This is the follow up to mu previous post, “Indian Cinema: On the verge Of a Creative Famine? Part I”.
In the previous post we have dealt about four points why Indian cinema is lost in the minds of global audience. I have stated four points as the probable reasons, they are:
·        Insipid Stories
·        Lack Of Creativity
·        Inappropriate Utilization of Run Time
·        ‘Hero’ism


I will state three more reasons in this post, so keep your eyes glued to the monitor as I start off.


1.      Lack Of Nativity: When was the last time you saw a Bollywood film set completely in India, including the songs?. Well, I can only remember ‘Iqbal’ but my Bollywood knowledge being weak I can’t remember others. Indian filmmakers have long forgotten the beauty of India and the film makers mostly scalp their stories in and around America and at times in European countries (Karan Johar is the leader of this, as far as I know he is a traitor for Indian cinema as he mostly revolves Indian village dramas in foreign locales).
I guess Indian cinema is the only one to adapt to western conditions and cultures more. The use of a sari by most of the Bollywood’s top heroines has been long forgotten and they most of the times expose bare skin to make up for their horrible acting. The culture and traditions of India have been long forgotten in Bollywood movies and the regional language movies also have taken cue (At this point, Tamil films are far better, Tamilians have immense respect for their culture).


Nowadays, Indian movies are being released simultaneously in foreign countries too. Except for a few the rest are duds. What would any NRI want from an Indian film?. Foreign locales?, No, he could go anywhere he wanted to.


Item girls and Bikini babes? – An obvious No, as mostly Indian films are released in U.S.A and U.K where one can have enough doses of entertainment if they go to beaches.

Then what does a really homesick person living in a far of land want?
I say any NRI or for instance any movie buff would like to know more about the country, culture and people where the film is set in. As a movie enthusiast whenever I see a foreign film (apart from the English ones) I first give preference to movies which enlighten our grey cells more about their country. At this juncture, the Indian directors and producers have forgotten this point and they have taken their rotten stories to foreign locales just to hide the flaws in the story with the beauty of the location.


[I would like to add this incident which happened a few months ago in my house. Our Servant maid was watching a teen college flick, which centered around college life and mostly more around the love affairs between students. I was just into an Engineering college then, and my Servant maid who hails from a remote village asked my mom, “Amma, does everyone in college fall in love with girls? Does Pawan Babu also have girlfriends like shown in the movie?”
My mother was shocked and she couldn’t shoot a reply and she gave an answer which somewhat sounded like, “Cheap films – Children watch – get spoilt – future wasted”.
Our Servant maid was prompt to reply saying that, “I won’t send my daughter to college, given how the life in a college really is in the movie”
My Mom didn’t have a reply and so did I.
The film I am talking happened to be the biggest hit of 2007 in Telugu and the director was shot into fame, but believe me the movie was utter CRAP!.]


2.      The Audience Factor: Indian audience no matter where they live never grew up. Sorry for being bland but that is the truth. And do you want an evidence?. Here it is, even the dumbest of the dumb movies are becoming huge successes and grossing huge amounts which in fact they do not deserve. The films with cheap sets, flimsy actors, icky dialogues, bizarre stunts are being made on a repetitive basis as the previous movies made on these themes made big bucks at the box office. There are in fact people who indeed watch such movies with awe. 


For Indian movies to mature, the mindset of the audience should change. They should become receptive with bold cinema and also get used to movies which run on a shorter length. Well, someone has to pioneer in making this type of cinema in India. People living in the metros will be ready to accept the change but the rest are maybe quite insensitive in the start but as times proceeds the audience themselves will feel at ease (Remember, when 20-20 was first introduced, many people displayed their fears saying the introduction of such a short format will destroy the essence of the game, but now 20-20 format is ruling the game, with the other formats intact as before!)


