No kid stuff

Bollywood has churned out many films for and about children in the four years since Taare Zameen Par changed the rules of the game, but most of these efforts have failed to measure up, writes Saibal Chatterjee

Aamir Khan’s directorial debut Taare Zameen Par was a runaway hit. In the four years since the release of that film, the Mumbai movie industry has come up with a larger complement of films about and for children than it did in the entire decade that preceded its making.

Since 2007, Indian moviegoers have been treated to an assortment of films that have sought to meet the growing demand for quality entertainment among children and young adults. There has been a generous sprinkling of animated mythological epics (Hanuman, Bal Ganesh, My Friend Ganesha) amid a spate of live-action features such as Nanhe Jaisalmer, Toonpur Ka Superhero, Thanks Maa, Allah Ke Bandey, Satrangee Parachute, and Cycle Kick.

Bollywood has also delivered a few derivative efforts in the children’s cinema space – Chain Kulli Ki Main Kulli, Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors (based on an idea filched from Home Alone) and Bumm Bumm Bole (inspired by Majid Majidi’s Iranian masterpiece, Children of Heaven). What’s more, we also recently saw a child superhero flick, Zokkomon, starring Taare Zameen Par’s Darsheel Safary in a new, improved avatar.

So does this spate of children’s films from Mumbai represent a full-fledged trend? The answer is yes, and no; yes because the frequency of such films has certainly increased appreciably, and no, because their boxoffice grosses haven’t quite achieved the desired levels. Hindi films for children still remain a fringe phenomenon. One hit here and another one there do not a revolution make. But, to focus on the positive side, at least a beginning of what might be a clear phenomenon seems to have been made.

Taare Zameen Par, the story of a child with dyslexia, a rarely understood learning disorder, had the backing of a superstar. So the film arrived in our multiplexes amid much fanfare. It tugged at our heartstrings, marked the birth of a promising new child star and gave the industry a reason to believe that narratives woven around children and their growing-up woes could yield commercial dividends. But all said and done, the boxoffice success of Taare Zameen Par was a foregone conclusion. It is quite doubtful that it would have achieved the profile it did, had Aamir Khan not been on board.

Weeks after Taare Zameen Par took the nation by storm, a small-budget film Apna Asmaan about an autistic teenager (Dhruv Piyush Panjnani), whose personal crises impacts the relationship of his parents (played with characteristic competence by Irrfan Khan and Shobhana), came and went without creating so much as a ripple.

The boxoffice performance of the recently released Stanley Ka Dabba, written and directed by Amole Gupte, is particularly heartening because it is a film that carved a niche for itself despite lacking star power. In Gupte’s words, "It is a simple story about children standing up for each other." The simplicity of Stanley Ka Dabba stems primarily from its steadfast focus on the unique world of children.

Gupte, who also played a pivotal on-screen role in Stanley Ka Dabba, was the writer of Taare Zameen Par as well.

Stanley Ka Dabba is Gupte’s riposte. It breaks the mould by eschewing artifice at all levels — the acting is fluid, the lighting is natural and the film is shot with a small digital SLR camera that allowed the child actors to be themselves. This touching but not unduly dramatic tale of an orphan boy (Partho, Gupte’s son), who cannot afford to bring any food to school, is narrated with the kind of grace and empathy that instantly sets the film apart from the run-of-the-mill.

Is the Indian moviegoer finally ready, then, to embrace the kind of quality children’s cinema that Stanley Ka Dabba is? Once again, we are in a whirlpool of ifs and buts. Stanley Ka Dabba certainly isn’t the first film of its kind to come out of Mumbai. Fifteen years ago, ace cinematographer-director Santosh Sivan made the wonderful Halo, about a motherless girl, who loses her dog and sets out in search of the puppy, a search that takes her across the city of Mumbai. Halo was a deeply affecting blend of pathos, humour and innocence.

Sivan moved a few notches higher with 2008’s Tahaan, which revolved around a young Kashmiri boy (Purav Bhandare) and his pet donkey. The boy’s father has been missing for three years and he lives with his grandfather (Victor Banerjee), mother (Sarika) and elder sister (Sana Sheikh). His grandpa dies and the family is plunged into a financial crisis. The donkey is taken away in lieu of an unpaid debt. The young protagonist sets his heart upon bringing his pet back, no matter what price he has to pay.

Vishal Bhardwaj, music composer and filmmaker, whose reputation today rests on a bunch of star-driven dark thrillers, has remarkable children’s films like Makdee (2002) and The Blue Umbrella (2007) to his credit. The former was a delectably inventive fantasy about a wicked witch (played by Shabana Azmi), and a pair of twin sisters as different from each other as chalk and cheese. The latter, adapted from a Ruskin Bond story, was another neatly crafted story of loss, reconciliation and self-realisation woven around a young village girl, whose prized possession, a blue umbrella, is stolen by a wily old shopkeeper.

Such was the intrinsic quality of these films that it is surprising that they did not achieve greater commercial success than they did. In an ideal world, they would have triggered off a whole new trend of children’s cinema of high artistic value. The fact that the Indian movie distribution and exhibition market is driven entirely by the superstars was probably the reason why none of these films got the sort of exposure that they deserved. We had to wait until Taare Zameen Par to see a spurt in the production of films aimed at children.

Bollywood’s growing focus on the challenges of childhood has assumed different forms. While Zokkomon is an action film about a mistreated orphan, who bounces back in the guise of a superhero, Chain Kulli Ki Main Kulli is a cricket-themed drama about a 13-year-old boy, who lives in an orphanage and dreams of becoming a cricketer, inspired by Kapil Dev’s exploits in the 1983 World Cup.

Faruk Kabir’s realistic Allah Ke Bandey focuses on two boys, who live in one of Mumbai’s grimiest slums, and are inexorably sucked into the underworld. In Irfan Kamal’s unflinching Thanks Maa, a Mumbai slum boy discovers an abandoned infant and decides to find the mother and restore the baby to her. Cycle Kick is about a boy, who is obsessed with making it big as a footballer. Satrangee Parachute revolves around a boy and his friends who flee their homes in Nainital and reach Mumbai in search of the multi-hued parachute that they want to buy for one of their pals.

Interesting enough stories all, but sadly low on boxoffice draw. Even as the number of children’s films increases steadily and they move ever closer to the Mumbai mainstream, their failure to find an instant connect with the masses continues to be a disappointment.