Went too smart with ‘Raksha Bandhan’,but wasn’t dishonest: Aanand L Rai

Panaji, Nov 24 (PTI): “Success never damaged my head and failure never broke my heart,” says filmmaker Aanand L Rai as he navigates his course of action following the underwhelming performance of his last two major releases — “Raksha Bandhan” and “Zero”.
Rai, the brain behind the blockbuster “Tanu Weds Manu” franchise and “Raanjhanaa”, believes the relationship between filmmakers and audiences is going through a stage of detachment. “I feel there is a certain kind of detachment between the makers and audience. Is this our fault or their fault? No, it’s nobody’s fault. Right now we are just trying to figure out what went wrong.
“Did we take the audiences for granted and keep feeding them the same thing, which they didn’t want? These are the questions which are rising in my mind,” the 51-year-old director told PTI in an interview here.
As a storyteller, Rai believes, the biggest mistake he committed while making “Raksha Bandhan” was “differentiating” between the audiences.
“I was wrong while making ‘Raksha Bandhan’ when I thought let me give them something which is more of India and let me cater to the audience in the B and C tier cities.
“I was wrong in differentiating between the audiences. That’s not my job. I should focus more on the story rather than selecting the audience whom I want to cater to. This is my learning,” he added. Quoting “Star Wars” creator-director George Lucas, Rai said learning to make films is easy but learning what to make films about is hard. He believes the film industry has failed in gauging the mood of the audience post the pandemic.
“We are battling the same thing and trying to find out what story will engage the audience at this moment and in this phase. Post-pandemic we have failed the audience with that.”
Not only the Akshay Kumar-led “Raksha Bandhan”, but most of the Hindi films including Aamir Khan’s “Laal Singh Chaddha”, Ranveer Singh’s “83” among a few others failed to bring the crowd to the theatres.