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 Neil Nitin Mukesh is the first mainstream hero to have done a scene of masturbation in Madhur Bhandarkar’s Jail. Reliving the highly unconventional moments of on-screen realism Neil
says, “Frankly if it was some other director I’d have said no. But
knowing the way Madhur depicts explicit sexual scenes I said yes. We
shot the masturbation sequence with 450 other actors on the set with
me. All the other inmates are asleep when I do it. Now a lot of it has
been cropped off. But we still see the character doing it. There’s just
a suggestion of it now.”
A portion of the sequence was voluntarily removed from the film before it was presented to the censor board.
Says Neil, “Honestly, after Madhur and I shot the masturbation
sequence we found we had gone too far. It was too explicit. It was just
not jelling with Indian concepts of aesthetics. So we decided to knock
it off quite a bit by mutual consent. We just wondered if the flow of
the narration would be hampered.”
That’s not only sexually explicit sequence Neil has participated in
for Jail. “In one sequence I go in the night to the bath and see a boy
performing oral sex on another. Their pleasure is interrupted by me,
and the boy says, ‘You had to come and spoil the fun.’ While we agreed
to remove dialogue the scene of oral sex remains.”
Neil’s colleagues say they would gladly do a nude scene for a role.
Ranbir Kapoor already has in Saawariya. But auto-eroticism is going too
far.
Neil explains, “My nude or masturbation scenes are not for
titillation. It’s a very practical need in the script. My character is
in Jail without sex for 2 and 1/2 years. What does he do? He naturally
seeks pleasure by himself. In the scene that we shot my character
fantasizes about his girlfriend and gets his gratification.”
Comparing the moment to the dramatic poignant and memorable sequence
in Alan Parker’s 1979 prison drama Midnight Express where the young
prison inmate makes his girlfriend undress from across the glass
partition dividing prisoners from visitors Neil sighs, “Oh my God! That
was a wonderful moment. But we couldn’t show something like this in
Jail. Even the love-making scene with Mugdha Godse has been so
aesthetically shot. Like the love making scene between Kate Winslet and
Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. It became an out-of-the-body experience
for the audience.”
Even the censors’ blocking off Neil’s frontal nudity has been taken
in the right spirit by the young actor. “At first I was upset. I
realize I am the first Indian actor to show full frontal nudity. But
the scene was that of humiliation, not titillation, like the naked
parade in Bandit Queen. Even though I don’t get raped physically Jail
is the first Hindi film to show the hero’s emotional rape. We’ve
created all the hell inside prison. Audiences will actually see the
horror behind the prison walls.”
Sampurn Media
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