Since my son was born two and a half years ago, I have pretty much given up on staying current on Indian cinema. It’s difficult to get out to the movies, and our local Indian store really doesn’t seem to have a very good collection of stuff. I saw more Indian movies on the plane from Mumbai to Newark in January than I probably did in all of 2008.
On a recent day-trip to New York, we picked up two DVDs of what might be termed “anti-Bollywood” Hindi films that might get us back in the habit, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, and Luck By Chance.
By anti-Bollywood, I mean films that try to be “realistic” rather than sentimental, and that have limited use of songs to accompany, rather than interrupt, the plot of the film (the “diegesis,” for you film geeks). Many conventional Bollywood films don’t have written scripts, and star-power, branding, and memorable songs often have more to do with the success of those films than acting skill, or good, believable stories. In the old days, the emphasis on realism in Indian cinema was mainly the province of art-house directors, and mainly involved glum themes and a certain ponderousness. Happily, in the past few years, with the rise of Indian multiplexes, a realist sensibility has started to take hold on the margins of Bollywood itself. To my eye, the movement started with gangster films, and directors like R.G. Varma. But now it seems like we’re increasingly seeing a broader range of themes and styles of filmmaking in this space: an anti-Bollywood Bollywood. (Meanwhile, the same-old same-old of Hindi commercial cinema sputters along, effectively unchanged.)
Below are my brief reviews of Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Luck by Chance.I almost don’t need to say anything about Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, since Jabberwock/Jai Arjun Singh has already said most of what I would want to say in his own review:
Dibakar Banerjee’s delightful Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! is a Delhi movie that doesn’t much linger on the city’s physical landmarks but captures many vital aspects of its mood and character. At a basic level, this film is about the (improbably) charmed life of Lucky Singh, a Sikh lad from a middle-class West Delhi household, who grows up to become a master thief and gets away with one audacious theft after another – often doing nothing more strenuous than sauntering into a house and sauntering out again with a TV set tucked under his arm. This makes for a lightheartedly amoral story, anchored by a superb Punjabi-rap soundtrack and by that earsplitting old song “Chahiye Thoda Pyaarâ€, but Oye Lucky! is also a film that understands the spiraling nature of class aspiration and upward mobility. It knows a thing or two about surviving in a dog-eat-dog world where the kindly, “God-fearing family man†who befriends you and encourages his little son to call you “maama†might well have a dagger ready to plunge into your back. (link)
Jai also goes on in his comments on the film to note some parallels with the upward-mobility plot and the “eat the rich” attitude of The White Tiger, which I think seem quite apt. (I have no idea whether Dibaker Bannerjee had read Adiga before making his film.) I also agreed with Jai on one of the best lines in the film: “Yeh Gentry log angrezi bolte hain par karte hain desi” (These elite people may speak English, but they act all too desi.) It’s a brilliant reversal of the usual way of thinking — the idea that wealthier, English-speaking Indians are somehow deracinated within their own society. In Oye Lucky, English-medium privilege, and the luxurious commodities associated with it, are part of a class struggle played entirely within the Indian frame.
As with The White Tiger, I do disagree slightly with Jai. With Adiga, I felt there was an element of fakeness in the construction of the character Balram Halwai, which I couldn’t overlook. Here, I was a bit frustrated with how Oye Lucky! ends. The filmmaker really had two intelligent choices for this character — go up, and actually join the wealthy Delhi society he has heretofore been preying on — or go down, and end up in jail, or dead. I won’t say how the film ends, but let me just say that I think Bannerjee makes a less interesting choice than either of those options. This film verges on being a hard-hitting satire of the Delhi bourgeoisie from a lower-middle class perspective, but it isn’t fully committed.
