Indian Enough For You? Bollywood and the Oscars

Following on Siddhartha’s discussion of the “Desi Angle” question, there’s an insightful piece in the Indian Express by Shubhra Gupta (thanks, SP) on a related question: is it possible that the only foreign films that have a chance at getting nominated for the Oscars are those that register as completely “other” to the West? This year, India’s official choice, Rang de Basanti, didn’t make the top 10, while the Canadian-financed Deepa Mehta film Water, did. (The final nominees will be announced next week.)

But Paint It Yellow/Saffron (that’s what its English-subtitled version [of Rang de Basanti] is called . . . didn’t travel too far down the road to the Oscars for that exact same reason: confused, contemporary youth exist all over the world. To a foreign viewer, the film is not ‘Indian’ enough, not in the same way as, say, a Water is: it is also, and this is not a well-known fact, very strongly reminiscent of Canadian film Jesus Of Montreal, in which a group of actors’ lives change drastically as they put on a passion play.

Incarcerated widows in a pre-Independence Indian ‘ashram’. Oooh, that’s Indian. Where else would you find little girls and beautiful young women and old crones with tragic backstories and cruelly shaven heads? It’s another matter that even today, Vrindavan’s widows lead lives of quiet desperation. It’s also another matter that major portions of the film had to be shot in Sri Lanka, which masquerades as Varanasi. But Water has the backdrop of the British ‘raj’, the horror of child marriage and ‘sati’, and brutal oppression. Can’t get better, can it? (link)

Gupta is right on many counts here. Rang de Basanti does have urban, middle-class kids speaking liberal amounts of English (as well as a white girl, speaking Hindi). What she’s overlooking, of course, is that while Rang de Basanti is a lot of fun, it just isn’t that serious a film. It doesn’t have the sense of gravity or “prestige” that makes a film a plausible Oscar contender. A much better choice, by far, would have been Omkara — which has the three A’s: it’s Arty, “Authentic” (though still legible to western audiences, via Othello), and most importantly, Adult. (I often feel that NRIs or ABDs should pick India’s official Oscar selections, since the Board that currently makes this selection clearly has no idea what it’s doing. Paheli?)

Still, I fear that the three Indian films that have reached the nomination phase over the years — Mother India, Salaam, Bombay, and Lagaan — do all fit a pattern: they focus on desperate poverty. While this is undeniably an important (and continuing) part of Indian society, it’s sad that only the exotic, impoverished India of street urchins or rural desperation is likely to make an Oscar-worthy film.

Someone might object: why should Indians care about the Oscars? No Satyajit Ray film was ever nominated (though I must admit I don’t know how many of his films were officially submitted). And isn’t this is the same Academy that gave Best Picture to A Terrible Bore A Beautiful Mind? But, whether or not it’s justified, there always seems to be a great deal of interest in the Indian media about the Oscars — despite rampant evidence that Americans simply don’t get Indian cinema.

Perhaps we should start our own awards? The Mutinies?

223 thoughts on “Indian Enough For You? Bollywood and the Oscars

  1. The submissions also indicate that the judges seem to have little idea of what might appeal to an international audience. “My thought was that we should present our Indian culture abroad,” says Shiromanee, “so a film like HSSH or Mohabbatein would be appropriate.” Actually, the opposite is true-India’s song-and-dance narrative is largely seen as exotic kitsch by the West. Says Uma d’Cunha, official programme consultant, Toronto Film Festival: “Our preference is for commercial films which the FFI is familiar with. But the perceptions of an Oscar committee are very different from ours.” Adds filmmaker Mani Ratnam: “A lot of attention is focused on Indian cinema now, but we’re not producing international quality films.”

    Exotic Kitsch.

    Reference; http://www.india-today.com/itoday/20010326/cinema.shtml

  2. “my point being that if the FFI is really serious about winning an oscar (personally, i dont think they should care two flying mango pits for it) it should invite someone with an understanding of the Academy as well as desi movies into its board – a POI type is a logical selection.”

    exactly. good cinema is good cinema. the instinct of shiromanee is actually a good one – it reflects that the indian commercial/cultural sensibility is a unique one and that it is a genre in and of itself that deserves respect when it meets the highest standards (and i agree these are few and far between). why should india go out of its way to seek out films that ignore the indian commercial/cultural aesthetic and cater to hollywood’s cultural aesthetic just to win an award? submit a good commercial song-and-dance film (hindi or otherwise) if it meets the standard, or submit an “art” film or “non-commercial” film if that meets a certain standard. it’s not as if flights-of-fancy song-and-dance movies have not won oscars before. india should focus on improving her own aesthetic instead of seeking to please others. if others don’t get it, so what?

