Film on Aarushi Talwar murder ready?

Tisca Chopra, who plays the mother in a film based on the Aarushi Talwar murder case, says she is fascinated by extreme human behaviour, and did this film because somebody else would've done it anyway.

Now that the verdict on the Aarushi Talwar murder case is out, many filmmakers would be lining up to make a film on it. But Manish Gupta, who wrote Sarkar, has almost finished making a film, Rahasya, based on this case.

Tisca Chopra plays the role of the mother, and says that she tried to do it without judging her character. "I am not playing a hugely public figure, like an Indira Gandhi or a person whom people are familiar with. Whatever I've seen on the news, that's what I am familiar with and that's what I've tried to follow. The universe of the actor is amoral, and should be. I am not here to judge characters, I am here to play them to their authentic best and find things that I find resonating and truthful about those people, because the character has got their own logic to their truth.That it does not meet the logic of the public, even mine maybe, is different, but when I am playing the character I will try and convey the logic and emotion of that character. There is something that that person is thinking, some truth that that person is coming out of. That truth may be warped, but the actor's job is to play the character without judging it, no matter how dark or gruesome or horrible the person might be to anybody, including to myself," she says.

The actress has been following the case since even before she signed the film, and says that on some level, it fascinates her.

She says, "It piques my curiosity how someone can do something like this. Once the initial horror of what happened dies down, what keeps it alive in your head is that you want to get to the root of it. Why did you do it? What was your reason? To me, the psyche of this is most interesting."

But were there any apprehensions about doing a film based on a case like this, where the makers might be accused of sensationalising a sensitive topic? "To some extent, yes. But then I thought somebody is going to do it."

It's too out-there-a-story not to be told. It is going to come out. Now, or five years down the line, somebody is going to do it. To me, these sort of stories - Jack The Ripper, Charlize Theron's character in Monster - people who do extreme things; there's something extremely fascinating about playing characters like these. That's what an actor lives for - to play extremes. To me, this is all in a day's work and it's part of my job. I do not look at it and think 'Oho'. I see it as a story," she says.

But many people, including Nupur Talwar, felt that it'd be insensitive to make a film on this. "If somebody's gone and killed their child, somebody's going to make a story about it. It can't be kept under wraps. If you're taking your dog for a walk, nobody will make a story about it. The scope of human behaviour when it gets extreme is what films are made on. That's our area of interest. They're saying don't make it, tell me, why not?" she asks.