Incidentally, the director of Oye Lucky! also made a fantastic film called Khosla ka Ghosla, about the Delhi obsession with acquiring real estate and property. I would strongly recommend that film too…
Next up, Luck by Chance. Like Oye Lucky, it’s not quite accurate to say that this film is really outside Bollywood. (Oye Lucky‘s star, Abhay Deol, is a nephew of retired Bollywood great Dharmendra — hardly an outsider, though he has apparently made the choice to stay mainly with edgier, more marginal films.) For its part, Luck by Chance is a self-reflexive satire of the Bollywood system, which manages to have its cake and critique it too. The film satirizes the fakeness of the Bollywood star system and the romance/melodrama formula, but even as it does that, the filmmaker decides to enjoy some of the cheese too, by including, for instance, full romantic songs from the film-within-the-film. Also, the leading man, Farhan Akhtar, is in fact an established Bollywood insider, though he has generally worked behind the camera (as director) rather than in front of it.
Luck by Chance has dozens of cameos from big bollywood stars, many of whom show up to play against type, though Shah Rukh Khan does figure as an ultra-glamorous superstar who has managed to keep it real. It also has Dimple Kapadia, as the pushy and demanding mother of an emerging Bollywood starlet (Isha Sharvani).
People who liked Page 3 (2005) a few years ago will likely like this film as well, though I think, on the whole, Page 3 was a more provocative, riskier film. (Interestingly, Konkona Sen Sharma played a similar role in both films, though here she gets to glam it up in a few scenes.)
“It’s a brilliant reversal of the usual way of thinking — the idea that wealthier, English-speaking Indians are somehow deracinated within their own society.” …… this might have been true of the old rich, English speaking folks, but I doubt its the usual way of thinking about today’s rich.
… this might have been true of the old rich, English speaking folks, but I doubt its the usual way of thinking about today’s rich.
It works a little differently now. In the 1960s and 70s, the reference point was England and the problem with English was the idea of a lingering colonial mindset. More recently, the reference point is America…
Mostly I’m going from the way my cousins in India talk, and how they define and mark themselves in terms of taste and preferences. I also seem to remember a fair number of comments from readers here at SM about how the English-speaking elites are alienated from their own society. (Often in posts related to English vs. Hindi vs. regional languages… hm, let me see if I can find something from the archives…)
Still, I take your point.
I think the turn to realism is really peripheral; the vast majoirty of cinema-goers won’t be interested in this kind of cinema. Sometimes though even songless films have been box office successes like BR Chopra’s Kanoon and Achanak (based loosely on the Nanavati affair) which deal with quite spophisticated thees without any song and dance numbers. I dip in now and then into Bollywood fare; though it becomes so repetititve after a while. I still think these other films will be at the margins for some time to come.
I will keep an eye out for Oye Oye; being mainly a resident of Delhi I have s oft spot for films based in the city, most of the other Hindi fare seem to have adopted Mumbai as the backdrop to the national cinematic imaginary (understandably) so it is relatively rare to see a film entirely based in other cities.
I really liked Luck By Chance. As I get older I tend to like the “edgier” films as opposed to the same old stale storys.
This debate is playing out in the US too although to a different degree, most recently in the back and forth about neo-realism between NYT’s AO Scott and the New Yorker’s Richard Brody. Brody’s criticism could be applied to what most Bollywood defenders I have heard claim as well:
I personally like granola cinema :).
Amardeep I don’t know where you get the impression that this movie is non-angrezi speaking Delhi set against angrezi speaking Delhi set. I’m more than halfway through the film right now on youtube and no one is speaking angrezi so far.
The sub-titles are funny though. They substituted “Clint Eastwood” for “Vinode Khanna”, “Britney (Spears)” for “Surdas” and “Solomon the Wise” for “Harishchandra”.
Funny.
And Abhay Deol is really cute.
Hi Amardeep,
I would also recommend Abhay Deol’s other films – ‘Ek Chalis ki last local’, ‘Manorama Six feet under” etc. Terrific stuff. I’m sure you already know about this blog. Deol has blogged about the making of Oye Lucky.
this is what people are referring to as the ‘rise of the (h)indie films’. dibakar banerjee, anurag kashyap, navdeep singh, sriram raghavan, zoya akhtar, neeraj panday, sudhir mishra…we have something going on here.
