker bus on Warsaw streets to convince audiences that things were still happening in the British capital). Parts of the serial Mahakumbh (2014) too were shot in Poland (the hero’s father is brought to Poland by members of the Nazi Thule Society and tortured to reveal the secret of amrit—the nectar of immortality). 2016 saw the shoot of Fitoor at the Goetz Palace, Brzesko, and various art galleries in Warsaw. Interestingly, this was a reshoot of the entire sequence earlier shot with Bollywood superstar Rekha in Kashmir. When Rekha opted out of the film due to an altercation with director Abhishek Kapoor, her sequences were reshot around Tabu (one of the stars of Andhadhun) in Poland standing in for Kashmir.

Three Polish institutions have been instrumental in bringing Indian films to Poland and Krakow specifically: The Polish Tourism Organisation (Polska Organizacja Turystyki), Film Polska Productions, and Kraków Festival Office (Krakowskie Biuro Festiwalowe). The Polish Tourism Organisation has been wooing Indian films to be shot in Poland since 2009. In 2012, they started the ‘I like Poland’ campaign focusing on Japanese, Chinese and Indian tourist markets. Getting Kick to be shot in Poland was part of this initiative. Krakow has now become Krakowood for Bollywood films. (https://thediplomat.com/2015/07/kracowood-bollywoods-new-found-love-affair-with-poland/)

The Polish Ambassador to India, Adam Burakowski, said in an interview that Indian films shot in Poland can get 30 percent rebate by the Film Polska Productions on shooting on locations there. He mentioned Poland has scenic palaces, mountains, forests, seafront—all in very close proximity, making travelling from one location to the other very easy. (https://www.ibtimes.co.in/poland-lures-indian-film-makers-30-rebate-scenic-beauty-icing-cake-exclusive-831505)

In addition, Indian commercials too are being shot in Poland. Film Polska in collaboration with Classic Films from Mumbai shot a TV commercial for Yardley London Deo at the Slowacki Theatre, Krakow, featuring Bollywood star Katrina Kaif. The Slowacki Theatre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a landmark of Polish cultural history marking the birthplace of the Young Poland theatre movement (1890-1918). The shoot had 100 extras, featured actors and dancers all cast by Choice Casting, Film Polska’s in-house casting agency. (https://www.thelocationguide.com/2013/12/tlg-advertorial-filming-on-location-in-krakow-with-film-polska-and-katrina-kaif/). Alvernia Studios, located in Alwernia, west of Krakow, has begun to do the Polish on-location production work for Indian films and commercials. In 2013, they opened in Mumbai. They were in charge of the production of Aazaan, Yeh Ji Mohabbat Hai, Saguni and Rhythm (2016). In addition, they did some of the post-production work on Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra’s Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013).  They also produced the commercial for TVS Sport directed by Ashim Ahluwalia and a commercial for Tata Photon dongles. (http://www.alvernia.com/en/)

Maciej Zemojcin: Zemojcin, who served as line producer for the Polish shoot of Andhadhun is by now an old ‘India hand’. Currently partner in Blackfish Studio, Warsaw, a state-of-the-art production studio for films, commercials and much more, Zemojcin is also a freelance line producer in which capacity he has worked on many Indian films shot in Poland. He has served as line producer on Aazaan, Saguni, Kick, Mahakumbh, Shaandaar, Fitoor and Andhadhun. He is also credited with line production for the upcoming Rumi Jaffrey’s Chehre (2021) starring Amitabh Bachchan, Emran Hashmi and Rhea Chakraborty.

Polish cinematographer Artur Zurawski has served as DOP for Bollywood films Jackpot (2013), Mardaani (2014), Sultan (2016) and Bhoomi (2017). He was DOP 2nd unit for Aazaan.

On another note, Andhadhun did extremely well in China raking in $47 million (out of the worldwide collections of $64 million). Piano-mania in China meets the Indian piano player?

Tourism

There is until now no evidence that the shooting of films in Poland has caused a spurt in Indian tourism in Poland. Ambassador Burakowski mentioned in the interview referred to above that Poland was also being promoted as a destination wedding site for Indians given that the country has so many magical palaces. He also mentioned Amitabh Bachchan visiting Poland before the pandemic breakout on the occasion of the unveiling of a statue of his father, the poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, in Wroclaw, recently declared a UNESCO City of Literature (just after former Wroclawian Olga Tokarczuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature).