Paralysis of Bollywood
Paralysis of Bollywood
Paralysis of Bollywood
Many of us today are showing our deep disappointment towards the majority of the films being made in Bollywood today. Each Friday of the month numerous films are released and most of them are forgotten in a short space of time. So much so that when someone talks about it, one almost has to think for quite some time to cultivate his thoughts and recollect from his memory if that particular film even existed(do u remember a movie called Right Ya Wrong' or Teen Patti' or Dulha Mil Gaya' or Paathshala' or even Luck' or Cash')? Well now you may, after seeing them here. But in truth we had forgotten about all of them which is nothing wrong as they are not worth remembering. Why is it that Bollywood, which has such a huge fan base, such a huge financial support, has magnificent resources, manages to produce not more than one or two memorable films in a year?
The root of the problem does not lie in the system or in the directors or producers but lies in the masses or the audience itself. All the rest are secondary causes. For Bollywood to evolve the audience has to evolve. And this is not a process which takes place overnight. It's a cycle which takes time to happen. All of us compare Bollywood to Hollywood and have set Hollywood as a bench mark or standard for our films. But we are forgetting the fact that certain great directors were inspired from Bollywood itself, from the great Satyajit Ray. Filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese,
James Ivory, AbbasKiarostami, Elia Kazan, Francois Truffaut, Carlos Saura,Isao Takahataand Danny Boylehave been influenced by his cinematic style, with many others such as Akira Kurosawapraising his work. "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon" saidAkira Kurosawa. How many people know that Martin Scorsese's taxi driver is based on Satyajit Rays Abhijan (1962).Therefore at one time our films were an inspiration for Hollywood but since then it has been declining. So why should we consider ourselves inferior to Hollywood when at one time they were following our cinema? This only goes to show how the standards have dropped since then. Hollywood is now leaps and bounds ahead of us not only because they have greatly improved but also because Bollywood has remained stagnant or maybe even dropped.
The reason for this is the changing tastes of the audience and their rejection of good cinema. The audience now craves for the Dabangg' type movies. They just want to be thoroughly entertained no matter how senseless the movie may be. Everybody seems to like no brainers or heart melting melodramatic films .The commercial director knows it well that emotion is the weakness of the Indian audience and that by showing one or two emotional or touching scenes he can easily extract a tear or two from the viewer. It is after all a society of emotional fools we live in. That is the reason why we are being exploited so easily. We have made Dabangg' or a film like Wanted' a superhit by queing infront of multiplexes to experience three hours of enjoyment' . The audience has to mature which will happen gradually. If we see Bolllywood ten years ago and when we see it now, we can notice a change. People are becoming more welcome towards realism and social films. Even though they have not reached the popularity of the masala movies they are slowly but surely making a place for themselves. The offbeat or non commercial cinema is now slowly being liked and appreciated by major art of the audiences. Directors like Dibakar banerjee and Anurag kashyap are few who are setting the trend and making audiences interested in parallel cinema. Ofcourse people like Vishal Bhardwaj and to some extent Prakash Jha are few of the directors who even make very good commercial films.
Another factor for the stagnancy of bollywood according to me is to some extent the superstars of Bollywood, Shahrukh,Salman,Abhishek,Saif,Akshaythe list goes on. They have the dynamic magnitude to create an absolutely frantic frenzy overnight with their films and they can very heavily influence the audience As superstars of bollywood should'nt they shoulder some responsibility of actively participating in maturing bollywood? Taking it to a level ahead?Unless and until they don't act in parallel or even meaningful commercial cinema the audiences wont be appealed or attracted to see it. Until they don't stop working in films like dabangg', wanted', race', tees maar khan', welcome', housefull', billu' etc we cant hope for a change. I mean how much more money do they want? Two of their generations can live off it even if they work for free now. These people have to take some responsibility and help bollywood grow. They can very easily and rapidly revolutionarize the Hindi Cinema. Even though Aamir Khan is slightly different from them and does pretty good films but he hasn't been able to radically change anything. How many people are Abhi Deol fans who doesn't do commercial films? Not many. So the drawback also lies because of the superstars who themselves are reluctant to work in different films afraid of a decline in fan following and revenue. So the modern director hasn't got much of a choice. A Wednesday' was such a good film, but people hardly went to watch it before the second or third week because by that time they had heard the news from a few people that it was very good.From the perspective of the audience who wants to see two old men, Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher during their weekend for three hours right? That's the poor mentality. If 'A Wednesday' just had one star like Shahrukh or Salman then the reception and revenue it would have got on the opening day itself would have been nothing compared to what 'A Wednesday' got in its 3 weeks.
Young directors who are trying to mature Indian cinema are not getting much support from anywhere. If they make a film which is realist and offbeat and not like the masala movie they do not get enough financial support and commercial success even though they are critically acclaimed. They therefore get no incentive to carry on like this and are reluctant to take challenging and experimental projects as their films don't go down to well with the audiences. I mean how much commercial acclaim did films like bheja fry', khosla ka ghosla' or even the shahrukh khan starrer swades' get? But it is not true that they are entirely not getting recognized. Films like A Wednesday' peepli live' udaan' did come into notice. This shows that Bollywood is getting back on track. But there needs to be more cinema like them and more importantly it should be popular amongst the masses. Directors should have an incentive to make good cinema. That is why most young directors start off in the right direction but due to lack of support end up making the commercial dump. Parallel cinema is slowly gaining foothold over the audiences as the audiences are slowly getting mature and are becoming appreciative of this kind of cinema. So basically we, the viewers have to mature,and expand our outllok towards films rather than just compare Bollywood to Hollywood. Why don't we compare the bollywood viewer to the Hollywood viewer? Well its not entirely the fault of the inidan audiences themselves as maturity and braoder vision and outlook depends on various other factors like literacy and development and growth of the country. Economic development doesn't only mean to signify an increase in GDP and GNP, it implies welfare of the society as a whole. So until that happens we cant expect much.
So for Bollywood to progress and even reach near Hollywood the audience has to grow, understand,mature and introspect. Its no use just blatantly blaming the directors and producers when the actual fault lies in us. Hopefully in the years to come Bollywood will slowly change. Just as its showing signs of maturity now.What Bollywood desperately need is INDIVIDUALITY & ORIGINALITY & INNOVATIVENESS and has to do away with 'CLICHE' cinema.
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