article: Talking Indian movies
Where shall we start, where shall we end? As everybody may know India is the biggest film industry in the world. In the last year they have produced 1091 feature films in different regions, not counting their TV-production. Still we pretend to know what Indian film is: Bollywood. But what the hell is Bollywood? People dancing, slow rhythms, B-movies, endless love stories - no! A generalization is not possible. As everywhere it depends on the director, writer, producer, the team, the culture, the genre… Film is an art form and entertainment, where it is difficult to generalize. What means “German” film nowadays - politics, realism, melancholy? Are “French” films only about love, “Italian” films about Mafia and what means Hollywood anyhow? So I can just briefly talk about some movies, which came out in our cinemas.
As far as numbers are concerned, many people saw the English-American film “Slumdog Millionaire”, which is not an Indian production but still a very interesting and fascinating movie, also from the production point of view. But there is a more interesting and forgotten film made by Mira Nair in 1988, called “Saalam Bombay“. This film also tells the live and destiny of kids in the poor areas of Mumbai in a more realistic way and not with a happy-ending like in “Slumdog Millionaire”. Mira Nair didn’t have the advantages of modern film making, shooting with little HD-cameras, flexible film teams and highly developed post-production facilities with all its possible manipulations. Still as a spectator of “Saalam Bombay” you get closer to the kids, their worries and dreams than in the English production, and in this film you can’t escape at all in a dream of becoming a millionaire.
Also the film “Thanks Maa”, directed by Irfan Kamal , distributed by IDREAMS, shows in a realistic, documentary style the life and destiny of kids, living in the streets of India. It treats the subject of child trafficking, like in the love and action movie “Ghajini”, the biggest box-office hit in 2008. For sure it is a question of taste if you prefer a realistic movie or a pretending to be realistic movie, which shows a dream world, or a world of action, love and crime.
The producer, director and actor Aamir Khan has as well chosen a more realistic approach to Indian contemporary life in his film “Taare Zameen Par” as described in the blog below. You discover the Indian school and educational system, which touches the same questions and problems as discussed in Europe or North America. How far shall we push and oppress our kids to fit into the system of our modern world?
On the other hand “Karma calling” shows a modern world of Indians, living and struggling in and outside India. The director and writer Sarba Das brings us closer to the life of an average Indian family living in the States, fighting with their debts, work circumstances… such as the life of young people in Mumbai, working in a Call-center. You have no dancing scenes, no kitsch, but still romance and dreams in its own comic way.
Don’t forget the film “Monsoon wedding” by Mira Nair, a director, who can tell stories like a beautiful pearl necklace. A young woman has to get married to an Indian, she doesn’t know well, living in the States. But still she has an illegal love affair with another man, whom she can’t forget. Slowly we discover the world of her father, getting into economic troubles because of the marriage, the life of her younger brother, who is very feminine, as well the story of an abused woman, her cousin, rediscovering live and love, while the future husband from the States is searching for an India, which doesn’t exist anymore. Mira Nair mixes comedy with tragedy and drama, giving us some insights into Indian society.
India seems to have a long tradition of realistic films, starting with Satyajit Ray, born in Kolkata 1921, who was influenced by European neo-realism and the French filmmaker Jean Renoir. Satyajit Ray worked with him in Kolkata, searching for locations. He started his career as a film director with the “Apu Triology” in 1950, telling the story of a young poor Bengali boy, coming from a high caste, living in a rural area, trying to help his family to survive. Every film from Satyajit Ray is worth watching.
But where does realism starts, where does it end? Could we describe the film “Fanaa”, directed by Kunal Kohli, produced by Aditya and Yash Chopra, as a typical Bollywood movie, where you live in a kind of dream world? Or do we watch a film, which tries to bring us life closer in a seemingly realistic way? Kunal Kohli gives us a glimpse into the life of a modern terrorist from Cashmere, living undercover as a tourist guide in New-Delhi to fulfill his mission, bombing the presidential palace. He falls in love, getting into a dilemma: true love or the fulfillment of his political ideas. This film succeeds to start as a romantic comedy, changes into an action movie and ends as a tragedy, and still keeps its classical dance sequences.
Many people may know “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham…” (Sometimes happy, sometimes sad), directed by Karan Johar, a film, who brought Bollywood into German cinemas. I still remember sitting with a colleague in the movie theater and we couldn’t believe that a film is 211 minutes long with a break! But it’s not just the length of the movie and the dance scenes. It was this archetypal storytelling of the son fighting against his omnipotent father, the love affair of a rich man with a woman, who is socially below him, the consequent separation of his family and the reconciliation with the help of the younger generation. We thought it’s simplistic as a story, but it worked.
I could continue to recite many more wonderful Indian films, experimental, realistic, comic, kitschy, action or surreal, from the different regions in the different languages. I just want to continue the discussion about what could be Indian film or Hindi or Tamil or Bengali film… There are so many different films such as filmmakers to discover. By the way you can watch a lot of interesting trailers in the Internet such the lately released film “Dev.D”, produced by UTV Spotboy, Ronnie Screwvala, and directed by Anurag Kashyap, or the comedy “Quick gun Murugun“.
On the website of Arte you find more information and a blog about Bollywood and in the Süddeutsche Zeitung you may read an interview with Aamir Khan about Indian film and his work.
Have a lot of fun to discover the huge variety of Indian film art and if you would like to read some more, please go to the beginning of my blog to part 2…
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