‘Aditya Dhar wanted to show brutality’: Dhurandhar prosthetic designer on Akshaye Khanna’s brain smashing scene | Bollywood News

The Aditya Dhar directorial Dhurandhar is currently taking names at the box office, as its collection rises with each passing day. However, since the release of its first look, the film has also attracted a lot of flak for the extreme violence that has been depicted throughout the film. Now, the prosthetic and character designer for the film has given the fans an insight into what all went behind making those graphic scenes look real, without actually hurting anyone.
Award-winning character designer Preetisheel Singh has worked with Ranveer in the past as well. She designed his character’s look for Sanjay Leela Bhanshali’s Bajirao Mastani (2015) and Padmaavat (2018), and Ranveer received praise for both those roles. This time around, she was dealing with something on a completely different scale, and she recently told THR India exactly what all went into creating these looks.
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First of all, Singh makes it clear that prosthetic or character designers don’t get their due when it comes to overall recognition. She said, “Except for the National Awards, it is barely acknowledged. They think it’s only meant to turn people into an old or fat person. It is high time we, and I include the casting director in this, get the recognition that is due.”
From there, Singh moved on to Dhurandhar itself and began talking about the torture scenes in the film. She revealed that Dhar wanted the people to witness what people really go through during these situations and said, “I suppose that is a job well done, then. Aditya was very clear that he wanted to show the brutality people go through and how, actually, in gang wars, people torture each other in novel ways to set an example as a warning. We would sit with Aditya and the action directors and would think of new ways we haven’t seen of killing and torturing. We would then sculpt those scenes.”
The character designer specifically talked about the scene where Major Iqbal (Arjun Rampal) has tied a man’s flesh with hooks. I made small folds of flesh and put the hooks in those pieces, so it gives the illusion of skin. I mostly work with silicon which has this lovely quality of imitating skin, when you colour it properly with good blood work. It is important for us to get the anatomy right; nothing should give away that this is fake,” said Singh.
She also addressed the brain-smashing scene with Akshaye Khanna and said, “We deconstructed the body and brain parts, made from a mix of silicon and foam, to see what parts to smush off. We got an exact replica of the actor, so what you see is a dummy being smashed. The man being flung into the iron nails is actually a person, though I made the iron nails out of foam coordinating with the production designer.”Story continues below this ad
She concluded with saying, “The challenge with Dhurandhar is that I had fifteen days to prep for the film. Besides, we shot a lot for this film. Usually a movie covers 80 to 90 locations. For Dhurandhae, we have covered 220 locations.
Directed Aditya Dhar, Dhurandhar’s cast includes Ranveer Singh, Sara Arjun, Akshaye Khanna, Arjun Rampal, Sanjay Dutt, and R Madhavan.