Lights, Camera....Action Replay!

It’s a tried and tested technique and an entire film industry seems to be raking in the moolah out of it. The reason you take notice is because it is the most ubiquitous, omnipotent celluloid dream factory that caters to the whims and fancies of a nation worth 1.3 billion people and more. The Hindi film industry, lovingly called Bollywood (because of course everything has to be a rehash of Hollywood, including the name of its Indian counterpart), enjoys a dominance over markets, both Indian and overseas like no other film industry in the world. Alas, it is built on a fluffy, fragile and superfluous premise: of churning out over a hundred films every year, mostly inspired/recreated/reconstructed material from successful ‘formulae’ that have never let producers and our mega heroes down film, after mind numbing film. After all, to achieve the grandeur and hype that our blockbusters demand, you need to convince an awful lot of people that this is worth your two hours and INR 200 investment. So you have sequels, prequels, remakes, remixes and then the tragic so-called original films- which are mere reflections of older movies past.

The decade of the ‘90s flourished on this premise: poor boy meets rich girl, college romances, villains in the name of fathers, villains who were always sniffing out a rape scene to get mileage from, tacky fashion sense, whacky dance moves, five songs with at least one rain song or with the lead pair singing around the trees, revenge dramas, comic sidekicks....the list goes on. Film after film was created with these massy tropes and the audience applauded every single one of them. How else do you explain the rise and rise of Govinda for instance? With due respect to him, his high-octane histrionics earned him so much fame with these familiar shenanigans, he was pelvic-thrusting his way to the bank, red shirt and yellow pants intact. He enjoyed this kind of monopoly at a time when the Khans were setting the foundation of their superstardom, with films that were similar albeit, ranked for a classier audience that went to good colleges and were very modern while respecting Indian traditions. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for him two decades later, when he tried to summon the same kind of hero worship from a vastly different audience this time with his silly caper of a film, ‘Aa Gaya Hero’. Someone please tell him it’s 2017, not 1995!

At the turn of the new millennium, fresh faces on the block like Hrithik Roshan were followed by Ranbir Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor and the like, while the Khans hit middle age and were forced to share box-office space with other, not less talented adversaries like Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn. Heck, even an atypical but inimitable hero like Emraan Hashmi was allowed his place in the sun, with his own brand of cinema: bold, brash and erotic, airbrushed with melodious songs and long-lasting smooches that became the talk of tinsel town. Everybody was minting their signature styles, which were reaping great profits with each film. So Hrithik was the rare all-rounder who seemed to be a director’s dream come true- what with his Greek God-like gorgeous looks, Michael Jackson-like groove and Sylvester Stallone-like muscles to flex in all those delish action stunts. Ajay Devgn had the perpetually angry and intense persona to heave onto every Godforsaken villain in town, Salman was fine-tuning his clean romedy act, Aamir was hitting the ball out of the park with his gritty roles the critics couldn’t get enough of, and finally SRK alias King Khan swept the chiffon-clad ladies off their pretty feet, with those adorable dimples and those crinkling eyes.

All was well so far but come the invasion of the internet and a sudden burst of films borne out of the web, and the grammar of cinema seems to have turned upside down. It’s no longer about making an audience sit through 3 hours of an assault on your senses just so you feel ‘entertained’. Entertainment has found new outlets, new vistas, and new languages. As an audience, you don’t need to walk to your neighbourhood cinema hall to be entertained anymore. You can watch a short film on the web, log on to Netflix to devour the latest international bestselling shows or simply download foreign language films on Torrent that are all the rage at film festivals like the Cannes. And if all this bores you, there’s always the last/latest season of Game of Thrones or reruns of Malgudi Days to catch up on. Where oh where does that leave our wonderful Bollywood, licking its wounds of neglect and apathy and now relegated to an occasional raising of the eyebrow only for an offbeat film like ‘Udaan’, or a norm-breaking ‘Queen’ or a casting coup like ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’. What do our blockbuster-prone producers or the Bollywood royalty do? After all, you do need films to run the meticulously built empire, which can be awarded at the inane and n number of film awards shows that celebrate good cinema. Hit the books for new research, go scout for new talent, weave realism in to scripts to make them more ‘relatable’, scrape off the old tricks to make way for some new, zany ones that are more attuned to today’s youth....?

Dude...you are really dim if you thought any producer with  self-imposed royal status was going to go through so much effort to please you, you measly audience! No, Hindi films these days are made to please especially you- they are made to feed a superstar’s ego or help him thrive in his comfort zone, they are made to milk the stereotypical, archaic formulae (that have served the purpose these many decades) dry, they are made to appease to brain-dead, obsolete imaginations that have no room for novelty as long as you pay for a ticket at your friendly multiplex playing 18 shows to a packed house, day in day out. But look where it got the industry? A film like Bahubali, not even made from Bollywood money or for the regular Hindi-speaking audience, went on to trample every Hindi film record in history, with its sheer magnitude, star appeal in the name of a never-before known Prabhas and a story that eclipsed every creative possibility conceived of till date.

