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Manoj Bajpayee And Jim Sarbh On 'Inspector Zende': 'We Have Lost The Tradition Of Great Comedies'
The actors talk about their new crime caper and stick up for independent films like 'Jugnuma' and 'Sabar Bonda'
This is a cheery month for fans of Manoj Bajpayee. Two of his films—as worlds apart as they can be imagined, yet slotting snugly into the actor’s filmography—are arriving in quick succession. Amazingly, it’s the artier title, Raam Reddy’s gorgeous-looking sophomore feature Jugnuma (The Fable), that’s getting a theatrical release; the other film, Inspector Zende, a cat-and-mouse crime caper co-starring Jim Sarbh, was always conceived as a Netflix original. That’s not everything. Bajpayee recently started shooting for Police Station Mein Bhoot, a horror-comedy that reunites him with Satya director Ram Gopal Varma. And before the year is out, we should also get The Family Man Season 3, on Prime Video.
Directed by Chinmay Mandlekar, Inspector Zende is a comedy—a goofy look at the manhunt for serial killer Charles Sobhraj (name changed to ‘Carl Bhojraj‘) after his sensational escape from Tihar Jail in 1986. Bajpayee’s character, a doughty and resourceful Marathi cop, is based on the real Madhukar Zende, a former assistant commissioner of the Mumbai Police who apprehended Shobraj at a Goa restaurant. Bajpayee met Zende at his home in Pune to research the role. The conversations flowed.
“At 88, Mr. Zende still walks more than 10 kilometres every day. He cooks his own food. He's taking care of his house while his children are away. In a way, he is still a policeman.”
Jim Sarbh, unlike Bajpayee, did not have occasion to meet his real-life counterpart (he sounds relieved). The flat-capped bikini killer is a staple of popular culture, most recently played by Sidhant Gupta in Netflix’s Black Warrant. Sarbh says he built his performance (French accent and all) from watching old interviews of Sobhraj. “He very much thought of himself as a gentleman. He was extremely clever, with a lawyer's mind. He would never say anything that could implicate him.”
It’s both funny and startling, Sarbh says, how similar most serial killer trajectories are. “Most often they have very antagonistic relationships with their mothers. Charles doesn't like to talk about his mother ever. The one or two times she's mentioned in an interview, it’s about how beautiful she was, and then he doesn't want to discuss anything further. You don't know why he has this deep-seated, deep-rooted hatred, but it's there.”
Silly and diverting, Inspector Zende is the tonal opposite of a grim procedural—as Ruchikaa Kapoor Sheikh, Director, Originals Films at Netflix, puts it, it’s their first family-friendly serial killer film. Indeed, she hopes to put it on a billboard.
“The creative liberty was really in the how and not the what,” Sheikh says. “What spoke to me was the cleverness and the ingenuity of the cops. When you are down and out, you have no resources, but you still have the will to charge ahead and do what is right.”
Bajpayee’s wary, hawk-eyed performance as Zende may bring back memories of Special 26, another caper where he hunted down a fleet-footed criminal across half of India. The actor says he’d turn up in more comedies if they were pitched correctly.
“Sadly, not many good comedies are written in our industry. Most of them are slapstick for the sake of it—making faces, twisting your body. I just can't do that. We have lost the tradition of films like Angoor, Padosan or Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro… where the comedy just happens.” For Sarbh, the funniest performances are often the deadly serious ones—the anti-Deadpool, as he says. “There's an old theatre saying—treat tragedy like comedy and treat comedy like tragedy.”
Both Bajpayee and Sarbh have put their weight behind recent independent films: the latter is a co-producer on Sabar Bonda, Rohan Kanawade’s Sundance-feted Marathi feature that’s releasing a week after Jugnuma. Sarbh describes the film as 'a beautiful, tender, fantastic work'. “I'm glad both films are getting a theatrical release so people can experience them in their intended form.”
Both actors refuse to be congratulated for pushing the kind of cinema they believe in. “I have more to gain from Jugnuma than Jugnuma has from me," Bajpayee says. "In the box office-oriented setup of our industry, I strongly feel independent cinema will help us evolve. Otherwise it’s just dumb commerce.”