In the last few days I watched some new Indian films by young directors. They all have a nice trend; fresh in ideas, practical, strong and unpretentious. I liked the fact that they strung the right chord and give a huge leap in the true direction. I have quite a big list but some I want to mention are ‘Bhejafry’, ‘Wake Up Sid’, ‘Luck by Chance’ and especially in the context ‘Mixed Doubles’, ‘Dev D’ and ‘Love Sex & Dhoka’. I think the last three movies are phenomenon in Indian cinema just for the naked portrayal of truth, which Hollywood has for reasonably long period now. Just for information Hollywood is considered quite novice in handling truth compared to European movies. I liked the movies just for the way they are presented, considered quiet bold in Indian perspective.
I have been wondering since my adulthood (which surprisingly came very late at the age of 23) few characteristics about Indians. We are extremely hypocritical about some of our most obvious feelings and feel great about it. We believe that love making is crime and even thinking about it is extremely bad. If there is a foreign movie which shows the natural instincts we avoid watching with other adult family members. It was tough to match it with my own feelings and scientific discoveries. As per several studies 90% of man’s brain is occupied by sex and for women it is about 50%, considering the occasional 0% periods.
This is also considered a sin even accepting the fact that this is natural to be physically attracted to people other than ones current partner in life. In fact this should be a subject of research how can two people stay together for 30-40 years and never get attracted by anybody.
By this I didn’t mean to say that we should start showing interest in any ABC we meet and break our marriage just like West. I intentionally said this, as a big chunk of my Indian friends will make conclusions like this after reading so far of my writing. First of all in the west 90% of the marriages break because they don’t want to compromise anything which is less than 100%. This is because they are raised in such a way that they start solving their own problems from a very young age and so grew up to be extremely independent. In fact I don’t like this mentality but I understand the fact, that being independent give the natural confidence to not to compromise at all. Secondly, marriage or being in a relationship means that we have some obligations which prohibit us from making decisions which affect two or more people. We do trade-offs with our life and marriage is no exception. If the happiness received being in the marriage is more than being single we stay in the marriage/relationship and that should be the only reason for staying in ANY relationship. So, if the marriage/relationship is strong it is difficult to break and those difficult situations make the bond even stronger.
In India we want to stop things to happen in life by not experiencing it. I don’t think we judge us truly by suppressing our feelings. It comes out in one form or other. The most common outcome in India is public harassing of women which is unimaginable in any developed country. The unfulfilled sex life also causes lots of frictions inside the marriage between the partners, which come out in other forms due to lack of understanding between the partners. I like one theory regarding this by a Bengali writer – Budhadev Guha- according to him, his father’s excessive fondness for food comes from that fact that he lacked the proper external expression of his other desires, which considered sin. If we accept this as a natural instinct (which IT IS) and allow us the maturity to accept that, life would be so much easier.
The hypocrisy is also extended to drinking alcohol. Even after so many studies relating drinking red wine and good health, in India drinking is still considered as an evil. Personally I feel drinking allows us to stop our brain for some time and take away all our inhibitions and give a nice happy feeling. Definitely addiction and too much of anything is bad, like too much rice and lack of exercise makes one diabetic.
I am really thankful to these young directors who have the courage and the spirit to cause the revolution in Indian especially in Hindi movie.
4 comments:
Trend of any film industry largely depennds on the type of audience it is made for. Many film makers may make films what makes them happpy or satisfied with their creative egos (if I may), BUT the businessmen who invest in that clearly treat that as another business investment and they want return for their investments. Till few years ago, commercial success of majority of Indian movies depend on how appealing the movie is for mass audience, i.e those hard working labor force that used to constitute more than 80% of film viewres. That group of people are not interested to see reality or to learn theoritecal knowledge or inner meaning of life or politics or global hunger. They face those in their day-to-day lives more than what a film can show them. They used to go to the movie hall to get some cool place and watch some fantasy world where they can enjoy all the luxaries of a prince and satisfy their desire to take revange of all the evils they face in real life. Professionalism in Indian film industry was also very rare. Most of the famous (not necessarily successful as an artist) film heros/heroines/directors used to live in their feudal and fantasy world. That affected their acting/directing performances. It was mostly over-acting and/or totally unrealistic. Many professional reasons for certain actions towards the hero/heroine/director were lost in due course and became more like a “tradition” in some cases and status/power symbol for majority other cases. For example, holding an umbrella over an artist with full make-up used to be for protection of the make-up in hot, humid climate of Mumbai. But later it became a status symbol of our famous but mostly unprofessional filmy characters only to show his/her feudal mentality and inconfidence as an artist.
I also see a reasonably clear correlation with corruption in a society and quality of movie they produce. If you see movies from China or Cuba, Japan or many European countries, they generally portray real picture of their societies and those films are much appealing to educated audience. On the other hand, hardly anyone can correlate Indian society after watching mainstream Bollywood movie. Probably less than 0.000001% of Indians can afford to have a wedding as shown in Karan Johar films or an Indian student who flies in executive class, drives Ferrari or Mercedes while studying in UK/US as in many Salmon Khan, Karan Johar films.
The trend started changing with slowing down of hall going audience and emergence of many other ways to enjoy films without going to a movie hall (i.e. TV, Internet, DVD etc.). The main evolution of Indian film started with smaller but costlier and better quality iMax type movie theaters. That changed the film business and type of audience a film producer (not necessarily the director) can target to get his/her investment paid off. Gradually an educated, middle class audience started making the difference in film business. Once the producers realized the market potential of real-life films, they started making films like Bhejafry, Mumbai Matinee, mixed doubles, Leela (with Dimple Kapadia), Uttara (Bengali), Sanjh Batir Rupkatha ra (Bengali) etc. Then came the latest blow to “hero” culture where big stars and huge budget films are no more a guarantee for commercial success and the scale of financial loos in such cases are too high for a producer to bear. On the other hand, small budget films with trained and/or talented actors started making commercial success. Once general public, even the hard working labor class got taste for “good” films they are not that enthusiastic (as before) to watch the stupid movies of Salman Khan or films promoted by Mumbai underworld. In the meantime, many educated people, who were successful in other professions and got money, started producing their own films (e.g. Pritish Nandi). In short, 1) emergence of educated middle class (mainly due to high level penetrance of foreign MNCs and development of knowledge based industries like IT and Biotechnology and release of Indian middle class from the clutches of typical Indian/Lala type business houses) and 2) gradual erosion of our closed, feudal social pattern (mainly due to economoc liberalization and closer interection with western civilizations) proved to be a game changer in Indian film industry. Nonetheless, it’s a very welcome relief to watch some good movies coming out of India these days and also becoming commercial success (that will ensure continuation of such films as mainstream industry).
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