Adil Hussain on The Storyteller: ‘I make conscious efforts to do something new as an artiste’

After 2019, it is the second time Adil Hussain has had two of his films at the Busan International Film Festival—Ananth Mahadevan’s The Storyteller and Padmakumar Narasimhamurthy’s Max, Min and Meowzaki. The Storyteller, which is based on Satyajit Ray's short story Golpo Boliye Tarini Khuro, explores the ideas of originality and plagiarism while telling the story of an artist's retaliation. Max, Min and Meowzaki is the story of three generations of an affluent Tamil-Brahmin family and portrays a clash of sociopolitical ideologies and the world view.

Hussain, who is well known for his roles in Life of Pi and Hotel Salvation, plays Gujarati businessman, Goradia in The Storyteller. Goradia thinks that once material money is collected, pleasure will follow, but this turns out to be untrue.

The late, legendary Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray wrote the story on which the movie is based.

“Of course, Ray set Bengal and Gujarat against one another. Bengal, on the other hand, has a history of intellectual knowledge and ability or the aspiration towards acquiring intellectual knowledge or knowledge in general. One state is a place where people believe in physical wealth way more—I'm not saying the entire community—but most of the people are very business minded and they like accumulating physical wealth,” Hussain told Variety.

“Therefore, this encounter between the Gujarati businessman and the Bengali storyteller must be viewed from that angle,” he added.

In an unconventional casting choice, Hussain, an actor from eastern India who is fluent in Bengali, plays the Gujarati character and famous Gujarati actor Paresh Rawal portrays the Bengali storyteller.

“It is a casting coup – we were both helping each other with each other’s accent,” noted Hussain.

For his other Busan movie, Max, Min and Meowzaki, Hussain had to learn the Tamil accent. In this movie, he plays Ramesh Mahadevan, a conservative businessman who is wedged between his free-spirited father and son, who are both musicians.

“The director, who is from that region of India, recorded all of my lines in the accent he thought I would use to assist me out. Therefore, I had been carefully listening to the audio and getting ready for the part,” said Hussain.

And when the actor delivered his initial lines, the director would stop him and ask him to gently change here and there.

“In acting lingo, we refer to this as the timbre quality, so I had to get the intonation just perfect. Since I had never done something similar, I was undoubtedly very, very suspicious before I started. Additionally, I had no desire to make it cartoonish. That was a tragedy waiting to happen. Probably not perfect, but at least tolerable, I got it properly.”

Hussain “makes conscious efforts to do something new as an artiste”, and is working on a bunch of interesting projects.

The immigrant drama Footprints on Water by Nathalia Syam is finished and ready to premiere at film festivals; meanwhile, Prawaal Raman's Postman, in which Hussain hires the title postman in a remote community to keep the post office open, is in the editing stage.

Other films include Abhiroop Basu's short Lipstick, in which Hussain portrays a secret gay Muslim factory worker, and Ranjan Palit's political thriller A Knock on the Door, with Naseeruddin Shah and Nandita Das (who is also in Busan this year as a filmmaker with Zwigato).

Apart from these, Hussain will soon commence Resul Pookutty's directorial debut, Otta, Pratim D Gupta’s Tooth Pari, Mukhbir and so on.

The Storyteller will compete at the BIFF for the prized Kim Jiseok award. The fest, which began on October 5, will last through October 14.