Can India get the Big O? That’s the question everybody is asking as Aamir Khan’s Rang De Basanti heads for the Academy Awards to put Bollywood in race with the best of the world.
Shekhar Kapur, India’s only filmmaker with some clout at the Oscars says Indian cinema still has a long way to go before it makes a mark in the international space.
It makes one uncomfortably sad to hear it, but isn’t he telling the truth? Bollywood films have not shown encouraging results at this august platform over the years and one has to admit that the director acclaimed for his famous Elizabeth, is not too far from right.
A look at the last few years' Indian entries to the Oscars and you would know what Kapur means. Whether you relish Western cinema or not, you would know that they were not Oscar-winning films by any standards.
More recently, Amitabh Bachchan's comments dismissing the notion that our country should aspire to win Oscars (stating that the Indian film industry was more creative than Hollywood) has met with sharp reactions.
While some believe he is accurate in his assessment, there are others who feel it's a case of 'sour grapes' when barring a few exceptions; Bollywood actually produces nothing but remakes of English movies with more masala than matter.
PAGE_BREAK
"Look at most of the films and you feel and you feel they are meant for a juvenile audience! The storyline is loaded with clichés (and this holds true for some of the A-grade films), the music offers no variety and yes, now-a-days they all boast of a really bad down-market item number”, this might sound like an oft-quoted remark but unfortunately this is the opinion of most Bollywood watchers.
Shekhar Kapur claims we have not reached international standards while Bachchan says we have (or rather we should have) our own standards. The question is: do we really have our own standards that deserve to have a look-in by others? Are we behaving like the proverbial frogs in the well?
Whether Indian movies by and large have reached international standards is not a matter of debate. Most of us know that we are still far from being ‘there’ as yet (A Ray is the exception that proves the rule). We have mastered the technique of filmmaking but it’s the art of it that we lack. It’s the lack of imaginative, original ideas that has marred our films off late.
And then, who said that regional cinema does not mean Indian movies? But even good regional fare has been ignored by the selectors over the years with Bollywood pop cinema being chosen as India’s nomination. This, when we all know that the kind of cinema that gets felicitated at the Oscars is realistic in nature focusing on the entertainment quotient, the and the way in which the film represents the culture of its country.
To that Indian movies should be satisfied with 'Indian audiences' and not bother about Oscars is trying to hide one’s head in the sand. And. And yes, we are indeed behaving like frogs in the well when we say that we don't need Hollywood or say, international acclaim.
PAGE_BREAK
Then there is Mahesh Bhatt who seem to suggest if Bollywood is seeking 'Western approval' when we send a movie for Oscars. And this is something to be pondered upon.
Is it Western approval what India is seeking when we send a movie for Oscars, or is it an attempt at contributing to the international cultural field and modifying it (for why should only US, Italy or France be the benchmark of great movies)?
We do have a whole range of film-makers (and not merely Hindi film-makers!) who do make great movies, but why have these never been sent? What is the criterion for selecting and sending a movie to the Oscars? If there is a criterion, are we consistent with it? (One shudders to think of a movie like Jeans being sent from India – yes, it was the Best Foreign Film in the 1998 Oscar race!!)
The problem is that we do not even want to admit that most of what we churn out is farce in the name of movies or kitsch. We should at least begin by accepting the fact that there are movies in the world that are good because more people like them and there are some that are good because they push the craft of moviemaking into another dimension (breaking new grounds) and some that are good because they do both.
Now it is obvious that the best bet for any movie is to fall into the third category where a movie like a Shakespeare play is both universally entertaining and culturally (and in terms of craft) path-breaking. How many such movies can we claim to have made in recent times? And if we have made them, why do we not send them?
For instance, a movie like Rang De Basanti is great and path breaking. But it is so only if seen against the Indian movie history. When placed in the international scenario, one would realise that movies of this kind have been made dime a dozen in the US, some good some bad. It is unlikely, thus, that RDB would evoke internationally the kind of response it did in India. And we do not want 'them' to like our films because of its exotic locales, Indian faces, strange fusion sounds and oriental novelty. Do we?
Comments
0 comment