The maker of consistently compelling content on screens big and small, Hansal Mehta’s latest is The Buckingham Murders. Led by Kareena Kapoor Khan (who also debuts as producer) as a cop battling a personal setback and professional impediments, the film has the classic Hansal touches of meat and meaning. A t2 chat with the filmmaker.

The Buckingham Murders, for me, is more than a mere police procedural or murder mystery. I saw it as a touching exploration of motherhood, grief and trauma. Has the larger audience also reacted to the film in this way?

Yes, it has been quite overwhelming. The tradition I follow is that once a film has been delivered, I go off on a break a day or two before it releases. Call it superstition or coping mechanism or anything else but I usually stay away from too many reviews and from social media, at least for the first 48 hours.

From whatever I have heard so far, the general sentiment for The Buckingham Murders is very, very positive. The film is doing well, the numbers are picking up. The audience count is increasing by the day. This growth is a good sign. It means that the audience is embracing the story and the larger thought and meaning of the film.

I have been getting messages from a lot of people who have been very generous in their love for the film. There has been a little bit of criticism here and there but this is not the time to think about it. When I look back and reflect upon the criticism later, it will be more constructive. Right now, I will only be reacting to it emotionally.

I believe the story came to you six years ago. What took so long to get it off the ground?

It was in 2018 when Aseem Arora (the co-writer of the film) narrated the idea to me. We were shooting Chhalaang and on the sets of that film, he narrated the idea of The Buckingham Murders to me. I immediately said: ‘Aseem, don’t give it to anyone else... I want to do this’. I tried to pitch it to some producers, but they said ‘no’ and the story went into cold storage.

I started shooting Scam (1992) in the meanwhile. I had forgotten about this script till Ektaa (R. Kapoor, co-producer of the film) called in 2019 and signed me to direct it. She said she loved the story and wanted to make it. A year later, she got Kareena (Kapoor Khan) and me on a call and I read a brief treatment of the film to Kareena who had already decided she wanted to do the film. Now when I look at the film, I don’t think anyone else but Kareena could have done this film.

What did Kareena bring to the part that was uniquely her own?

I never had any doubts that she was the best person for the part, especially when I saw how she embraced the story and the enthusiasm she showed to do the film. She was very collaborative. She came on board as a producer with Ektaa and Balaji (Motion Pictures) and that itself showed her conviction in the film.

She genuinely surrendered herself to what we were doing, to the overall vision of the film. The idea was never to do what one terms a conventional whodunit murder mystery made in Bollywood style. It was always to go beyond that to tell a story that would resonate with a large audience.

While the overarching theme is that of a murder mystery, the film is a study of motherhood, of small hamlets in a vast country that are constantly in friction... people polarised by their religion, their social strata, their beliefs.... It was an opportunity for an exploration that was far more than a Bollywood-ish story.

One doesn’t expect any less from you. Whatever you make will always have meaning, layers and a voice of its own...

That is a big burden, you know. I wish I could make something where I only have fun! (Laughs) But the thing is that when I get a story, I start exploring the world in which the story is set, the socio-economic, the political... they start staring me in the face, then I start exploring and that becomes part of the story. It makes the story richer. Then the psychological elements of the characters start coming into play and almost always translate into a fascinating, complex kind of story. Yet, my job is to tell you the story in the simplest way possible.

You shot this film completely in the UK. What makes the process of making The Buckingham Murders different from any of your previous films?

I am very proud of the film. This is a majorly female-driven film... I am perhaps one of the few men in the film. Apart from Kareena, Ektaa, Shobha Kapoor... we had Emma Dalesman, the director of photography, and Shakyra Dowling who did the casting in the UK. We had a very big international crew because I wanted the film to have authenticity. We cast very good local British actors for all the parts... we spent a lot of time auditioning them.

Very often, films that are shot by Indian directors abroad don’t ring true because the characters are either all made Indian or even non-Indian characters are made to speak in Hindi. Only the backdrop is international. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to make it authentic to the place and to the world.

Is that why you have released the film in two versions — the original Hinglish version and a dubbed Hindi version?

For Hinglish, I should give credit to the much-maligned CBFC! (Laughs) When they were certifying the film, they said that they can’t call it an English film because it has quite a bit of Hindi in it. I told them: ‘Why don’t you certify it as Hindi-English?’ And then they said: ‘No, let’s call it Hinglish’.

Hinglish was always a colloquial term for the crossover films of the ’90s and early 2000s. Now it has become an official term. I hope the National Awards have a Hinglish category soon.

We did the Hindi dub to reach a slightly wider audience. It is something that was driven by Ektaa and I also agreed to it. Viewers who don’t find themselves comfortable with the language and the dialects in the film still have an opportunity to enjoy and immerse themselves in this world. But as a filmmaker, as a purist, I will always tell everyone to watch the Hinglish version.

Though the story came to you before Mare of Easttown even went into production, how do you react to the comparisons being made between that series and your film, between Kareena and Kate Winslet?

I think it is very lazy and reductive to compare creative pieces of work. Mediocrity breeds mediocrity. Our thinking has become so mediocre that we immediately jump to such reductive comparisons. The two are very different and it hurts me sometimes when people say: ‘Oh, this is Mare of Easttown’. It makes me question the intellect of the person saying it.

This has been a year of more failure than successes in Bollywood. It has been a year of nostalgia with so many re-released films doing well. As a seasoned filmmaker, how do you look at Bollywood in 2024?

An industry friend recently said something to me that resonated. He said: ‘The audiences have grown and so should we’. We constantly underestimate the audience, their intelligence and their ability to embrace new narratives. The Buckingham Murders is a case in point. It has all the ingredients of not being a regular mainstream Bollywood film. Yet, the growth in audience numbers for it is indicative of people being drawn towards these narratives.

Over the last few years, there has been a steady stream of exemplary work from you, both as director and producer. Have you even had the time to sit and look back at the journey so far?

Making movies is the only thing that makes me breathe, that makes me feel alive. It is now 31 years since I made my beginnings with Khana Khazana. There has never been a day that I felt that I wanted to take a break except for that brief period after Woodstock Villa (2008) when I forced myself to take a break and reflect on life in general.

Right now, I am really enjoying what I am doing. I love what I do. For me, that is the biggest break that one can get in life. But yes, in between I do take breaks. I am in the UK right now, relaxing in an apartment, cooking with my kids and having fun.