Speaking of ‘edgy’, besides Deepa Mehta’s films (which are not really Bollywood – more art house realism), did anyone see Black Friday ?
Papaji, thanks for the term: “Hindie” film (or “Indie Hindi”?) is a pretty good term to describe this, though one should probably keep in mind that most of these films are not that independent.
@ GurMando – Black Friday is awesome. @ Amardeep – Luck By Chance is not that independent (Its budget and production house are all very mainstream) but the treatment is very non-bollywoodish. Anyways, the hindie film label is more used to describe alternate hindi films that are made under 8.5 crores. Oye Lucky, Khosla Ka Ghosla, Dev D, Manorama Six Feet Under, Black Friday, Bheja Fry, Mixed Doubles, Mithya, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi and a bunch of others all fall under that category. Recently UTV’s smaller production unit ‘Spot Boy’ has been successfully producing and disributing such films. The rise of hindie films is partially attributed to Spot Boy’s aggressive promotion and their desire to actually promote small budget films. Of course, I am not claiming this to be the advent of the Hindi New Wave or anything. We’ll have to wait and pray for that to happen.
Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! is brilliant!
I almost never watch Hindi movies because most of them really are moronic and disturbingly infantile. But once in a while a film comes along that is original, intelligent, witty, and fun, as well as touching on some serious themes, and Oye Lucky is all of those things.
Abhay Deol is the best actor working in India today, bar none. Go and see it! It gives a glimpse of what a decent Indian film industry could actually be! So refreshing and engaging.
A whole lot of self-loathing going on there, but what do i expect from NRIdiots from America?
Abhay Deol is brilliant but gotta give props to the young sikh kid in OLLO. He was spot on with this character from Delhi. From accent to clothing, just perfect!
I loved Dev D and Delhi 6 as well, both have really good sound tracks. By far the best music in the last 2-3 years.
i loved both oye lucky and luck by chance. but easily the best film i have seen in the last few years (and possibly the best film ever!!!) has to be taare zameen par.
Mainly, yes, but not entirely. During 70s-80s, a middle-of-the-road Hindie movement, which stumbled along for a while before losing its way somewhat, did exist. The movement shared some key players with its angst-ridden ponderous (and sometimes pretentious) new wave cousin, but there was enough thematic distinction to merit a mention on its own.
Some names from that period and genre which can be netflix-ed or found in neighborhood desi grocery stores – Basu Chatterjee (Sara Akash, Rajnigandha, Swami, Chhoti Si Baat, Baton Baton Main, Ek Ruka Hua Faisla), Basu Bhattacharya’s marital-relation trilogy (Anubhav, Aviskar, Grihapravesh), some Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Mirza brothers, early Ketan Mehta. Not to forget that Sudhir Mishra, who is enjoying a great second innings, wrote the script for Jaane Bhi Do Yaroon way back in 1983.
Current wave has stronger legs. Economics and urban sensibilities are different now.
Really? You thought Page 3 was edgier than either of these. Edgier in the sense he was willing to actually picturize the dirtiness, but Madhur Bhandarkar is a complete hack, IMO. I agree with Raja Sen about his filmmaking, he picks one industry at a time and shows how one supposedly good person loses their goodness by getting them involved in every supposedly bad thing in the industry without acknowledging there might be anything good about the industry. He moralizes far too much for my taste and does it by hitting the audience over the head repeatedly with his “message”.
hello. I was forwarded here by my friend Yasmine (of sweep the sunshine ) who’s been insisting I have to see Oye Lucky Lucky Oye. 🙂 As someone with roots in the Delhi NCR region, I am very intrigued by your review. I have to say the language in the title song gets the dilli dialect right [Bonait, paincha, pilaaitt, paincher… 🙂 I loved it].
