Locations in Europe: Spain
Storyline
Star(s): Shah Rukh Khan, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, Dimple Kapadia
Songs/Dance: Located in Spain, India
Indian/ International Crew: Indian and international.
Language: Hindi
Line Producer/Executive Producer/ Associate Producer: Padam Bhushan (Executive Producer); Mae Espada, Virginia Hernando (Production Manager Spain); Dimitriy D. Zaytsey, Tomeu Xamena Biblioni (Unit Production Managers, Russia)
Director/Producer: Siddharth Anand (Director); Aditya Chopra, Alexander Dostal, Maxim Ajjawi, Keshav Purushot
Film Location Analysis
By Ranjani Mazumdar
Drawing on the narrative themes of several films of Yash Chopra’s earlier days, like Dhool Ka Phool and Dharamputra, Pathaan showcases the main protagonist as an orphan abandoned at a movie theatre by his parents. This abandoned child grows up not knowing his religion, and the film shows how his name, Pathaan, was given to him by a family of Afghans who helped him recover after he prevented an American missile from attacking innocent children in a Madrasa. Pathaan’s narrative is globally located, with high-octane action sequences that unfold across the world. The locations include Spain, the UAE, Russia, and Bombay. The overall structure of the narrative is framed by major action taking place in locations that are outdoor or interior spaces of public buildings. The conversations take place in hotel rooms, cafes, and the workspace of the Indian spy network—a combination of computers, virtual navigation screens, and gadgetry. There is no stable home in the film; everything and every location is a place of transit.
The European segment is introduced narratively via the song "Besharam rang." The song sequence was shot in Mallorca Spain and becomes the setting for an encounter between Pathaan and Rubina. Siddharth Anand has always had a penchant for global locations, as evident from the action films he has made. The release of this song prior to the film started the initial controversy for Pathaan (in particular, the use of a saffron-coloured bikini worn by Rubina). Performed on a beach with several drone shots and a large crowd of dancers, the song required Rubina, the agent, to appear for the first time on screen as a femme fatale. Anand wanted a ghazal like sound combined with Afro beats. This is a beach sequence, with the sea, the wind, and the atmosphere providing density and ambience. Located in the Mediterranean Sea with two mountainous regions and dramatic cliffs, Mallorca’s primary economy is tourism, drawing visitors to see the region's historical sites and traces. The shooting of a song in Mallorca made perfect sense since the island offers a combination of lowlands, lakes, and dramatic mountains as a backdrop. Choreographed by Vaibhavi Merchant, this sequence is the first introduction to Rubina, and her seductive performance was crucial for the dance number. Following the dance, Rubina draws Pathaan through a tunnel to another space where she finally dives into a swimming pool, revealing Jim on one side—a remarkable moment in the film where we see her with the enemy—and then the narrative moves quickly to introduce twists and turns.
Rubina saves Pathaan from Jim’s men and strikes a deal with him to access the deadly virus, "Raktbeej," held under high security in Moscow. Moscow is evoked using exterior shots of Dubai along with superimposed VFX elements. Moscow is the site to stage the burglary of the virus stored in an intricately managed high security vault. The theft of the virus by Pathaan and Rubina is one of the moments in the film that evokes a videogame aesthetic with laser pointer directions and the deconstruction of the plan provided in detail for spectators to understand—something that is a regular feature in heist films and other spy films like Mission Impossible. The theft is placed as an act that is motivated by noble concerns; the method of gathering details about the process is broken down for the audience in an accelerated sequence, edited primarily with indoor corporate offices, a nightclub, and streets. The Bhurj Khaleefa in Dubai is shown as a building in Moscow, with Rubina and Pathaan walking up and down the building's side to make their way to the vault. With VFX, borders are made porous, and a building in Dubai can stand in for a structure in Moscow. What matters here is the imagination of the location.
