New Delhi: With gritty caper and grub street cinema from West Bengal and South India winning laurels at national and international film festivals, can Bollywood ever dare to crossover from the reliable mainstream to the unpredictable new age?
As Qaushiq Mukherjee’s experimental film ‘Gandu’ won the Grand Jury award at the Seattle film Festival this Sunday, it is a question worth asking whether Bollywood could ever afford to take the risks that small-budget filmmakers take in regional languages.
The film had traded Bollywood gloss and romance for gritty black and white images and in-your-face sexuality. Clearly, this was one more of the avant garde, art house productions that would never hit the box offices but thrive in the intellectual atmospheres of film festivals and international premiers.
Does Bollywood not have the stomach for such third acts?
In an ear-marked sort of way - there seems to be two separate genres of movies in India. The first being the movies for the masses that are meant to get the cash registers ringing and the other being the intellectual; alternative, experimental ones that are for this thin slice of the audience pie. The regular Dabaang, Ready, Three Idiots type; and the other being the intellectual, alternative, experimental ones that are for this thin slice of the audience pie – ‘The Afterword’ (Shob Choritro Kalponik), ‘Memories of March’, ‘Utsav’ and now ‘Gandu’. The obvious stands out - the alternatives are not from Bollywood.
While it is unfair to proclaim that Bollywood cannot make such ‘hatke’ movies, one cannot help but wonder why they actually do not do so.
The reasons could be many pronged. Primarily - Bollywood films are backed by massive budgets with the stars charging crores for their roles - experiments that might bomb terribly are a huge risk to take by the producers. Lately though there have been directors such as Dibaker Banerjee of the ‘Khosla ka Ghosla’ and ‘Oye Lucky Lucy Oye’ fame who have ventured into risky terrains and had the actors taking the chance as well. Even Hollywood actors are known to have sacrificed paydays for good movies.
Movies such as ‘Dosar’ and Bariwali’, both from Rituparno Ghosh’s arsenal, demand a certain kind of audience. The kinds who are intellectual and willing to accept a parallel but extremely effective genre of films. Bollywood is severely lacking in that category. To put it straight – the regular Bollywood audience is simply not ready for movies like ‘Gandu’ – that cannot cross the wrath of the censor board or be screened at multiplexes. The quintessential classes and masses divide.
The Bollywood entries for the Oscars are movies with the nationalistic colour like ‘Lagaan’ or complete bombers like ‘Eklavya- The Royal Guard’ or a ‘Peepli Live’- which is still borderline experimental. With eclectic directors like Dibakar Banerjee and Anurag Kashyap – why is Bollywood still playing it safe? There is probably only one answer to this – can we possibly think so much while munching on pop-corn? Will my neighbors’ son get to whistle the songs? Will some off-handed person on the street ape the actor’s fashion statement? No.
Bollywood is still one of those stress-busting, anti-depressants. It perhaps still needs time to become a shot of something more potent and thought provoking.
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