She plays the everyday middle-class housewife, who happens to be a lawyer in the National Award winning Court, so convincingly that you think she’s ingrained in the woodwork and not an actor selected for the role. Geetanjali Kulkarni laughs off the compliment and says the technicalities of the project attracted her to it. “I’m a process-driven actor. I wasn’t taken in by the film just because I knew producer Vivek Gomber or director Chaitanya Tamhane. There were proper auditions, readings, rehearsals; workshops… before filming began. And with the process, I acclimatised myself more and more to the role, hence the end product looks effortless,” she confesses.

Geetanjali has been part of professional theatre for the last 20 years. She’s played cameos in films before but hesitated to take on a full-fledged lead role… till now. Court has made her hungry for more. She reveals there were similarities between what she does as a professional in theatre and what happened with Court. “In theatre, you don’t just come and say your lines but sort of own the play. Your opinion is taken when it comes to lighting, the backdrop… you have to be familiar with the script, you have to know your co-stars inside-out so as to minimise goof-ups on stage. The same thing happened with Court. I was totally involved with the project from day one.
I was part of the scripting, casting, hunting locations… the works. I even researched on the judiciary for the role. It didn’t feel like I was doing a film.” She needs this sense of involvement to be comfortable as an actor. “I need all this in order to excel. Few filmmakers give you that freedom. Don’t pamper me with a fancy salary or perks but help me achieve a sense of ownership and I’m all yours,” she smiles.

It’s said theatre actors have it easy when it comes to films but she disagrees. “They are two completely different mediums. There is no sense of continuity in films. You don’t know which part of the scene, which angle of the scene would be retained because you have no control on that – it’s all decided post the shooting. It’s not easy to slip in and out of character, to keep track of continuity. All these things matter to me as in theatre we follow the dictum that God is in the details – but in films, the details keep changing. The audience might even not notice them but it makes you conscious as an actor.” She shrugs and reflects, “Maybe it’ll get better with practice.”
Court is an absurdist comedy that paints a realistic picture of what’s wrong with our judicial system. But at the same time, there are no heroes or villains in this slice-of-life drama. Everyone from the accused, the councillors to the judge are portrayed as frail humans struggling with what life has served them. Even the rebellious defense lawyer doesn’t mind drinking at a posh club with his high-society friends. The actor credits director Chaitanya Tamhane for coming up with such a script.

“Chaitanya follows world cinema and hence all those influences came into play when he wrote the script. Yes, the main aim was to highlight the absurdity of some of our archaic, stale laws. But he also wanted to point out how everyone involved is a victim to the system. The system, as we know of it today, isn’t much concerned about the high ideals of truth and justice – it’s more involved with clearing the pending files. Resultantly, everyone involved gets dehumanised. The worst hit is the man accused, who’s often seen as an irritant and treated in a callous, casual manner.”
She finds it amusing that the film, which won the National Award for the Best Feature Film, and a host of international honours, including the prestigious Best Film in the Horizons category and the Luigi De Laurentiis (Lion Of The Future) award for director Tamhane at the 71st International Film Festival, was asked to include two cuts by the Censor Board. “What can be more absurd than this? We didn’t put up a fight as the film stood for freedom of expression – they would have made us cut some more if they had realised that.”

The actor attended the Venice festival and had a ball being feted around town. “Venice is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. We were treated like royalty. It was an unexpected pleasure for unknowns like us. The real rush was the accolades by the other delegates after the film’s screening. We walked the whole city with filmmakers from across the world, making friends, drinking beer out in the open and having the time of our life. Ace cinematographer Robbie Ryan (who’s worked on popular titles like Philomena and Fish Tank) became our friend and invited us to a private tour of Venice on his speedboat. We attended Golden Lion winner Roy Andersson’s (acclaimed Swedish filmmaker) party… then, we even travelled to Murano, famed for its glassworks and bought tons of baubles from there.”

Venice is also one of the most romantic cities in the world and Geetanjali missed the company of her spouse, actor Atul Kulkarni. “We will go back there one day on a holiday,” she muses. “I wanted him to come this time too but he was busy with his projects.”

The duo first met in Delhi, where Atul was her senior at the National School Of Drama (NSD). “You gravitate towards people from your state. After doing plays and workshops in Hindi, I was desperate to speak Marathi and Atul was the leader of the Marathi speaking group.” She says she’s a natural follower and he’s a natural leader, so it was a given that she fell for him. “But it was I who initiated the marriage talk,” she laughs. “We got married as soon as I graduated in 1996. It was more of an arranged marriage than a love marriage as we convinced our parents and had a proper marriage ceremony.”

With husband Atul Kulkarni

They say it’s easier on the relationship if both partners belong to the same profession and Geetanjali agrees. “We understand the pressures of the industry and hence we can relate to what the other is going through. We act as each other’s sounding board and smoothen out the chinks in our performances.” Atul has mastered the art of juggling theatre and cinema but she hasn’t. Didn’t she get to learn from his experience? “See, switching from one role to the other comes easy to him. He’s also ambitious and sorted. He knows what he wants and sets about achieving that. I’m laidback and take life as it comes. Also, I find it hard to let go of my character.
I bring it home, I soak myself in it and that’s easy when you’re doing theatre. That’s part of who I’m. But switching a persona completely and becoming someone else at rapid intervals – that’s what I have to do if I do films on a regular basis – that’s not me at all.” More than anything else, she insists she lacks that ambition. “Nawazuddin Siddiqui was my batchmate at NSD. He had this desire to be in films from day one. Whereas I just wanted to act. I don’t have this burning desire to shine big at the marquee.”

Atul and she decided not to have children and Geetanjali says she doesn’t regret the decision. “As a society, we are forced to follow so many conventions and one of them is having children. But when we started out, we were both struggling to find our feet. Things weren’t smooth as they are now. We had our share of troubles, our share of darkness. So we couldn’t think of brining another being in our lives. It wouldn’t have been good for the child. I too would have resented sitting at home and taking care of the baby.”

 But now, she says, their lives are too full to have children. And there is the age factor as well. “Atul has so many projects, Hindi, Marathi, South films on hand – plus he has theatre commitments. I tour all over the world with our Hindi adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, called Piya Beharupiya – where I play both a man and a woman. Then, I teach drama. We also have our NGO, where we work for education for rural children. We recently acquired a farm house near Wada and indulge in a bit of organic farming. We have two dogs there, whom we adore. Plus we treat our niece – Atul’s sister’s daughter - as our own. So we don’t miss having children.”

As a parting shot, the actor maintains her profession has made her a fulfilled person. “One of the gifts of being an actor is that you get to play different roles – and through them – live different lives. I’ve seen life through the eyes of a dozen characters, dreamt their dreams and experienced their apprehensions. It has sorted me out. I’m blessed my husband shares that passion… I wouldn’t have been happy if things were otherwise…”

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