3.      Movies are being considered as a storehouse of money: A movie is a work of art. In olden days dedicated directors like Satyajit Ray, Raj Kapoor used to make movies out of dedication and solely with a purpose of delivering a social message to the audience. But these days the scenario has changed, almost all the directors (minus Mani Ratnam, who made a master pieces like ‘Anjali’, ’Geetanjali’ and ‘Iddaru’ in times where the Indian film industry was focusing more on commercial elements) are making movies only for the sake of money. Not only the directors, but even the producers, actors, crew and every last person in the field are only working for money.


Here I want to cite the examples of director Darren Aronofsky who made the movie ‘Pi’ with a shoe string budget of $60,000, read more about it here. Swedish director Roy Andersson had to wait for two years before he could make out the movie ‘Du Levande’ which went to become a commercial success later on but at one point during the shooting of the movie had to stop filming due to lack of funds. There are many many more good films which were made with financial constraints like, ‘Reservoir Dogs’, ‘Halloween’ so on and so forth. But the budgets did not become an issue as the directors took a risk and they were dedicated towards the job.


It has been proved many times in the past that dedication is the key to any successful venture. Even if children were to join in schools and colleges just for the sake of a job/money then the education has no worth but if they study for the sake of knowledge, they can do wonders. Same applies to movies or any other field.


So an ideal Indian can be done my scrapping all the songs and instead having background scores like in English movies, reducing the stardom of the already existing actors/actresses by telling them what cinema really is. Doing of vulgar and crude comedies/skin shows and for the sake of the Mass audience a steamy scene could be added. Focusing more on Indian mythology will also help (when was the last time a main stream mythological film was produced?). Gradually the people will get used to the change and tend to support diverse form of cinema and then start a trend wherein all Indians would be done proud all over the world.


Indian film industry to survive the globalization of cinema and the ongoing recession should focus more upon its story, script and direction instead of stressing upon the actors and special effects/stunts. India has the immense capacity to become the world leader in the field of cinema by making more sensible movies on much more diverse themes and topics and also making bold moves. Even production companies instead of hiring old directors and also taking directors who are the son/grandsons/friends of politicians and all should focus more upon aggregating the immense creative power available in the youth nowadays. Certainly then, one could be proud showing off an Indian cinema to a foreigner saying, “It’s our cinema, period.”


[Dedicated to Mihir , Aparna , Anil, Apurv , Ravindra, Avrs and all the others who have encouraged me to write this post!]

Of late I have been watching quite a few Scandinavian, South Korean and European movies (specifically German, Italian and French movies) and I have noticed a very striking point. The aforesaid movies have a very small exposure and are usually limited to their country audience and at times to American audience and also they are displayed in film fests.
On the other hand, we have India which approximately produces 900 movies a year and is only second to Hollywood in producing movies. The movies made in India have a huge fan base in India and outside and have considerably more exposure the Scandinavian, European movies. But what do Indian movies lack?. Many of the Scandinavian and European movies get more awards than the entire film industry in India gets. Surprisingly, in a land where 900 movies are churned out per year none of them even go to win the Oscar’s in the Best Foreign Film Category. What’s more, Indian films even fail to impress the critics at other film festivals. Whereas, the other small film making industries situated elsewhere in the world get much more favorable reviews and get more awards and in turn get a huge fan base.


Coming back to me, I was a huge fan of Indian movies until a year ago. There were many instances of me leaving important works to stay back at home to watch a movie. But the scenario changed when I actually started developing a very persistent taste towards Hollywood movies and gradually into cinema made in other languages. Here I am after a year and a half and it has been ages since I watched an Indian movies and it will only after ages will I watch an Indian movie again.


Indian movies are abnormally over hyped and lack taste and are usually filled with egoistic actors who can’t act and even more trivial heroines who can act better in porn movies. The hero is generally some politician or a Big shot’s son and so are the directors and producer’s hence forth making the relatively ‘poor’ talent available in India useless. Here are some essential points which make Indian cinema an utter disaster among its foreign counterparts,


1. Insipid stories: The main strength in any movie lies in its story. The very basic reason why movies are made is to narrate stories in such a way that the viewer feels like he is an integral part in the story. But our filthy rich Son/relative of a Big shots never understand that and generally skim off stories on a very thin thread usually consisting of Hero and Heroine and a villain with an Item number with an otherwise porn actress and also have three fights with the Hero usually bashing up the villain and then lets no forget the heroines parents who oppose her marriage with the hero and a few senti dialogues later the movies reaches its end after the Hero kills the villain. Where ever you go, whatever movie you see in India for 98% times you will find the same story.