Pathaan also used VFX to simulate other locations, like Paris. After the theft of the virus, Rubina double-crosses Pathaan. Some years later, she sends a signal to him via a CCTV image of herself captured in Paris. This is a deliberate strategy since she knows Pathaan will see this and understand that she is waiting to meet him in Paris. This meeting takes place in a street in Cadiz, Spain, that is recreated to represent Paris. The street signs were changed, and a stock aerial shot of Paris with the Eiffel Tower was used to provide a sense of "authenticity." These simulated imaginations of concrete locations have become dramatically possible with VFX technology, which transforms the relationship between space, place, and virtual imaginations into a complex arrangement. Since the advent of digital special effects, the distinction between a camera image and a computer-generated simulation has been difficult to establish. This is because VFX can mimic reality, raising new concerns about "realism" and "authenticity." While these issues are hotly debated, the public relations machinery for big-budget films continues to conceal the level of artifice generated by computer imagery in order to aggressively emphasise the role of the actors and cinematographer in the "authentic" capture of complex and risky situations. These issues are heightened in the production and marketing of action films. So, even though the film's only European location with the actors present was Spain, the producers have continued to claim the film was shot in Russia, France, Italy, and so on, revealing how they continue to believe in the "reality effect" as a required benchmark for audiences, no matter how spectacular and artificial the imagery may be.
This is exactly what happened in southern Siberia's frozen Lake Baikal. The lake contains more than 2,000 plant and animal species and has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In terms of its visual look, the lake, surrounded by rivers, forests, and mountains, is breath-taking, and it is no wonder that the place is known as the pearl of Siberia. In a major action sequence, the virus containers roll out on the frozen surface of the lake. While Jim manages to capture one of them, Rubina, on ice skates, gets hold of the other, only to trip and fall through the ice into the water. She is saved by Pathaan, and they now have in their possession one of the virus containers. For this sequence, the actors did not travel to the location. It was shot independently, and the actors were placed in the location using VFX because they did not need a crowd to be present.
The last song, "Jhoome Jo Pathaan," which appears as the credit sequence in the film, shows Rubina and Pathaan dancing with a crowd of Spanish dancers. This colourful dance was shot in the Andalucian city of Cadiz, in Spain, and all the dancers came from the country. The dancers move through the Old Town locales of Cadiz, which include the Plaza del Cabildo, Plaza de San Juan de Dios, Church of Santa Cruz, and the neighbourhood of El Pópulo with the Cadiz seafront. Unlike the Besharam Rang song, this one projects the architectural heritage and texture of Cadiz, with its ancient buildings, domes, and plazas. The song sells heritage and architectural imagination as its tourism myth, while the previous one revels in natural landscapes and waterways. The Moorish architecture associated with Cadiz comes from the influence of Muslims who lived under Christian rule in this region. This knowledge, combined with the fact that Anand wanted the song to be like a jazzified qawwali, draws attention to the complex layering at work in the construction of Pathaan’s persona for a contemporary Indian audience. Between the two songs, we get a spectrum of what Spain has to offer the traveller, the audience, and other filmmakers thinking of locations.
Pathaan has had tremendous success at the global and domestic box office, but it is always difficult to predict why a film works with large audiences. In this case, Shahrukh Khan’s star power combined with the actor’s biography being woven into the narrative remains important. Pathaan is a film with a utopian promise that seeks inclusivity. The sequence in Afghanistan where SRK narrates how he became Pathaan is highly evocative of a desire to claim an identity that is not rigid but fluid. This is also a film where SRK is strongly portrayed as a Muslim, even if it is not overtly stated. On screen, he is battered but does not give up. SRK's new form of expression is battery and swift bodily action in response. There is a trace of this in Raees, but it takes on its full form in Pathaan. You get the feeling that despite all that has happened in the last few years with trolls, the arrest of his son, etc., the actor has channelled his anger into his screen performance, but it is an anger that is not vengeful or making revenge a form of political culture. This is a film that wants to use the power of love to move against the hatred out there. It draws on both SRK’s screen legacy and reframes it as an action film where the body is expressive of a complex situation. The careful selection of locations was therefore crucial to reclaiming SRK’s beleaguered stardom.
Additional Information & Links
https://awaradiaries.com/pathaan-filming-locations/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7f685ljJL8&list=RDCMUCbTLwN10NoCU4WDzLf1JMOA
The film credits on IMDB show that there were producers from Russia and Line producers and production managers from Spain. This is usually the case when the production wants to take the benefit of cash rebates.
Tourism