The only exception to this rule has been Aamir Khan who seems to have mastered the art of making cinema resonate with enough solid and universal messaging that it wins over both the masses and the classes. His film-making discipline is rigid as much as his cinematic persona is amorphous. Hungry to innovate with every film- through plot, story, characters and appearance, he has struck gold with every film in recent times for its juicy content without falling for gimmicks or age-old conventions. Even the otherwise commercially driven Akshay Kumar has had to hone his craft to accommodate a new style- more profound, hard-hitting and socially-connected as evident from his latest spate of films- Holiday, Airlift, Rustom and the upcoming Toilet or Padman.

Where has that left Salman? The brawny actor full of machismo and bravado may have spawned a legacy of films based on his ability to prance, romance and look askance every time another superstar gives a hit, because he inevitably manages to shine even more on the box-office scorecard. After all, who can resist that tight six-pack and bulging bicep that refuses to be tamed and hidden inside a shirt, or the endearingly innocent man-child like purity of his soul every time he goes on emotional overdrive mode. Ah! A tender heart beneath that tough exterior- every woman’s dream come true, every man’s aspirational icon. It worked for Bodyguard, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Ek Tha Tiger, Dabangg and even Sultan. No surprises then that his next film may have given you a feeling of deja vu right from the trailer of Tubelight- innocent kid who could do with some rescuing from the baddies, the innocuous philosophy of life oversimplified for the masses, tough circumstances playing the villain and the real evil emitting from circumstances rather than moustache-twirling ruffians....similar elements in a new packing. Surprise, surprise, it didn’t work! Suddenly the same fans of Sallu bhai who swore on every film he made, were walking out of the theatres because it looks like, well, the impossible came true and that they had simply had enough. Oops! Time to put that thinking cap on again may be, after what, decades of building a castle in the air?

The bane of our superstars these days is also the fact that most of the younger crop of actors are not afraid to go miles in order to reinvent- take Ranveer Singh, Ranbir Kapoor or even Shahid who fast seems to be catching up from where he left off. They are taking on new physicalities to hit the nail on the head, changing their image to suit a new mould as per the film at hand and singing a different tune with every roll call. It keeps their audience on their toes, makes it possible to spring surprises and yet, helps them to maintain their well-earned star status through out. Of course, even Ranbir was ‘accused’ of falling in to the rut of forever playing this ‘coming-of-age’ kind of hero who simply couldn’t do without a female co-star showing him the ropes. It may have won him his fan following but also got the critics’ thumbs down, made evident as soon as Tamasha flopped. In fact, everyone cried foul over ADHM walking the trodden line, even if it went on to be declared a hit. Jagga Jasoos is being seen as his attempt at being redeemed off his folly but only time will tell if it earns him back the respect he deserves otherwise.

The only Bollywood impresario who is repeatedly struggling to find coherence in the cacophony is SRK- upheld as the eternal Romeo for too long and unable to break out of that bubble no matter how many films like ‘Chak De India’ or ‘Swades’ he does. Blame it on Yashraj or KJo, but everyone loves the lovey-dovey SRK- so all he can do is choose to bring back the golden heydays through a glimmer of hope that is ‘When Harry Met Sejal’. Unfortunately, this film through its brief glimpses so far, is again aping every marketing ploy to sell itself to its audience- it’s almost like he went back to all his past films that helped him win his label of ‘King of Romance’ and mixed it generously with Imtiaz Ali’s brand of love potion to churn out a romedy. Good old DDLJ borrowed ‘sarson ke khet’, Punjabi bhangra a ‘Nagada Baja’ style, girl-boy gallivanting in a foreign locale like in ‘Tamasha’, tourist impersonation inspired from Dev Anand’s Guide or Aamir Khan’s ‘Fanaa’- you take your pick and a foot-tapping retro number like the one he pulled off in Kal Ho Na Ho – ‘Dil hai mera deewana kya’ which was so much zingier even though it seems to have been born generations ago. How many films will it take before SRK realises the actor in him needs a major overhaul. Wouldn’t it be better to bid farewell to the relics of his past before his loyal fan base which seems to be moving on gets tired of the same old, same old? Suffice it to say, the lyrics of his new song ‘Safar’ from the aforementioned film tell his tale like only he could:

Ab na mujhko yaad beeta
Main toh lamhon mein jeeta
Chala ja raha hoon
Main kahaan pe ja raha hoon,
Kaha hoon?

Ye umrr, waqt, raasta...guzarta raha...
Idhar ka hi hoon na udhar ka raha
Safar ka hi tha main safar ka raha
Main raha...