Sense and sensibility

A new breed of film-makers, Indian at heart but with an adequate mix of Western sensibilities, are now rewriting the conventions of Indian cinema

Anurag Kashyap spent eight months living on the streets. He slept on the pavement and used the wash room at Prithvi Theatre, where he waited tables while waiting for his dream to come true: to be able to make films. That passion had been ignited at the 1993 film festival in New Delhi, at which the then 21-year old student absorbed the wonders of fifty films from different corners of the world.

Not only did he want to make films, Kashyap was determined to capture the rhythms of real life on celluloid. So Satya, the first film he scripted, showed the underworld without the glitz and glamour that earlier films had often dressed it in. In Black Friday, the film he has completed on the Mumbai blasts, he insisted on shooting on location, in the streets and the beaches where the explosives actually landed. So successful have Kashyap’s scripts been that he can make filmmakers sit in his den through the night while he writes, in case he needs to discuss points. “He must show some dedication,” he says with a gentle grin.

This alumnus of Delhi’s Hans Raj College represents a new kind of filmmaker. A middle class upbringing keeps him rooted to reality but, inspired by Kubric, Scorcese and the like, he is filled with passion to break new ground. His sensibility is solidly Indian, but that of an India whose windows are open to fresh cultural winds of every sort.

Those who have worked with him or even seen his films gush about the total integrity of his filmmaking, the feel he gives to every aspect of the film in keeping with the theme. Another young filmmaker who does that with dexterity is Nagesh Kukanoor, who made Hyderabad Blues, Bollywood Calling and the recent surprise success, Iqbal.

There are several others who have broken out of the “formula” to make extraordinarily different films. Take Vishal Bhardwaj, who made a version of Macbeth called Maqbool – and also had unexpected commercial success with his children’s film, Makdee – or Janhu Barua, who made Maine Gandhi ko Nahin Mara. Generally young, they grew up outside the film industry, often outside Mumbai, and have a very real experience of what makes contemporary India tick.

Sudhir Mishra, who earned distinction for Hazaron Khawaishen Hain, stands out among the generally younger lot of such filmmakers, for he has worked for about a decade as an assistant director to other filmmakers. Talking about what it takes, he says that “cinema per se assumes an interest in life and not just an ideology”. Very often, he adds, the film raises questions without providing answers.

It is important for the future of Indian cinema that these directors have now become established, warmly accepted by the market. As Mishra points out, “those that are brands can tell their own stories”, getting funding and other industry backing even when they break away from successful formulae.

A new phase has arrived, adds Shyam Benegal, different from the one in the 1970s. Then, art cinema dealt with serious issues and mainstream entertained. Now, he says, there are filmmakers like Karan Johar on one side and those like Ram Gopal Verma on the other, both within the mainstream.

It is interesting that some of those who are breaking out of the old moulds are reaching out especially to the mofussil. Prakash Jha focuses often on his native Bihar and Chandan Arora won the heart of small town India with his Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahati Hoon and his Main, Meri Patni aur Woh.

Some of the young writers are equally promising – Kashyap among them, for he still uses his redoubtable skills to write scripts for other filmmakers. Abbas Tyrewala, who wrote for Munnabhai MBBS and Maqbool, and Bhavani Iyer, who wrote Black, are outstanding examples of new scriptwriters. Noting that film aesthetics has taken an upward leap, Javed Akhtar says that “Hindustan mein aesthetics aa rahi hai wapas” (aesthetics is returning in India).

Twenty-eight year old Iyer has been writing for two years, during which she has also written a novel about dysfunctional urban minds pressured by excessive expectations, which Penguin is publishing. Like Kashyap and Jha, she writes about life from her experience of it: disability in her family gave depth to Black. She says she originally wrote the script in English, acknowledging that she grew up with an urban, English-speaking Westernised sensibility. But of course that is a dynamic part of the new India.
Meenakshi Shedde, film critic for Mumbai’s Daily News and Analysis says that the vast numbers of young graduates from India’s mushrooming mass communication course have suddenly transformed the level of film literacy. Indeed. Manoj Lobo, who won the best short film award at the prestigious Karlovy Vary festival after he graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India in 2004, says one of the most vital aspects of being at the institute is the exposure to world cinema, which puts students in touch with trends in such places as Hong Kong, South Korea and Iran.

The crucial change that animates this phase of Indian cinema then is that it is being fashioned by young Indians whose sensibility is simultaneously Indian and global. Iyer, for example, says her creative idol is Gulzar. It is contemporary and organic, deeply inspired by the potential of the country and its people.

Given the reach of the movies, what the English language novelist did to shape a class of young Indians a couple of decades ago, these writers and filmmakers can do for a much larger number.

(David Devdas, Mumbai, with inputs from Karan Makhija, Mumbai)