  3. “And being totally removed from Bollywood power players & loyalties could also help get more user-friendly art movies (i.e., Aparna Sen) through. The article that was linked to in Comment #28 is also worth keeping in mind.”

    I’ve seen a few of her films.

    The problem I find when Indian films go in for drama over song-dance-masala, is that you are left to see what really horrible actors most of them are without the much needed and appreciated interruptions of song-dance-masala.

    Has anyone here seen 10 Park Avenue, or 21 Park Avenue or whatever, by Sen?

    Everyone’s acting comes off totally stiff and fake. They try to portray people in real life day to day activities like cooking, cleaning, talking on the phone, socializing, dating, whatever, and they come off so unreal, so rehearsed.

    I’m seeing this more and more in Bollywood films too, as they are trying to get more “real” and less melodramatic.

    They just can’t pull it off.

    I think it might be because for decades they have been doing only big melodrama with lots of song-dance-masala between, that they really don’t know how to portray casual, real life scenes.

    And for those actors that are exclusively “art” or whatever, like that bengali guy in Sen’s films, well, even if he never did a masala type film, he grew up watching them.

    I think most Indian actors do best in high melo-drama, over-acting, song-dance-masala films.

  4. Troll alert!

    I think most Indian actors do best in high melo-drama, over-acting, song-dance-masala films.
  5. ANd if you think Hollywood is only interested in steroetypical and ultimately negative films about India, which I agree they are, they seem to apply this standard toward their own film as well. Watch Children of Men or V for Vendetta . . . westerners have a subconscious fantasy about Western countries turning into dictatorships

    I agree, and I think this applies to fils across the board for the oscars. For example, I LOVED renee zellweger’s performance in bridgette jones diary, but even though she was nominated, she wasn’t considered a serious contender for that year because it was a comedy with a happy ending. Instead, she won for a more depressing role years later. I think the oscars tend to reward depictions of misery which translate (for the acadamy) into movies with “substance” and it tends to cast a very dark tone over the favored films in general.

  6. I think one contribution to the fake acting is the english. In hindi films these same actors come off more natural, though still over-the-top. But when they do mostly english films, as in Sen’s Park Avenue, the same actors like Shabana, come off totally, totally fake. Which to me makes sense.

    Shabana is one of my favorite actors, more for her screen presense than anything else, so I still kind of enjoyed Park Avenue, despite the horrible, stiff acting. In fact I watched it twice, precisely for that reason. Was drawn to the totally unbelievability of the acting – sucked in, you could say. Which is also why I find myself on youtube watching clips from Shabd and other such films wherein Aiswarya tries to pull off casual moments at home cooking and fails miserably.

    I just keep screaming, “Arey! Nobody does those things!”

    I’ll look for and post the clip of Aish cooking in that film and then going to turn up the radio and turn it down in like the same 20 second period. Hello!

  7. mistress of spices, i really do think you should stop with the generalization and over-simplification. i’m not sure you know this, but the malayalam and bengali film industries have very good art house productionst that, while may not appeal to those who only wish to see films life K3G, has great cinematic value. i suggest you check out the link by shodan for alt movies before you make such gross judgements.

  8. think most Indian actors do best in high melo-drama, over-acting, song-dance-masala films.

    it’s a matter of opinion. i disagree with you.

    i was just thinking of monsoon wedding axually – and there were two scenes that really got to me, neither of them melodramatic and equally compeling… – one when vijay raaz is on the roof and there’s a view of old delhi with kites flying around and he’s in a funk, the other when nsaeer shah is revulsed by his niece’s revelation and he wakes up in the night and reaches out to his wife asking for help – the closest western movie i can recall is the one in which robert de niro has this long monologue in ‘city by the sea’ and he is begging his son to surrender to the police – but i am desi yaar, meri life bilkul filmi, a real potboiler/tearjerker – so this relates to me – your mileage may vary.

