Indian Cinema and the market forces

Indian Cinema and the market forces

“The best films of a country are produced in times of stress. Look what the war has done to Italian films. Look at Brief Encounter. I don’t think a great film like that would have been made possible without all those air raids London had to suffer. I think what Hollywood really needs is a good bombing.”
These words were said by Jean Renoir to Satyajit Ray.
So, what do we need? A nuclear attack? Why after having a history of more than 100 years our film industry has made a very few number of internationally acclaimed good films. The reason is not that we can’t make good films but we don’t want to. The reason is we Indians are scared of originality.

Cinema is an art form which needs audience to survive. A film maker is scared of originality because he will not find enough audience to payback his financers and he will not be able to make another film. The audience is scared of originality because of their reluctance to change. Change is not welcomed in India. That is why we see same kind of movies and make them successful. By same kind I mean the commercially successful films made by YRF, Mahesh Bhatt and Karan Johar (including all the film makers associated with them who make the camp). All these films are nearly the same. That doesn’t mean that these makers are not capable of making different, innovative, good films. But they don’t want to.

Cinema no more reflects the society because we no more live in a society. Today we live in a market. And like all other products the market forces also control cinema. The camps mentioned above were early in realizing this fact and they changed accordingly. Because in the past we have seen them making great movies. This art has now become just a source of making money.

Who is responsible for that?
It’s a collective effort of film makers, audience and the external environment (which we can’t control). For the decades the camps are showing us the films made in accordance with the market forces of demand and supply. And today we are in the stage of habit formation. We are habituated to watching that kind of cinema. That is why whenever a different and good film is made it is appreciated by a very few people, forget the commerce part. I am not saying that their films are bad but they are the same every single time.

Why most of the good films made in India are low budget? Because the maker is aware of the fact that he will not get enough audience. This fear starts affecting the film making process right at the first stage, the thinking stage. The maker starts thinking more about cost cutting than the concept. If you want to make a commercially successful film it must have a hero, a heroine, a villain, five to six songs because majority of the audience want exactly this. They don’t want to watch a film that is made differently, in an unconventional way. Here I would like to mention again what Renoir said to Ray about audience.

“It was as if someone had opened a secret door of communication between the film maker and his audience. it was a great feeling. Everything we did the audience understood. The French cinema could not have made those enormous strides towards maturity without this wonderfully perceptive audience. They helped us all along the way, and I for one feel grateful to them.”

So what can be done to bring Indian audience to that level? Changing their pattern of watching cinema is the only answer. We have seen that number of people acknowledging and appreciating good cinema has increased. Because today good cinema is reaching to more and more audience. But the penetration needs to be accelerated. Today we have some production houses which are backing good cinema and we have makers who are making it knowing the fact that it will not make money. That is a good sign and a ray of hope. It is our duty to increase the awareness of the people about cinema as an art. And a day will come when people, I would say majority of people would watch good cinema and they will not be known as good but commercially flops.

An Indian “Darshak”, Kaminey and Critics

An Indian “Darshak”, Kaminey and Critics

Today I watched Kaminey for the Fixfth time.

I am not trying to give another review of the movie because I don’t consider myself good enough to review any movie. That is why I could not write here before this. For the past two years I wanted to write here but I did not do that. But I can’t stop myself anymore. Kaminey is not a milestone in Indian cinema but it is something. It is the newest wave in Indian cinema. It has nothing to do with Hollywood. It is not Vishal Bhardwaj’s “Javab” to Hollywood (I am sure he will agree on this) and for god sake it is not Indian Pulp Fiction. It will be seen as an important movie in Indian cinema in future because it demonstrates the capability of an Indian film maker. It is a proof that Indian film makers have the courage and are ready to follow a different path for storytelling. It tells how Indian cinema has evolved and where it can go.

My insanity for cinema started when I couldn’t even speak. I lived in a very small town where there was not a single decent theatre where a man could watch a movie with his family. My insanity increased with the increasing age. VCR was the only available option and my family did not have one (I was told that it will come when my father’s friend’s brother in law will come back from Dubai and it never happened). I have watched movies in every possible place, at Durga Puja Pandal, at a video theatre (there were some small rooms where movies were shown on a colour TV and people watched it sitting on the floor), at every neighbours’ house (whom I didn’t even know). I remember I used to go to every baarat because movies were shown there in the night. I remember sitting on the ground and watching movies for the whole night. Those were the days when I could do anything for watching a movie. And what movies I could watch? Bhabhi, Paap ko jalakar rakh kar dunga, Rakhwala, Hamla, sone pe suhaga, Mar mitenge, Aatishbaaj, Billu badshah, Aag ka gola, Humara khandan, Bade ghar ki beti, Laal dupatta malmal ka, Jina teri gali mein, Bahar aane tak and every movie mentioned in the torture series. These are some names. At that time only parameter for deciding whether a movie is good or bad was the no. of villains it has. After a long wait and a lot of hard work watching Naseeb was a great achievement for me because it had Pran, Amrish Puri, Amjad Khan, Kadar Khan, Prem Chopra and Shakti Kapoor together. Even watching the poster of a movie was a great delight.

My insanity continued to grow. Today I have watched almost every Hindi movie, can’t say all but a great number of English movies. I have watched Italian neorealist and pre and post neorealist movies, French poetic realist movies. I have watched movies of Renoir, Godard, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Kiarostami, Bergman, Kurosawa, Antonioni and endless names. I have watched good movies in every Indian language. This is how I evolved as a “Darshak”.

If I say that I did not like the Hindi movies that I watched in my childhood, it would be a lie. At that time I loved them. My passion for cinema started with those movies and today I can’t imagine myself without cinema.

Yes, I love all kinds of movies good, bad or ugly but I know the difference between good, bad and ugly cinema. I don’t read any reviews before actually watching a movie. Critics are causing more damage to cinema than piracy. Today people decide which movie to watch after reading someone else’s views without finding who he is and what he has to do with cinema. Everybody has become a film critic. And they are not doing any good to cinema because they are not qualified enough to criticize even a B grade Hindi movie.

I started with Kaminey because I can’t sit and read the things written about a good movie any more. Everyone is free to say that they don’t like it. But even the critics who praised it mentioned the names of Tarantino or Pulp Fiction. Why it is Indian Pulp fiction? Because people can’t understand what is going on in the movie? Because the story line is not linear? They are not doing justice to the film maker. Critics today know everything about a film more than its maker. They even know the intention behind making a film more than the maker. Someone calls it a spaghetti gangster film. So let it be. It doesn’t make it a bad movie. May be you don’t like it. May this film is not made for an audience like you. But you don’t have to criticize it on false premises.

They assumes something and their review revolve around their assumptions. This is not a good sign for cinema in India. Everybody is free to write anything about anything but the reader is also free to believe it or not. Only the audience can stop them from doing more damage. Please go to the theatre watch a movie and decide what is good and what is not.