The year that was

Bollywood is fixated with designer cliches and it makes no breakthrough because the box office laps it up

Partha Chatterjee Delhi

The past year was not a particularly distinguished one for Hindi cinema.  Nothing of note came out of Bollywood, save Lage Raho Munna Bhai (dir. Raj Kumar Hirani) and, to a lesser extent, Khosla Ka Ghosla (dir. Dibakar Banerjee).  Both these films dealt with values that concern the urban Indian middle class. Of that later.

Krissh…  by the father-son duo of director Rakesh Roshan and his superstar son Hrithik, predictably did very well at the box-office because of its special effects and a protagonist modelled  on the American comic book hero Superman. While there was a lot to admire in the film’s craft, there was not much in terms of art. Bollywood does not have a moral compass, usually, despite vociferous claims to the contrary by the fraternity. But, ironically, many of its films, despite contrary intentions, bring viewers face to face with existential problems—however crudely.

Rang de Basanti , Rakeysh Mehra’s much touted ‘political’ film, is populist in conception and execution and shows a political naiveté — only to be expected in a director not seriously engaged with social issues.  Rang De’s exceptional financial success may be attributed to its championing of the idea, however superficially, that the backbone of a nation is its youth, and brushing aside the grievances of this important social segment is tantamount to a heinous crime.

On the other end of the scale is Karan Johar’s, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (KANK), a love-story featuring two NRI couples who are mismatched. One of the husbands has an affair with the other’s wife – seeking emotional sustenance through an exercise conducted in the right woozy Mills & Boon style. The quartet of Preity Zinta, Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee, and Abhishek Bachchan, bolstered by Amitabh  Bachchan, lend glamour to a foolish story about well-heeled Indians in America who are puzzled by the workings of their respective libidos. Not unexpectedly, KANK is a hit in urban India.

An eight per cent economic growth may have the economists crowing with delight but farmers continue to commit suicide regularly and more than half of the population goes to bed hungry. The money boom is largely an urban phenomenon and its beneficiaries seek their entertainment through Bollywood films and that of its more sophisticated cousin, Hollywood.  The cultural underpinnings continue to be traditional, Hindu, right-wing. Films like KANK provide the right mixture of sentiment and titillation.

Farhan Akhtar, who made a sensible first film Dil Chahta Hai, went running for cover after the failure of Lakshya. In 2006, he completed and released Don, a modified remake of a 1978 Amitabh Bachchan superhit.  The film, thanks to modern promotion techniques that include releasing eight hundred to a thousand prints simultaneously, has been declared a hit. But most of its revenue has come from young NRI viewers in England, Australia, Canada and the United States.

Since the spectacular success of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas, Bollywood film makers have been relying on overseas Indian audiences to help them make hits.  Songs, the staple in any Hindi film, also contribute substantially to its success and hence revenue.  These days, large sales of a particular film’s music abroad are more a result of the buyer’s nostalgia for his/her motherland than an appreciation of genuine musical accomplishment.

Devdas had utterly mediocre music but NRIs lapped it up. The songs in KANK, Rang De…, Omkara, Krissh… have sold like hot cakes abroad.

To come to the positives, Raj Kumar Hirani’s Lage Raho Munna Bhai has done deservedly well and its success can be attributed to a clever packaging of Gandhian ideals leavened by hour that leans towards the broad. Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, and Boman Irani have the audience in stitches with their antics.  Another reason for the film’s huge success is perhaps its message of tolerance in an increasingly violent world.

Khosla Ka Ghosla is more modest in scope and ambition.  A middle class man wants to spend his life’s savings on a house but is on the verge of being diddled out of it by a cunning property dealer.  It is a serious comedy about the triumph of the meek over the strong.

If the year 2006 belongs to any actor then it is Boman Irani.  More than any star, it is he who through sheer talent and versatility leaves a lasting impression on the viewer.  He is an actor in the Zero Mostel mould and given the right script and director, could make a mark internationally.

Another talent to watch is Arshad Warsi who plays Circuit in Munna Bhai MBBS and its sequel Lage Raho… He has zest, wit and sparkle. Script writers, both in mainstream Bollywood and its fringes, should think seriously abut writing meaty parts for Boman Irani and Arshad Warsi because they have it in them to help Bollywood films break out of the stultifying mould of sentiment and seediness.

Technical gloss has come to Bollywood and certain other parts of Indian cinema as a fait accompli.  Today, even medium budget Bollywood films, not to speak of the big ones, have a cosmetically pleasing look.

Both Being Cyrus by Homi Adajania and Rahul Dhotakia’s Parzania are one of a kind films. Budgeted on the modest side, they are unusual in content and treatment.  The first is a black comedy about a brother-sister team who murder for financial gain, and the second is about the trauma of a couple whose child is lost during the Gujarat riots of 2002. Both deal with the Parsi community, some of whose members are caught in extraordinary situations. 

Being Cyrus turned out to be a surprise hit despite the fact that it is in English. Bollywood insiders of course dismissed it as a multiplex wonder —  an exceptional case of modest financial success whose negative cost to first-run collection ratio at home was impressive.  That the film also did well abroad on its cinematic merit alone seems to have riled Hindi phillumwallas even more.

Indian society today is in a state of flux.  Considerable economic change and great poverty exist side by side.  reactionary and progressive thinking vie with each other in public and private for a; cinema, particularly Bollywood cinema, reflects this confusion, intentionally or unintentionally.

Omkara, supposedly a vivid, critical portrait of the antediluvian politics of contemporary western Uttar Pradesh, is, through the sheer muddle-headedness of its maker, Vishal Bharadwaj, an endorsement of it.  Why he called it a modern day version of Shakespeare’s Othello is anyone’s guess.

Hegel has said that one does not have to take sides in a literary work, and that it is enough just to show, to describe the action with fidelity.  What he did not probably take into consideration was the enormous difficulty the task entailed. 

Hindi films in particular, and Indian films in general, are still a long way off from putting Hegel into practice.  They are usually unable to tell a story with the necessary intellectual and emotional depth and clarity.  Until that occurs, finding a niche in international cinema would be difficult.