  9. I’m not talking about Malayalam and Bengali films. I’m talking about Bollywood trying to portray real life and Sen’s (insert number) Park Avenue. Well, I guess that would be a Bengali film since it was filmed in Kolkata and had alot of Bengali actors in it. But it was in the english and hindi languages.

  10. “I think most Indian actors do best in high melo-drama, over-acting, song-dance-masala films.”

    not all song-and-dance films are high melodrama or overacted (but a lot these days are), especially amongst the older ones, where you can find actors doing song-and-dance and realistic everyday scenes (not that song and dance is entirely unrealistic in the indian context). even if it is high melodrama song and dance, who’s to say that’s an inferior type of aesthetic? that’s like saying all western actors do best in low melodrama, colorless (say a limited palette of five colors right next to each other on the color wheel), bland, underacted, one-genre at a time movies that don’t require any singing or dancing talent (probably true these days). there are indian song-and-dance movies today that can still be called realistic within the indian context. what westerners call “exotic kitsch” today is what was a staple of hollywood not too long ago. so you could have actors singing at the burst of a hat, dancing, crying, emoting and high melodrama. now, western movies seemed to have suppressed that instinct in favor of single-genre movies that rarely stray from very narrow boundaries.

  11. Very interesting.

    I think there’s a particular genre of Indian (or Indian-ized) stories that could do really well with an audience with more Westernized tastes, or western sensibilities: the fairy tale.

    Indian culture is rife with highly romanticized (and slightly moralizing) fantasy stories that could play really well to non-desi audiences (ignoring for a moment the idea that desi cinema shouldn’t have to pander to non-desi audiences). It’s also easier to fit in the unique mores of Indian cinema (with all the songs and dances and heavy melodrama) into the fantasy/fairy tale format, without losing significant credibility.

    Look at all the buzz that a movie like “Pan’s Labyrinth” is getting now, for example. Surely there are just many intriguing stories that could be told from a more desi perspective? Or, to use a more Eastern example, “House of Flying Daggers” or “Crouching Tiger…”?

    I would also bring up the fact that Indian regional cinema is often much more compelling than Bollywood cinema, but that’s an argument for a different day. Sigh.

  12. Which is also why I find myself on youtube watching clips from Shabd and other such films wherein Aiswarya tries to pull off casual moments at home cooking and fails miserably. I just keep screaming, “Arey! Nobody does those things!”

    Haha. My sentiments exactly when seeing Ash in D:2. She may be bad at pulling off casual moments, but she is even worse when she tries to be cool.

    <

    p> Ash: (to Hrithik, her right hand waving in a gangsta gesture) “Are you, like, checking me out?”

    <

    p> Ouch! Not even Valley girls do that.

  13. And I like musicals!

    I even liked Dreamgirls, corny as it was.

    So, generally speaking, I enjoy sitting down to a kitsch Bollywood masala film every once in a while. It’s a real stress buster for me.

    These are escapist films. And we all need a little escapism from time to time.

  14. \begin{threadjack}

    eh, “et alia”, da kee mathlab bhai?

    Hahaha. Sahej, do you have ties to South India ? Your “mathlab” brought back flashbacks of TA-ing, and of undergraduates who needed “help with math” 🙂 \end{threadjack}

  15. Ash: (to Hrithik, her right hand waving in a gangsta gesture) “Are you, like, checking me out?”

    Vishy – link the clip please! I gotta see it!

    It just kills me when they try to act “westernized” in those films. Stick to what you really do and know in real life and you will come across as more “real”, which was, afterall, the best compliment she ever received (when asked in her 60 Minutes interview which was the most flattering compliment you ever received? Aish replied, when she’s told she is “real”) Okay……….

  16. mistress of spices, i think i agree with some of what you say in 106. there is a certain overly calculated attempt at looking and being “modern” and “cool” that, despite good intentions of portraying a different facet to indian life (that of its urban, anglicized elite), comes across as pretentious because of clumsy and self-conscious handling.

    second post 111. i think older indian cinema used to make more use of india’s wealth of religious/non-religious story heritage. these could even be updated for those who complain about always showing the “ancient” side of india. that’s why i liked both paheli and omkara (albeit an update of a non-indian story). one was better than poor bollywood imitations of poor hollywood movies via unrealistic transplants to an indian setting and the other was a more realistic transplant of a non-indian story.

