Entertainment - Small filmmakers outdoing monster movies

Pritish Nandy

Have you noticed how everything about Bollywood now centres around size? The magazines are full of big Bollywood. So are the TV channels, the internet portals, the tabloids, as well as the fashion weeks.

It’s almost as if Bollywood is only about big movies, big budgets, big stars, big sets, big designersand of course big flops. Big is in. Everything else, dear Ophelia, is out.

But is that the real picture? Forget the producers, the myth merchants, the sellers of hype and tripe who flourish in this Byzantine bazaar. Ask the guys who run the screens, book the theatres, and add up the numbers at the end of each day so that investors can be paid back. They will give you a very different picture.

In fact, they will give you some truly scary numbers for some big films that were recently released with much hubris and declared as huge box-office hits. The movies that are actually working today are not these big, flashy types but the humble sloggers, the ones that no one ever thought had a chance in hell.

If you add up their net collections from theatres in India and overseas and the money they make from satellite and cable sales, music, home video and digital rights, you will find that most of the good ones have romped home safe, and made some profit as well.

While a disproportionately high number of the monster movies have floundered and fallen with such earth-shaking thuds that their producers have had to spend a few more crores in publicity just to obfuscate their actual performance.

Jaane Tu... is a charming example of a small movie that made it big. It created a new star in Imran Khan and rediscovered Genelia. Jannat is another. Everyone thought Emran Hashmi was trapped in his boring, predictable Mr Kisser image till this sleeper hit came along and proved them wrong. The Bhatts have this amazing ability to surprise the box-office when you least expect them to.

Just as no one thought a movie on terrorism and bomb blasts with Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher in the lead roles would last in the theatres beyond the mandatory week. But A Wednesday has been hanging in there for six weeks and looks ready for more.

It’s a realistic movie, with no item songs, no Swiss Alps, no risque double entendres. Also about terrorism was Aamir, a tiny thriller set in the aching heart of Mumbai. All four, interestingly, were made by new, practically unknown film-makers.

Then you have Rock On which made a star out of Farhan Akhtar, launched Prachi Desai and renewed Arjun Rampal’s career. There were also Mithya and Ugly Aur Pagli, which put Ranvir Shorey on the Bollywood map, just as Bheja Fry had put Vinay Pathak.

Mallika Sherawat has a brand-new star profile, post-Pyar Ke Side Effects and Ugly Aur Pagli, both made by first-time directors. Nishikant Kamath followed up his brilliant Dombivli Fast with an equally moving Mumbai Meri Jaan.

Even Aamir Khan’s first directorial effort, now readying for a shot at the Oscars, is pretty much a small film, way out of big Bollywood’s usual domain space. It was made to cater to a niche multiplex audience and ended up as a huge success without anyone having to suspend disbelief.

All these films assert the simple fact that the new cinema’s here to stay. And to challenge the hubris of big Bollywood, which promotes itself as a Goliath on steroids. A perfect example is Ram Gopal Varma whose smallest film in recent times, Phoonk, stormed the box-office and proved he is best when not burdened by the compulsions of a big budget movie.

I wish other gifted film makers would occasionally try the same. All it requires is self-confidence and the ability to write or assess a script that can stand on its own without necessarily spending an obscene amount of money or begging an impudent star secretary for dates.

Movies are ultimately about two things: Magic and inspiration. Some movies transport you into another world, charming and magical, and it’s for that experience that you go to a theatre and sit back for two hours and allow yourself to be entertained. The great masters of cinema have worked this space brilliantly, be it Spielberg or Hitchcock or Baz Luhrmann.

Then there are people who make movies that make you think, cry, rediscover yourself. The Pursuit Of Happyness is a shining example. Or Little Miss Sunshine. Or the Woody Allen films. Nearer home was Satyajit Ray who, contrary to what many of us think, made comedies and thrillers with as much chutzpah as he made the Apu trilogy.

In fact, Bollywood has excelled in both kind of movies. Mehboob Khan and Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt and Kishore Kumar, Bimal Roy and Hrishikesh Mukherjee, were all masters in their own right.

But, in my time, I have seen and loved films like Mr India and Chaalbaaz, Lamhe and Hum, Andaaz Apna Apna and Lagaan on the one hand and Satya and Jhankaar Beats, Vaastav and Chameli, Cheeni Kum and Chak De on the other. They are not easy standards to live up to. But while the Davids are managing to do so, the Goliaths have given up the ghost.