In Main Aur Charles Prawaal Raman attempted to piece together the seductive life of Charles Sobhraj. It was an uphill task. And one that required reams of rigorous research, an actor who could define and own Sobhraj’s seductive charms and a certain detachment from Sobhraj’s scheming intellect to ensure we don’t get sucked into his deceptions.
This detachment is achieved in the plot by making the Delhi cop Amod Kanth who nabbed Sobhraj, the hero of the show. Not that Sobhraj plays the villain. But his cool quotient, conveyed by Randeep Hooda in rationed doses, is ruthlessly challenged and thwarted by Adil Hussain’s upfront and unfettered contempt for all attempts by books, movies and news channels to glorify a criminal like Sobhraj.
Prawaal Raman speaks on nine years of Main Aur Charles How did you hit on the correct moral pitch? The obvious approach would have been a cat and mouse game. And I had no intention to follow the obvious. It was a story of two men with similar IQ but both on the other sides of the social division of the right and wrong.
And the only difference between the two was, one knew himself and what a custodian of a society needs to stand for, while the other didn’t wish to know himself and walk the blurry line which was a vast ground between the good and the evil. There was always the danger of glorifying the criminal? In a character oriented film like this even the facts are as slippery as the character. Glorification of a self glorifying conman wa.