  17. In the hodgepodge of comments someone mentioned Pan’s Labyrinth. Pan’s Labyrinth is a great movie, one of the best films of the year. Both Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth are films from Directors who are mexican, and yet Pan’s Labyrinth doesn’t stink of mexico or spain. There’s no expository scene that says, “LOOK! WE ARE IN SPAIN. AREN’T WE SO SPANISH! NOTICE THE MARACAS!”. The movie is more imaginative than bollywood could ever be, and it doesn’t pander to the audience. The characters just happen to be in spain, its the story of the little girl that matters.

    I like imaginative and campy stories as much as the other guy. I have more than 200 dvds in my own bollywood catalogue and most of them are movies that would never stand up in front of films from america or the world that espouse similar values and themes. You have to see them in context, and I personally enjoy them wholeheartedly. What is stuck in my craw, is boring, unimaginative and dumbed down films like Crash or RDB that pretend to tackle important issues while doing nothing of the kind. It’s just pretentious showboating that our films tackle hardhitting issues, and our characters are “real” because they were molested or suffered some tragedy and now we will show them overcoming difficulties. There. Wasn’t that heart-wrenching?

    Now give us our oscar.

  18. There’s no expository scene that says, “LOOK! WE ARE IN SPAIN. AREN’T WE SO SPANISH! NOTICE THE MARACAS!”.

    Right. I was the one who brought up Pan’s Labyrinth, as an example of a non-Hollywood movie that resonates with a largely western audience.

    But my point really is this: I think a lot of traditional Indian stories have mass appeal, and could be told well, and in a way that resonates with a non-Indian audience, in spite of having a certain (and perhaps obvious) Indian flavor. You don’t need a song-and-dance sequence of “Made in India” to make a story Indian.

  19. RDB was no different from a communist propoganda films, except they switched some of the plotline to accomodate the new and improved six million rupee metrosexual man. Its the same done to death story, carefree youth live a live of decadence and bacchanalia, scoring around the clock. Then a tragedy forces them to embark on a bildungsromann: their country is invaded, a terrorist attack, or some other menace to the social fabric. Except this time its evil corporations, bad politicians or anti-environmentalists, take your pick. We’re not responsible for anything, we were doing fine until the menace came along. Everyone hold hands now.

    EPILOGUE: Robot General: “It’ll never be over, Wendy. Even now, humans are lurking in our playgrounds…our (?)…perhaps even our movie theaters! (screams in the theater)” Fry: “God help us!”

    I actually wrote in length about this: http://www.anangbhai.com/nobody-wants-to-read-what-you-write/

  20. I think most Indian actors do best in high melo-drama, over-acting, song-dance-masala films.

    I don’t think this is so trollish as an iteration of the idea that Indian acting is still more closely tied to the theater than its American counterparts.

    Besides which, there’s the issue of dubbed sound – the ‘parallel’ / independent filmmakers I have spoken with in India are very frank about how dubbing sound (mostly really bad dubbing) kills performances. But it is necessary, partially because of the density of the sound landscape (buses belching, rickshaws bleating, need I go on?) but also because the idea of actors memorizing their lines is a novel concept, and one can hardly expect decent acting when there needs to be someone off camera feeding everyone their lines.

    Even those directors who considered great in the Indian parallel cinema world – the likes of M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, etc. – struggle so much to achieve semi-decent sound in their films and rarely get what they aspire to because the industry in which they are working in completely undervalues the role of sound in film. Sound recordists are plenty, but sound ENGINEERS are virtually non-existant in the Indian scene (again, I speak in regards to the parallel film world…).

    Sound is one of the most evocative / manipulative elements of filmmaking, and yet it is also one of the most undervalued aspects of the medium. Not just in India but everywhere. And say what you want about Spielberg but he is one of the few who can create a whole universe with sound alone! I had forgotten that he directed Munich but was astounded by the details in the sound mix. Once I realized it was S.S. directing it all made sense…

  21. On a more general point, film is still such a new medium, one that is just over 100 years old. Many performances that seem stellar and nuanced today will read as stiff and ridiculous a generation or two from now because of new innovations that are bound to come along.