2. Lack of Creativity: Strictly speaking as far as my guess is true a proportion of the movies released in India are lifted directly lifted from English and also from movies made in other languages. (Those who think Munnabhai M.B.B.S is an original work, here is some bad news, its heavily ripped off from a 1995 movie called ‘Houseguest’). As Hollywood movies usually fail to have the Indian nativity feel the unsolicited Indian remakes to generally lack the feel because, most of the directors simply rip off the English movies even with the dialogues!.
Most of the directors before the release of the film give speeches like, “We had a fresh script in hand and the story is simply enthralling and from the start only we wanted Hero X to act in the movie and the obvious choice for the heroine was Mrs. Exposing Chick Y. This movie has all commercial elements in place and will enthrall both the Mass audience as well as the class audience and will surely rewrite history”. Yes, in the end it does rewrite history by becoming the biggest dud in the year ;) . Every press pre-movie publicity press meet in the country would have the same dialogues except that the words will be interchanged a bit.

Another reason can be cited for the lack of creativity. Most of the directors, story writes have no primary education (as in they have degrees but they are the kind of people who passed those exams by mere copying or by pure luck, this is especially visible in their abysmal cinematic works and even more clumsy media interviews) and also make movies with one single purpose i.e to make money. This can be disastrous and we shall discuss about this point a bit later.


3. Inappropriate utilization of the Run time: Generally, all Indian movies (with an exception a few like ‘A Wednesday’) have a run time of two and a half hours to three hours. A regular Indian movie has about 6 songs (usually unauthorized rip off’s from the foreign music director’s) and each song on an average lasts for 5 minutes. That means about thirty to thirty five minutes of the two and half hours is just utilized to show case an expressionless heroine sizzling in the rain and a eunuch like actress doing a mass masala number. This type of dealing is almost absent in their foreign counterparts movies where the music is just played in the background. Songs generally dilute the content of the story and at times affect the story in such a way that the viewer can forget what happened prior to the songs.

Next comes the fighting sequences. Indian heroes are far greater than their Hollywood counterparts! If Superman and Spider-Man get their power from fictional sources but there have been many instances where are Indian ‘Heroes’ get their energy from their slapped girlfriends of tortured fellow family members or also when some goon assaults his community people. Our single ‘Hero’ gets to work and bashes all the baddies one by one (the surprising fact being, all the rowdies come in batches of tens or twenties but when it comes to hitting the ‘Hero’ they forget about teamwork and always go one by one or in pairs to get mashed by our viciously red eyed ‘Hero’!). Single handed fights and super natural stunts minced with amplified thud sounds give way to worse fight sequences. But Hello!, Its like I’m the only one bothered up here.


4. ‘Hero’ism : By mentioning Heroes I refer to the actors who play the lead roles in an Indian movie. This is the killer of all the points and also the basic reason because of which Indian movies lack substance. Apart from a movie or two almost every other movie released in India has a Hero and to partner him there is Heroine. The ‘Hero’ of the movie can do anything, fly, cry, love, flirt, romance, study and do what no other normal Indian can do. There have been many instances of films merely being made around a Hero’s image but which do not concentrate on the story.
This leads to a stereo typed movie making, because an Actor acts in movies generally having the same kind of character. (For example take Emraan Hashmi, he is suitable for being an extra but somehow bless his stars he became an actor. Nearly all his initial movies featured him as a lover boy who kisses his girlfriends whenever the story loses heat. Many heroes end up making the same type of movies except for few like Kamal Hassan and Aamir Khan). If a particular movie which belongs to ‘X’ genre featuring an actor ‘Y’ becomes a hit, the actor ‘Y’ tends to do the same role from time to time. There are many examples for this and just look at the patterns for some of the actors you follow!.
For making Indian movies better, the total concept of Hero-Fucking-ism should be banned (sorry to be abusive, but I thought a little F word could be more fruitful) as in the Hollywood movies. In English cinema, the story usually revolves around characters and not Heroes and in the end sometimes the characters outdo the lead pair in the movie (I would cite Kevin Spacey as the best example whose exemplar performances in “The Usual Suspects” , “Se7en” and “American Beauty” over shadowed the performances of other artistes.). But in India most of the action is left up to the Hero and generally the character artistes get lesser importance and hence dampen the image of the movie. Unless this is scrapped, many versatile actors present in the industry wouldn’t be able to make a mark in the film industry and also in the hearts of the people.

