Ever since he can remember, the prolific Bengali director Srijit Mukherjee has been a fan of Uttam Kumar.
“Which Bengali isn’t?” he wonders. “It’s one of my greatest regrets that I was not working at the time when he was. So I couldn’t work with him.On his birth and death anniversary the media keeps asking what I would have made with him. So I thought, why not give it a shot? That’s how the germ of an idea came. I grew up watching Uttamda’s films and understanding what a great star-actor he was and also understanding that beyond a star-actor he became a great social phenomenon . Just speak to any Bengali of any age group..the kind of glow that comes on to the face will tell you that he has gone way beyond being just a superstar.”
The germ of an idea to bring alive Uttam Kumar through computer graphics came to Srijit on seeing how relevant the legendary actor remained generations if Bengalis. “I think the fact that he transcended the conflict between being a star and an actor…he combined both and became a cultural and social icon for the entire Bengali race. I think his persona attracted me from a young age. Ati Uttam is a modernday fairytale. It is a rom-com. It is also tribute to the charisma of Uttam Kumar. It is about the ghost of Uttam Kumar being brought down by planchette and how he helps a fan of his to succeed in love. Of course there were lot of technological hurdles which I had to work around. Given the unimaginable resource constraints of the Bengali film industry, to do something like this for the first time in the history of Indian cinema, to cut out existing footage of Uttamda and place it in a new film…I think we are quite happy with what we’ve achieved. It’s a novel concept and I am so happy that it is happening in Bengali cinema.”
Recreating the legendary actor through computer graphics was not easy. “Oh, it was a long arduous task. Ati Uttam took six years to be made. The first thing I did was to write a rom-com which assumed that Uttam Kumar was alive. Then I went through almost all of his films to find dialogues that I could use in my film. One I got a match I replaced that dialogue with a dialogue in my film, so this process was undertaken till I got a match from fifty-six of Uttam Kumar’s films . Then came the very tough part of getting the negative digital satellite rights of these clippings,not just his dialogues but clippings of his silent reactions or just a walk.These became the building blocks on which I could build a script. Then I started shooting and editing simultaneously . The source material was so granny at times that some shots of Uttam Kumar look like bad special-effects.That problem we’ve solved by giving a disclaimer in the credit titles. But the audio was still noisy. For that we used artificial intelligence.I guess the regret of not being able to work with him led to the conceptualization of Ati Uttam.”
When asked his opinion on the eternal Uttam Kumar Versus Soumitra Chatterjee debate in Bengali cinema , Srijit replies, “Oh, I’ve been an Uttam advocate in all Uttam-Soumitra arguments . Of course, Soumitra Chatterjee is the finest actor of Bengali cinema. But Uttam Kumar is much more than an actor .Once you get into the superstar-matinee idol space , it is very difficult for an actor to denude himself of his style and mannerisms and play character, which Uttam Kumar did with a lot of panache. Also, the sheer number of mediocre scripts that Uttam uplifted with his acting prowess, is something even the great Satyajit Ray acknowledged.”