    This brought to mind the words of Walter Murch – editor / Yoda to many of the best filmmakers of our time – who talks about a stint he held earlier in life cataloguing 15th century music. After several weeks of doing this he heard Bach one day and found it chaotic and an assault on the ears. Today we think of Bach as very ‘classical’ and ‘formal’, but for his time and place the man was a radical.

    Much like evolution in nature, we may not be aware of them but new rules are coming along all the time. It hurts me to say this but until such time as those rules start taking hold in India, I don’t expect to see a truly innovative film coming out of the subcontinent anytime soon.

    I could go on but I think it best to kill my tirade here…before some Indian film fanatic decides to kill me!

  22. RDB was no different from a communist propoganda films, except they switched some of the plotline to accomodate the new and improved six million rupee metrosexual man.

    And vigilante justice, don’t forget that…you know, because people taking the law into their own hands is so cool, and cinematically brilliant.

  23. 120 comments before I got here! This train has really left the station. And I love phillums.

  24. Besides which, there’s the issue of dubbed sound – the ‘parallel’ / independent filmmakers I have spoken with in India are very frank about how dubbing sound (mostly really bad dubbing) kills performances. But it is necessary, partially because of the density of the sound landscape (buses belching, rickshaws bleating, need I go on?) but also because the idea of actors memorizing their lines is a novel concept, and one can hardly expect decent acting when there needs to be someone off camera feeding everyone their lines.

    I always wondered why there are voice-overs in Bollywood films. Another reason that makes sense is the time factor. When you consider how quickly the films are made, there is no time to memorize lines, much less “get into character”, which would explain the less than stellar, non-nuanced performances – generally seen.

    But I don’t watch Bollywood films for stellar, nuanced performances. I watch them for temporary escape, humour, and endorphin release.

    I’ve seen a few old Bengali films with thoughtful content. I’ve enjoyed them too, for different reasons.

    I appreciate how Indian films are trying to tackle issues like mental illness and homosexualilty. I just wish the acting could come across more natural in such films, since they are not entirely “escape cinema”, and have nothing else to fall back on other than the acting.

  25. 106 Mistress of Spices:

    “I’m seeing this more and more in Bollywood films too, as they are trying to get more “real” and less melodramatic.

    They just can’t pull it off.”

    I will agree with you if you agree to modify “they” to “most of them.” You can’t dismiss an entire industry of this size and output as not being capable of doing reality cinema. The good reality stuff, as opposed to the awkward attempts at cinema verite that you mentioned, have been around since the early days of Indian cinema. The movies of Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Mrinal Sen and Girish Karnad… the list goes on and on, and the very realistic performance of Waheeda Rahman, Nutan, Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Manoj Bajpayee, Nana Patekar… even that list can go on and on. And they were not even trying to do realistic anything. They just did good stuff.

    The bulk of Indian cinema is melodramatic or whatever appendage one may choose because it is a medium that, in the absence of other forms of entertainment in India, has had to cater to a very broad cross section of society. Mass feeding cannot create quality all the time. No product, whether or cinema or food or automobiles, can have any meaningful substance if it is designed for one and all.

    Having said that, I confess to enjoying a lot of the banality because I grew up on Indian cinema as my staple diet. TV came to India when I started college. There was nothing else to do but hang out in a tea shop or go to the movies. So watching a good ol’ fashion’ multi-starrer blockbuster with a few Kapoors and Khans thrown in is ingrained in me and a few hundred million other Indians of my generation. The younger Indians are more like young Americans. They are growing up with lots of entertainment choices and therefore more selective of their movies.

    I also do not like even my favorite Indian actors acting in English but the fault is mine, not theirs. I find the “chi chi convent accent” a little too odd for good acting. But I guess if I lived in India all the time that issue would disappear.

  26. what westerners call “exotic kitsch” today is what was a staple of hollywood not too long ago. so you could have actors singing at the burst of a hat, dancing, crying, emoting and high melodrama.

    That is so true!! Ever seen “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers?” TOTAL melodrama (not to mention the excesssive singing and dancing). Plus, most of the singing was not done by the actors but was dubbed later by professionals. We tend to call these movies “classics” (I happen to love them)…So I think there’s plenty of room to appreciate the musicals that come out of Bollywood. Sometimes a fun movie is just fun.

