|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In the sleeper hit of the year, Vicky Donor, a middle-aged mother shares a drink or two with an aged mother-in-law. In a crucial scene in Ek Mein Ekk Tu when a psychiatrist quizzes the hero and the heroine on sex, pat comes a reply in the affirmative from not the hero but the heroine. Once again, in Vicky Donor, the heroine happens to be a divorcee and in Rockstar the mother turns a blind eye to her married daughter’s sojourn with her lover. In Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur, it’s almost impossible to say who is more brutal, the protagonist or the antagonist
Of course, many would argue that this is not the first time Hindi cinema has crossed the line. After all, the original angry young man Amitabh Bachchan was the first anti-hero of Hindi cinema. He had a real, almost moral reason, to tread the amoral path. A treacherous villain, ailing mother or a hungry brother or a sister who had been raped, lurked in the background and propelled him to digress from the righteous path. As new filmmakers exposed to the world cinema breathe in fresh vision, they are not compelled to give any justification for the new texture of their characters. Invariably, grey and incredibly real…. the Hindi cinema has rarely seen such nuanced and multi-dimensional beings. No wonder, only a thin line separates the hero from the villain. Message, or even entertainment, are finding a new form. No wonder, Onir director of films like My Brother…Nikhil, one of the first mainstream Hindi films to deal with AIDS and same-sex relationships, is prompted to state, “It’s about time we understood entertainment as not only a ‘feel-good’ euphoria but also as something that triggers our thinking process.”
Directors like Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihlani continued to make the kind of movies they believed in. According to Ayushmann Khurana, who played the happy-go-lucky sperm donor of the movie that broke new ground, “Sure there was parallel cinema back in time but the delineating point today is that movies of alternative cinema are packing both meaning and fun.” Be it Kahani, Vicky Donor or Paan Singh Tomar, the films that made significant statements are not devoid of entertainment value either. These are finding favour with the intelligent cinegoer.
Onir, however, feels that many of the films being hailed as path-breaking actually fall into mainstream genres like thriller and comedy which do well the world over. Still, he does agree that there has been a resurgence of alternative cinema for quite a while. The new cinema is a reflection of the changing milieu. If women are asserting themselves in real life, they can’t be depicted as weaklings on screen. Besides, it could be the Hollywood multiplier effect too. When the Indian viewer is privy to the very best from Hollywood, Indian filmmakers can’t afford to sit in their ivory tower and keep churning out the same old inane stuff. That is not to say Indian films are fast becoming Hollywood clones. Even though Gangs of Wasseypur is inspired by filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, its flavour is so distinctively Indian that the film scores ten on ten on the authentic treatment scale. So Hollywood inspired or drawing from the strength of its own roots, at least a part of Hindi cinema is looking fresh.
Will the robustness last or will it once again be sucked into the quagmire of monotony? Well, judging by the number of offbeat movies that have hit the screens in the first half of the year, it seems unlikely. Winds of change are meant to blow in different directions. Directors like Kashyap might rue the fact that Indian audiences don’t patronise good cinema but are already thinking ahead. You bet the next movie, probably on Kanpur, will not be like his last. The new formula that Bollywood has discovered is, as Sharman Joshi puts it, success has no stereotypes.
|
||
|
|
||
As
Anurag Kashyap, who has redefined the rules of Hindi cinema, feels message can’t drive cinema which is first and foremost an artistic statement. Thus his characters are credible, human, often brutal, and a far cry from sugar-coated heroes and heroines that Hindi cinema suffered for too long. The tribe of directors such as Shoojit Sircar, Vishal Bharadwaj, Tigmanshu Dhulia with courage and the vision to match is increasing. When Ram Gopal Varma became repetitive, Anurag Kashyap, who wrote Varma’s cult film Satya, made Hindi cinema cross new milestones. Have Indian audiences initiated the new wave of cinema? “Undeniably yes”, says director Rajesh Mapuskar, whose debut film Ferrari ki Swaari has dispensed away with all formulas as he did not even bother to cast a heroine. The only strong female presence in the film was the plain-looking Seema Bhargav, whom the audiences loved. Sharman Joshi, the actor of many a meaningful film, however, feels that audiences are always ready, and the onus rests only on filmmakers. He states, “It’s wrong to assume that it is a new phase. Right from the times of Bimal Roy, and later Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt, there have been filmmakers who thought out of the box.”
While there is little doubt about the commercial success of these films which have crossed the un-viability barrier, these are not everybody’s cup of tea. Vicky Donor, for instance, insists Khurrana, was targeted at the under-35 urban male or female youngster. To some extent, the divide between the 100-core elite club of movies like Dabangg and Rowdy Rathore and Ferrari Ki Sawaari remains. However, even the mainstream commercial cinema is not caught in a time warp. Emitting signals of change, commercial cinema is in a flirtatious mode, eager to step out of the straightjacket. After all, movies like Ek Mein… that didn’t even have a conventional climax of a love story were backed by big banners. Rockstar, which brought to the fore many new isms, is also part of mainstream cinema. Khurrana thinks that never before have Indian cinema and audiences provided so much space to different genres of films.