And like you Amardeep, I’ve been catching up on my Hindi movies on Jet airways. I’ve seen more Hindi movies on Jet since their launch last year than the fifteen years before that. Let’s see – Guru, Eklavya, yuvraj, Honeymoon travels, Trishul, Tare Zameen Par [Yes Yaz 🙂 I gave in finally. you won], dostaana and more. It makes the 15 hrs go by quite easily.
Cant wait till my next trip so I can see OLLO.
i just saw both of these recently. both were fairly well made, though neither was amazing. but i was a bit disappointed with OLLO, esp. as the only reason i watched it was because i absolutely adored dibakar banerjee’s first film, khosla ka ghosla.
re page 3/madhur bhandarkar – i’d have to agree with lea. with the exception of chandni bar – since that was before he hit it big, i think it was far more earnest than the more commercial films that followed. plus it had tabu 🙂
Has anyone seen this Malayalam film?
Folks – check our this really, really strong but really, really funny interview with the director Dibakar Bannerjee of Oye Lucky and Khosla.
http://passionforcinema.com/dibakar-unplugged/
Jeet – the reason the young sikh kid acts well, is that because he is not really an actor 🙂
i will check out these 2 films…
khosla ga ghosla was brilliant and in a small way a good film to have watched before we purchased an apartment abroad. The events in that film and issues faced by the family though exagerated, really can happen in any of the south east Asain country.
I also use flying time to catch up with bollywood movies, and saw many films to and from Dubai…
It’s great to watch cinema which is intelligent and entertaining, without being preachy, boring or pretentious. Watching such movies, set in a familiar milieu, using idioms from one’s own language is doubly good. I think the time is ripe for such movies to flourish. A lot of young middle class people have found freedom from the rat race of enforced ‘stable’ career options, to explore avenues like filmmaking (a couple of examples in my own family- how I envy them). And the audience for such ‘indie’ movies has never been bigger. I found Anurag Kashyap’s ‘No Smoking’ really good, but critics tore it apart. Too far ahead of it’s time, I think.
Hindi again? I love all Indian cinema and can’t get enough of it. For a person like me from the South, these themes evoke barely a yawn. Been there, done that. Within the mainstream format itself there is plenty of interesting stuff going on. In Tamizh – since I know that best – there have been two recent movies that don’t explore contrasts, they simply present a subject who knows little else. Pudhupettai – starring Dhanush, Rajinikanth’s son-in-law – and Chennai 600028 are great examples of this style, although the former is a little too ornate. The difference maybe because of who the film makers are. Dibakar Banerjee is an outsider to Delhi’s culture (although he may well belong to a family that has lived in N. India for >150 years) or may simply opted out of it after a chance encounter with his “native” Bengali culture. But I am a great fan of Abhay Deol and will make it a point to see the movie.
He’s from Delhi and grew up in a heavily Punjabi neighbourhood. He’s virtually an honorary Punjabi, and is clearly in love with Delhi, the patois, the swagger and atmosphere of the city.
agreed with bobby, dibakar is more dilli-wala than any other filmmaker out there. you don’t really have to be a punjabi to be a delhiite.
Bobby and Pappaji, you should have read the second part of my sentence, or at least from >150 years
jyotsana – i don;t see how your qualification makes any difference. he’s not an outsider to delhi in the sense that he grew up there and knows the culture well. more so, he has conveyed that extremely well in both his movies.
as for a comparison with chennai 28/puthupettai – i really don’t think there is one. as comforting as i find hearing tamil, as a whole package, a movie like khosla trumps either one of those any day. if you want to find an amazing tamil movie in recent times, i’m sure you can do far better.
totally agree with bobby, papaji and ak.. it was kind of weird to hear jyotsana’s notion of a true delhi’ite. first time that i have heard in my 31 years of existence in this city that being a bengali, or any other non-north indian, disqualifies me or any other person from being a delhi’ite or an insider. By the way, Delhi has been a punjabi city only for the last 60 years after partition. Have you even seen the two films?