  27. “I don’t expect to see a truly innovative film coming out of the subcontinent anytime soon…”

    behen-ji, “innovative” with regard to what? I don’t mean to peshab on your highness, But, innovation is a very relative standard. I don’t see why my poor gaunwallahs should be assaulted with your reference frames as to innovation. Our Govinda bhai’s movies are the most innovative in terms of plot, acting and wardrobe. Not to forget those divine pelvic thrusts. There ain’t another like him.

    The Indian philumm industry does a good job catering to the tastes of our bhai log. Too bad that some angrez ke aulaad doesn’t deem it good enough. aaagey sab saale band bajaaney….

    Jai Bajrangbali!! GaunWallah

  28. RDB was no different from a communist propoganda films, except they switched some of the plotline to accomodate the new and improved six million rupee metrosexual man. And vigilante justice, don’t forget that…you know, because people taking the law into their own hands is so cool, and cinematically brilliant.

    Hey, don’t knock RDB. Honestly, I am tired of defending RDB and I know it was a flawed movie. But it was a cathartic experience for lots of guys of my generation, who grew up in India and have been constantly frustrated by the corruption and the way the system has of not working, no matter what you do. Vigilante justice has been a part of Bollywood movies since Amitabh Bachchan, so nothing new there. Only these guys were not super-heroic, and paid a price for what they did. The big point for me was the connection with pre-independent India, and the idea that if those people could change things, our generation could too. Take it as a polemic if you want to, maybe that was what it was meant to be. I couldn’t see the point of sending it to the Oscars either – Omkara would have been a better choice. But the movie made a difference to many people, just as Yuva did, even though that is another completely screwed up movie.

  29. I’m talking about Bollywood trying to portray real life and Sen’s (insert number) Park Avenue.

    It’s 15 park avenue.

  30. There was a hilarious article in Salon.com a few years ago, written by an American tourist who spent a few weeks playing “extras” in Bollywood films. She was a skinny blonde, but the sames roles were also played by a skinny Indian guy with hairy legs, wearing a blond wig. Apparently, whichever one got there first during the filming, got the role for that day. There was quite a bit of jealous jostling and catty looks between the two. But at least with these two playing the same role, no director could ask them for nude scenes.

  31. “Ever seen “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers?”

    • yes. have you seen the hindi remake (because you know there had to be one!): “satte pe satta” with amitabh?

      We tend to call these movies “classics” (I happen to love them)…So I think there’s plenty of room to appreciate the musicals that come out of Bollywood.

    • exactly. as kavita pointed out, things change. movies that were classic are now called dated. who knows what hollywood will value 20 years from now? so why run from pillar to post changing just to seek its approval? the minute you get it they will decide its “exotic kitsch” all the same. just do what you want to do in the best manner possible.

    Sometimes a fun movie is just fun.

    • wholeheartedly agree. the world is so cynical now. not everything has to have 20 shades of meaning or live up to some arbitrary “oscar” standard.
  32. I couldn’t see the point of sending it to the Oscars either – Omkara would have been a better choice.

    I agree 100%.

    I saw RDB in Delhi after I had been in India for only a day. Maybe, as said earlier, needed some iterations, but has resonated deeply with the youth in India. Vigilantte justice only in Bollywood come on, what is Seven Samurai or Magnificent Seven or Dirty Harry or Pale Rider or countless Clint Eastwood movies.

    I also agree with Preston, Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se is not about Assam, it is a love story and a very eloquent struggle within a suicide bomber and her desire to be like any other woman shown by Manisha Koirala.

    From day 1, Indian film industry = Bengali film idustry = Tamil film industry = Bollywood

    What is common to Aparna Sen, Ashwaryia Rai, AB 1.0, AB 2.0, Mani Ratnam, AR Rahman, Manisha Koirala, Satyajit Ray, Sharmilla Tagore, Jaya Bahaduri, KamalHassan, Katrina Kaif, Rajnikant, Sridevi, Jaya Prada, Silk Smita, Suchitra Sen, and thousands of technicians – they all have spend their lifetime working in different centers (sometimes close to half a dozen) of Indian film industry for different opportunities and livelihood.

