India (Frommer's, 4th Edition) - Keith Bain [39]
Increasingly, the influence of Hollywood production values and obsession with consumer culture is becoming evident in major Bollywood releases; to keep the MTV generation (and yes, India has its very own MTV) interested, you can expect to see younger stars with an ever more visible sex appeal engaged in plots that echo some of the preoccupations of the Western silver screen. Bigger bangs, more powerful explosions, and longer chase scenes combine with racier moments, tighter outfits, and about enough attitude to put even the most self-indulgent posers to shame. But it’s not all bad. In fact, some wonderful experiments in storytelling have produced screenplays that pack a punch and wow with the twists and turns invented to keep more world-wise audiences on their toes. Also, collaborative efforts between Bollywood studios and the West are making for enterprising transnational story lines; perhaps the most interesting of these is the intricately crafted Salaam-E-Ishq: A Tribute to Love (2007), which travels between continents and across genres and generations to provide a fantasy romance that innovatively blends narrative techniques borrowed from a broad pedigree. It’s the type of cinema that cannot fail to steal your heart. Another development is the appearance of films that attempt to somehow deconstruct the Bollywood formula while still playing to the masses. Dev.D (2009), for example, is a contemporary, youth-culture oriented reworking of Devdas, the classic novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, which had already spawned nine film versions. The film is a good chance to get some insight into a very modern understanding of India.
In fact, to view Bollywood movies as the be-all and end-all of India’s film industry would be akin to thinking that big-budget blockbusters are the only movies made by the U.S. film industry; Bollywood is only responsible for a small part of the huge number of films produced by India in several languages. The first Indian director to make international art audiences sit up and take notice was Kolkata-based Satyajit Ray. Although he made his films in the 1950s, he received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for his prolific body of work in 1992. Operating out of West Bengal’s “Tollywood,” Ray made movies that were the antithesis of Bollywood’s; he was the director who stated that “the man in the street is a more challenging subject for exploration than people in the heroic mold” and that he found “muted emotions more interesting and challenging.” Ray directed some 40 feature films, documentaries, and short subjects, of which Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) in 1955, Aparajito (The Unvanquished) in 1956, Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) in 1959, and Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha) in 1968 were the most internationally acclaimed. There are, of course, other exceptions, like Guru Dutt, one of Bollywood’s most successful directors of the 1950s, whose film Pyaasa (1957) has been nominated one of the world’s 100 best films by Time magazine.
Because India produces more than 700 films a year, it is in fact impossible to be monolithic about all products and speak of only a certain kind of film. Until recently, the government financed art-house cinema, and there are signs of a growing “indie” movement in which young directors scrape together the finances and make the kind of films they want as opposed to the formulaic catch-all colorful song-and-dance extravaganzas that financiers are comfortable backing. There are also some very serious and hard-hitting dramas, and one worth seeing—particularly if you’re visiting Mumbai—is Mumbai Meri Jaan (2008), which takes a poignant look at the impact of the 2006 train bombings that took 209 lives and left over 700 more injured.