I will celebrate Talvar’s success NOW
Never in the history of cinema has a film changed so many opinions” is how Vishal Bhardwaj describes the period between ‘Talvar”s 2015 release and the Allahabad High Court’s Thursday verdict that finally acquitted Rajesh and Nupur Talwar , so far officially designated the prime suspects in the murder of their daughter Aarushi. The director of the film, Meghna Gulzar , is far more restrained, calling herself only “a small link in that chain”. She doesn’t go so far as to say that the film influenced the verdict, but just that she believes “they (the judges) also looked at the facts and the data that we saw, and also saw that it wasn’t adding up”. Where both she and Vishal are on common ground, in a chat with each other and with DT, is that there is finally no holding back in emotionally reacting to, and feeling validated for, a movie that they tried so hard to be clinically distanced from while it was being made. Produced by Vineet Jain and Vishal Bhardwaj, the Junglee Pictures’ venture aggressively challenged the popular narrative about the case when it came out, and today, when the further judicial interpretation of facts has followed in the same direction, Vishal and Meghna rewind and explain that the “slant” wasn’t in their minds, but in the data and proof.