    Who says this better than me, Amitabh B. He makes a point to negate the term “Bollywood” on many ocasions. I have heard him on NPR, India Today to name a few. For him, Indian film industry is a giant conglomerate that cuts through caste, religion, and workships only one thing: paisa.

  33. If you’re interested in exploring alt-desi movies. Some hidden gems there.

    Shodan – where can i buy/rent some of these movies?

  34. But it was a cathartic experience for lots of guys of my generation, who grew up in India and have been constantly frustrated by the corruption and the way the system has of not working, no matter what you do.

    Ok, fine. But this is what I find so incredibly annoying about the movie…it seems to suggest that there’s only one way to deal with your very legitimate frustration with the government. I also find it slightly frightening that the vigilante justice angle resonates with so many people of a certain age in India today.

    IMO, it would have been a much more powerful film if they had stayed away from the vigilante justice angle. Back when India still had something resembling art cinema, there were a number of movies made about dealing with political corruption and bureaucracy that were at least 5x better than RDB. They just didn’t have RDB’s slick production values, or its photoshoot-ready protagonists.

    Yuva was slightly better, in that it took the direct political action approach, rather than the vigilante approach…although Yuva had its own problems.

    Oh, and Yuva was much better in its original Tamil incarnation than as a Bollywood phillum. JMO.

  35. I must recommend a comedy called BOLLYWOOD CALLING. Most desi stores will have it. It is a spoof of how Indian movies are made as seen through the eyes of a washed up Hollywood actor whose agent can only find him a role in Bollywood. Om Puri can do great comedy.

  36. The movies of Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Mrinal Sen and Girish Karnad… the list goes on and on, and the very realistic performance of Waheeda Rahman, Nutan, Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Manoj Bajpayee, Nana Patekar… even that list can go on and on. And they were not even trying to do realistic anything. They just did good stuff.

    Just watch Sen’s Park Avenues for Azmi’s “realistic performance”.

    And this was supposed to be a “realistic” film about mental illness.

  37. Shodan – where can i buy/rent some of these movies?

    Start with Nehaflix. Govind Nihilani, Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen, Ketan Mehta……this list goes on.

    As for movies…..Ankur, Mantham, Nishant, almost any Satyajit Ray movie, wagehera, wagehera,

    I wish Bong Breaker was participating in this discussion?

    As Bong Breaker and I have discussed often, in 1940-60s, or even 40s, Indian film industry was par with anyone. Some of the movies at that time, had even technical expertise from Europe, especially German cinematographers. The play of light in “Kagaaz Ke Phool” is a work of a genius like Guru Dutt. Movies like Bimal Roy are master pieces.

    Recently, Chinese, and Japanese before have over taken. It is time to be resurgent again. First step: Boycott Karan Johar.

  38. Mistress of Spice:

    Ash: (to Hrithik, her right hand waving in a gangsta gesture) “Are you, like, checking me out?”
    Vishy – link the clip please! I gotta see it!

    I trolled YouTube for an incredibly bad quality clip of this incredibly bad moment on film only for one reason: so that WE WILL NEVER FORGET.

    PS: Doesn’t Hrithik look like Batman from Batman Begins?

  39. The vigilante justice in RDB doesn’t resonate with me, and it doesn’t even come near the angry young man films of the 70s, and those films were even more castrated by the censors than the films of today. Remember the coda where the angry young man either has to die or go to jail because “society” could never accept revolution as a cause. Same for when Thakur couldn’t take the law into his own hands in Sholay. The whole film is about corruption and injustice and fighting politicians, and at the end everyone goes to jail assuming that they will be treated well because they have now told their life story. Time to come back into the fold.

  40. Same for when Thakur couldn’t take the law into his own hands in Sholay.

    Anangbhai,

    Which ending we are talking about?

    The original ending (that censor asked to change, and is now freely available on DVDs), Thakur kills Gabbar Singh. Here.

    In the theater release in 1975, he almost does it but is stopped.

    I see your point though.

  41. Neha —

    An opinion after my own heart.. RDB was, to put it lightly, rubbish.

