There comes a time when the whole system as we know it, changes. The whole process, tried and tested for an eternity, just comes to pass for a different setup completely. And this change is not easy. It is not easy to make, it is not easy to receive. But the only thing permanent, as we all know it, is change.
But can someone dare take that risk when hundreds of millions are at stake?
Bollywood. Along with cricket, it is the parallel lifeline of this nation. In Bollywood, regional bias always maligns itself with the national good, religious differences melt away, and mostly everything that is wrong in real life completely washes away to an Utopian magnanimity. It’s true. Bollywood has done this for ever now.
But then, like every other process in the country, in every country, even Bollywood has had to come through a sea of changes, to reinvent itself in a new package. Gone are the days when heroes chase coy heroines behind a tree to make out. They take off their clothes, show their bare skin and on the screen, do what the scene demands. Quite frankly, to begin with, heroes are now called actors, and heroines, actresses. Let’s begin with that to begin with — the cardinal changes.
It appears, at least from the very face of it now, that Bollywood has become a lot more professional now. Directors (or basically sons of big directors who considered directing a movie their birth right earlier) can now no longer rely on set combinations to achieve success. Now it is the script which is paramount. It is the screenplay which needs to determine which actor is capable of playing which role. No one is your “friend” here anymore. No one is given a job because you have worked with him earlier. Fact: Shah Rukh Khan is no longer playing the lead in a Karan Johar movie! And while on that name, Karan Johar, the ‘King of Melodrama’ has now made a movie with no songs and dance!
Which also brings me to the next point — about the director. The director is now no longer the same person as he was earlier. Now he is the acknowledged captain of the ship. He is the man responsible for making a whole movie. Not the actor, not the music composer, irrespective of however big the actor might be. It is, and now like every other film industry in the world, both aesthetic and commercial, everything lies in the hands of the director. Point in example: there was talk during the making of Farhan Akhtar’s Lakshya that Amitabh Bachchan had ‘cut’ a scene by himself. Director Akhtar clearly let him know who is the boss. If a certain scene did not come out right, Bachchan could tell Akhtar to reshoot it. Not call the shots himself.
And now, finally, to the principal change in Bollywood. Content. No longer can viewers scoff after the initial reels and scream, “Oh, same old, same old!” Even the same old is now not done in the same manner anymore. Movies like Luck By Chance have even gone on to make grueling fun at their own expense. Ditto with Om Shanti Om. The style of film making has changed, the canvas has become smaller and yet the entire effect has become gargantuan. Take for effect, Anurag Kashyap’s Dev D.
There are millions of small budget movies that have done well immensely. Like Udaan, Do Dooni Chaar, Tere Bin Laden. And the major issue to look out for in these movies are — all directed by relatively new directors from the next generation, and none of them have a big star in their line up. Which means that today, for a movie to make money, with cineplexes and all, you do not need names, you need content and style. And in a nutshell, ground reality, your movie needs to be “well done”.
And now, to make the change permanent, we need the old guard to back this change. And the right step in this direction had already been made. Dhobi Ghaat. And there is a reason for this. Aamir Khan. What happens when the stars that can pull audiences to the cinemas produce and more importantly, act, in such movies, not just the intelligencia, but even the common people come around to see it. And once that happens, once people arrive in numbers, there is every chance that they will go back “bored”, but there is every chance that they will come back for more.
And we need that more. Badly.
Indian cinema, and not just the unknown Maharashtrian or Bangla movie, but also the mainstream Hindi movie, is currently way behind global standards. No, that change is being made now, but even then, we are way off an Oscars panel’s expectations. Movies from Algeria make it to the Foreign Film category. This cannot be. We need to break through. And now is the time. We have everything to do this. Technology, talent and money.
Let us start making movies that are accepted in their original form. Not “international editions” which cut down on the melodrama and are song less. Americans do not insert songs and melodrama in the standard Brad Pitt film for Indians, do they? No one does. We like Hollywood in their true form. We need to make our audiences appreciate global standards. If our audiences ridicule the average Hindi pot boiler for the average Hollywood movie, yup, they like those kind of movies. Accept it.
Change is tiresome, change takes time, change is costly. But if Claude Monet had not painted ‘Impression, Sunset’, Impressionism as a movement would never have kicked off. He didn’t put his brush down and say, “to hell with it all. I am going cowboy on the current.’
It is high time Bollywood too does the same.