And as a non-north indian, I also get irritated by several north indian’s inability to see india beyond the vindhyas or east of gorakhpur, but still …. that doesnt stop me from acknowledging what is excellent cinema. Especially, something which films Delhi almost as a separate character.
Reality in movies in India can go as far as it reflects the society. If it crosses a certain threshold it will fail and that is the economic constraint of venturing out too far in Bollywood unlike Hollywood movies.
I went to India(south) to live there as a kid. I always considered my first language to be English. After a couple of years, I was able to understand Telugu though I was not fluent in speaking it. I never felt like an outsider for speaking in English. Most of my cousins and all of my friends had no problem speaking to me in English. Sometimes it would amuse them to hear me and an aunt/uncle have a conversation where they would speak to me in Telugu and I would speak to them in English where both parties understand each other.
As far as non-Bollywood fare, I think south Indian movies have had the leg up in that aspect. South Indian cinema from the 70s and part of the 80s managed to mix in social themes and even a tone of realism despite the limitations of working in a format where songs had to be there even if the songs were socially conscious. I remember watching some Telugu movie, Akali Rajyam, starring Kamalhassan (probably dubbed from Tamil) where he plays an unemployed guy. It had its usual quota of songs, but the songs did not detract from a sense of realism I felt that movie portrayed.
Check out the more recent Chennai 600 028 (Zip code of an area in Chennai/Madras)
It is about street or ‘gully” cricket and is really understated and well-done.
Not to diss or discourage new film-makers… Jagte Raho/Ek Din Ratri. Another Raj Kapoor/KA Abbas pathbreaker. The duo worked at all the way from Awaara to Bobby and kept going even when they failed. Jagte Raho was pretty ambitious for its time, and Raj Kapoor decided to pay homage to his 1st Indian home – Bengal (after Peshawar and before Bombay), recording a Bangla version as well delivering his lines himself (being a fluent Bangla speaker as are Shashi and Shammi). It was one of the several movies released around the same time as Pather Panchali, that mark a sort of creative high mark for Indian cinema – the years of 1950-60, that paved the way for Guru Dutt’s masterpieces. We need all the movies we can get and we should also be exploring paths that the pioneers explored.
Bengali and Malayalam films deal with social issues in an understated way all the time.
This big flash and dance style movie is not pan-Indian. Regional cinema has taken on the Bollywood formula and so you will find masala films being churned out of all the woods – Tolly, Molly, Kolly and Bolly, but from day one regional cinema has churned out understated thought provoking films as well and continues to do so.
You can find a number of good regional Indian films on youtube.
Bengali and Malayalam films deal with social issues in an understated way all the time.
This big flash and dance style movie is not pan-Indian. Regional cinema has taken on the Bollywood formula and so you will find masala films being churned out of all the woods – Tolly, Molly, Kolly and Bolly, but from day one regional cinema has churned out understated thought provoking films as well and continues to do so.
You can find a number of good regional Indian films on youtube.
I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts on Tamil director Bala’s movies– Sethu, Nandha, Pithamagan, and recently Naan Kadavul. Gritty is an understatement; the viewer is really put through the wringer. They seem to buck (what I understand to be) the conventional wisdom that movies that show poverty are not popular in India; certainly those flicks made stars of Vikram and Surya. It’s not ‘poverty porn’ because Bala is Indian?
katiekateBKLN,
it is not about poverty based themes. Many have done it before with a stark understanding of the experience. In my earlier posts on this subject I have written about Jayakanthan’s “Unnai pol oruvan” [someone like you], Durai’s “Pasi” [Hunger] and the Hindi movie it inspired “Chakra”. There is Ghatak’s classic as well “Nagarik” and several others. Everyone of those movies is set in context and not a set of cliches strung together. SDM unfortunately looks like a tourist’s photoalbum, not very different from the absolutely crappy “City of Joy” which has been debunked comprehensively by Dr. Aroup Chatterjee, also the author of the definitive work on Agnes Boiaxhu.