    Ouch! I agree with Preston on the first 2/3rds, and maybe even just a tad bit further into the very beginning of the assassination plot (with the echoes of Sue’s film, etc). I might agree regarding the collapse of the film at the end, but I guess I’ve forgiven that on account of how much I enjoyed the rest of it. I am looking forward to Omkara though.

    How is it wise to send a film to the Oscars that casts a 40 yr old as a 20 yr old?

    That NEVER happens in Hollywood. There, they only cast 32 yr olds as 17 yr olds. 😉

  42. I’m saying this as a lifelong American, so I apologize for any myopia.

    But doesn’t every country do this with foreign film? We’re more likely to promote those films that confirm our sentiments about a place. Look at the American films that do well overseas: not intimately-drawn character studies, but big-budget violent and sexual blow-em-ups. That’s our image. More importantly, that’s the image that foreign audiences want to see. A film about poverty and desperation in the United States doesn’t do well in most of the world (except maybe as propaganda) because that’s not the role this country fills in most people’s imagination. We’re rich and stupid. Conversely, America sees India as poor and exotic. As long as alternatives are available, I don’t see why it should be such a big deal that the meaningless golden trophy should go to an inferior film that embodies that bias.

  43. Deepti Naval, Naseerudin, Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi made some really nice movies in the eighties. Some are Mohan Joshi, Albert Pinto, Sparsh, Chakra (loved Kulbushan in that movie). Benegal made some stylistic movies too. Then there were the lite moves – about the football player/coach (early Anil Kapoor?), the comedy about 3 geezers and their lady friend. I am forgetting the names. These were NOT obscure films neither were they masala. Then there was Angoor, Chasme Badoor. Bit hits. Sincere entertainment.

  44. “Got any other recommendations?”

    SemiDesiMasala:

    you mean for more semi-silly remakes of hollywood musicals 🙂 satte pe satta is a fun movie, with all the strengths and weaknesses of an early 80s masala movie. one standout for me is the music. some of the other movies (not necessarily strict remakes of hollywood movies but som may contain elements of them) from that period that resonate with me (because i was a youth) are “Laawaris” and “Shaan” and “Mr. Natwarlal” and “Qurbani” and “Ram Balram” and “Kaalia” and “Gol Maal” and lots of others.

  45. The whole film is about corruption and injustice and fighting politicians, and at the end everyone goes to jail assuming that they will be treated well because they have now told their life story.

    That’s an inherent issue with story-telling, especially with western stories adapted to an Indian plotline, IMO. Remember, Sholay is essentially the American wild west recast into an Indian setting. John Wayne has to ride off into the sunset at the end.

    It’s also the right denouement for that story. There’s no point in having a Debbie Downer moment after the climax, where they talk about how much it sucks to be an inmate awaiting trial in India.

    Actually, that’s true for all stories. The Ramayana is just not as much fun when you discover Rama and Sita didn’t live happily ever after.

  46. “Got any other recommendations?”

    December ’06-January’07 special issue of Stardust. I brought from San Jose, CA. Any Indian shop sells Stardust.

    They called in directors, movie actors, and critics to list their top ten movies, songs, wagehera, wagehera…..It is an amazing collection of various and sundry lists. You will have a list for 2-3 years.

    You see movies like Pyaasa, Sholay, Guide, some of the Raj Kapoor movies showing up on almost everyone’s list.

    Personally, if somebody asked me for 10 movies. Mine would be 1) Sholay, 2) Kagaaz Ki Phool, 3) Bimal Roy’s Devdas, 4) Bobby, 5) Do Ankh Bara Haath, 6) Pakeezah, 7) Bombay, 8) Shri 420, 9) AB’s original Deewar, 10) Masoom, 11) Ankur (I already over 10. Add another 10 movies by Satyajit Ray only – that is just a start)

  47. I’m not asking for a Debbie Downer moment. I’m pointing out that the coda at the end of the film is totally useless and tacked on, and it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the film. So Bonnie and Clyde just go to jail at the end of the film, do their time, and then touch the feet of their elders when they return right? Cause that’s the way its supposed to be. Oh..you wayward children, its ok go ahead rebel. Just remember that you’re gonna have to come back sooner or later. What’s the point of rebelling in the first place? It ruins the entire film. You can’t just put it in every rebellious film to placate the censors for the sake of society or whomever they’re supposed to be working for.