This war of ego’s between the lead actors and the directors often leads to a film with small doses of everything, wherein the director tries to be a Jack In All trades but ends up as the master of none.


Read the follow-up of this article in my next post scheduled to be posted anytime tomorrow or day after. Share your valuable comments with me as it would enhance my writings and also helps me to shape my thinking.
Here is a gist of Indian film stunts. To see click HERE


Running away from the mercenaries,
Dodging away from the fire of artillery,
I ran a thousand miles,
How quick the time flies!.

After running for a bit further,
I approached the other countries border,
I looked around,
I didn’t hear a sound.

All of a sudden I got hit by a hummer,
I didn’t notice the sentry at the frontier,
There was blood all around,
My pain was the only sound.

Pain seared up to my brain,
I broke up and fell under the strain.

Days later I woke up darkness,
Stench imposed a olfactory blackness,
Screams of the guards were the only signs of life,
It was like being there in hell, Alive.

Prisoners were brought out and shot in the head,
Simultaneously till they were dead,
Their pain and misery in the last moments,
Ghosted my bedeviled head.

Days later my turn came,
To get sacrificed,
My head got hotter than a flame,
I got rooted on the spot and got traumatized.

There I stand eyes blind folded,
To get shot by the firing squad,
I stood there deep rooted waiting for the moment,
Fire!, was the order that came by the head of infantry.

Bullets sieved my body,
As if I were a paper piece,
Instantly I made peace with God Almighty!,
Seconds later I fell down, becoming a piece of earth.

There are blunders war can do,
Killing people like me,
In return for my sacrifice,
My family commits suicide.

God, if you are listening to me,
Save everyone else from the tragedy,
A man killed for a man,
Only leaves the world empty!.
[Dedicated to all those prisoners of war who lost their lives for the sake of their country]

The Dual Perspective – Me , Ashwin , am one of the two contributors to this blog . You guys maybe thinking what is the purpose of this blog , when both of us(Me and Pawan) already have personal blogs .to answer this question is a humongous task .
This blog , is an answer to all those questions which trouble me and Pawan (my friend and co-blogger). This blog is our medium of communicating with the world , the world which has never heard of us , never known such people as us exist.

We are here to give you insights into lives of two entirely different people , their take on subjects ranging from real to reel . We are here to give you our works in literature , in verse and prose , for you to read , to judge. We are here because we strongly believe that this world requires change and we want to be a part of it .

Have you ever thought , how differently two people react to a similar situation , have you ever thought what is their perspective on the situation at hand ? Now , here , you will see the differing perspectives , the wandering ideas , this will be like Hrithik and Shahrukh dancing to the same song in the movie Krazzy 4 ( of course we are no comparison to either of them , at least in the charm these men possess). You can compare , you can debate , you can stand with either one of us or both of us . We bring to you , an entirely new world of blogging.
We hope you will enjoy reading this blog as much us much as we will enjoy composing it .

Followers

About this blog

The dual perspective.

Life through the eyes of two different humans.

Welcome, to the world of dreamy poetry, swash buckling prose and uncensored thoughts!

Experience the power of two, through the packed in one!.

Copyright 2009 - The Dual Perspective

Blogspot Theme designed by: Ray Creations, Ray Hosting.