While movie critics and film makers in India and the audiences itself have given it a big thumbs down for its poor script and fanciful quality, social workers have criticised the film for making things up beyond excess.
Well, several of the actors in SDM do have “stark experience” with poverty.
And now, thanks to acting in that film, they are given a chance to get out of it.
And this may be the start of a new wave of slum actors who will also benefit.
Who knows?
I have a feeling that a lot of American desi kids, especially North Indians, grew up with the idea that Indian cinema means flashiness, happy endings, and dancing. But when I was little my family watched mostly Malayalam films and there was very little flashiness or elaborate dancing sequences and most of them had a social message. I think Bengali films, from what I’ve seen, are similar. My grandfather always talks about how similar Malayalees and Bengalis are and that includes their cinema. I think they tend to be more socially conscious (and I mean the mainstream films, not just the art house ones) partly because they don’t do masala and flashiness very well. Tamil and Telugu has its serious directors, not to the extent of Malayalam and Bengali, but they’ve managed to master the art of masala films at the same time. Of course, Bollywood is very much moving away from the masala now, which explains why Sivaji did well in North India. Tamil cinema is appealing to the audiences who can’t relate to the upper middle class values of Bollywood anymore.
As a non north indian delhiite, I love seeing Delhi on screen especially in movies like OLLO and Khosla ka Ghosla (and to some extent Dilli-6) which capture it so well. Somehow Abhay Deol and Ranvir Shorey are so authentically “dilli”, I almost feel I know these guys. I am not sure if they actually grew up in the Delhi area. Dilli-6 on the other hand was full of characters i could not identify with.
I loved Luck by Chance – its a movie I would watch again. Though it is ironic that a movie about Bollywood insiders and outsiders should be full of people who are very definitely in – Farhan Akhtar, Konkona, Hrithik Roshan, the younger kapoor fellow, Rishi Kapoor are all from filmi families. While new directors and female actors seem to get breaks in mainstream hindi cinema, there is hardly a new male lead who is not from one filmi khandaan or the other. I can think of only two male stars who broke into the industry from outside in not-so-recent times – Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar.
The only other movies I watch (other than hindi) are tamil movies. But there is a big difference in sensibility between hindi and tamil cinema. Tamil cinema seems to be extremely male dominated and I don’t just mean that the male lead gets a heftier role. Somehow every aspect of the film – from the way in which the story is told and centered, to the way relationships are portrayed – it all seems very male-oriented at best, and regressive at worst. This is true even of movies like Thavamai Thavamirunda (cheran), chennai 600028 and vaaranam aayiram.
The music director, young Sneha Khanwalker (one of only two women music directors in India’s film industry apparently), and Neetu Chandra, the young woman who played Abhay Deol’s character’s love interest are two more among the cast and crew that deserves credit.
(Check end of special features on DVD to get to Khanwalker’s interview–worth wading through the other less-inspiring interviews.)
As a non north indian delhiite, I love seeing Delhi on screen especially in movies like OLLO and Khosla ka Ghosla (and to some extent Dilli-6) which capture it so well. Somehow Abhay Deol and Ranvir Shorey are so authentically “dilli”, I almost feel I know these guys. I am not sure if they actually grew up in the Delhi area. Dilli-6 on the other hand was full of characters i could not identify with.
I loved Luck by Chance – its a movie I would watch again. Though it is ironic that a movie about Bollywood insiders and outsiders should be full of people who are very definitely in – Farhan Akhtar, Konkona, Hrithik Roshan, the younger kapoor fellow, Rishi Kapoor are all from filmi families. While new directors and female actors seem to get breaks in mainstream hindi cinema, there is hardly a new male lead who is not from one filmi khandaan or the other. I can think of only two male stars who broke into the industry from outside in not-so-recent times – Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar.