The Hindu Business Line : Desperate for a breather

There seems to be no end to Bollywood's woes. A slew of flops and no hits has directors and producers worrying over what will finally click with the audience. Any suggestions?

A still from the film, Maqbool.

Bad movies always come to a bad end. "Collections have dipped to an all-time low of 15-20 per cent," says veteran New Delhi-based film PRO Om Prakash, who has been part of the industry for over 50 years. He recalls with nostalgia the days when "makers," as he terms them quaintly, would know the exact pulse of the people and deliver unerringly: The filmmakers he is referring to are names which would ring a loud, joyous bell for the viewers of the 1960s and 1970s — Ramanand Sagar, B.R. Chopra, Yash Chopra, Manmohan Desai and a couple of others.

Of these, the last man left standing, so to speak, is Yash Chopra who is still making the kind of movies which made him famous in the late 1970s: Soft-focus love stories with strong music and performances, minus villains and vamps. The Sagars found themselves out of sync with public tastes once the movies turned to sex and violence laden tracts in the late 1970s, and switched to doing mythologicals on TV; now they are alive only in the re-runs on day-time spots.

B.R. Chopra, who also turned to televised religion for salvation, has found a revival in the shape of his son Ravi, who came up with the tearjerker Baghban, one of last year's few hits. Manmohan Desai, whose miraculous run of hits, lead-starring Amitabh Bachchan all through the 1970s and the initial years of the 1980s, was a director who created the complete family entertainer, and no one since his untimely death, has been able to fill his shoes: David Dhawan was poised to come close, but got carried away by the sheer idiocy of his plots, and started thinking that he was infallible.

Except for Rakesh Roshan, another old-timer who knows what works with the masses (his Koi Mil Gaya was the only universal success of 2003), and Karan Johar, whose movies have all been monstrous hits, grossing over Rs 50 crore each (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham, and Kal Ho Naa Ho), there is no production house which has constantly churned out movies to have aced the box office so consistently. Even the house of Barjatyas that specialised in making `clean wholesome' entertainment is in a state of flux these days, especially after Sooraj Barjatya's famed Midas touch turned to dross in last year's turkey Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon.

In the churn that has taken over the Mumbai film industry in the last three years, only two production houses, that of Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt, and that of Ram Gopal Varma, have dared to stay with the kind of turnover which used to mark old-style filmmaking: One film would finish, and, after a gap, another would be on the floors, having tied up the distribution and exhibition deals in advance. But their operating styles are drastically different. The Bhatts — Mahesh who is now only doing scripts and doling out advice to his home productions, daughter Pooja and Vikram — are doing movies which end up being caught between mothballed stories and shaky story-telling skills.

The Factory, Varma's aptly named production house, on the other hand, is changing all the rules of the game as it goes along. Breaking away from keeping everything in the family, Varma is out to prove that lineage doesn't matter, that anyone who is passionate about storytelling and craft is capable of making a film. The result of this policy is that films that keep rolling out of the Varma stables, made by him and his protégés (in an interview last year, he told this columnist that in 2004, there would be a film of his out every three months) are highly uneven: For every highly-polished Bhoot which rocked the box office, there was a Darna Mana Hai, and a Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon, both made by first-timers, who couldn't bridge the gap between enthusiasm and execution.

Take, for example, Pooja Bhatt's first directorial venture, Paap, which was high on gloss, and very low on original content. A cross between Witness, a Hollywood film, and Trishagni, a 1970s' Indian parallel film, Paap didn't make anyone completely happy: not those who remembered the two older films and could see the stolen bits, as well the new generation viewers who demand more than just good-looking locations and a rousing score. Expectedly, even by those who had made it, going by their wary reactions after the premier show when Pooja and Mahesh thanked `the very generous audience', the film died within the first three days.

Take also last fortnight's Rudraksh, a pretentious concoction of old lore and modern styling, which tried spinning a yarn about long-haired demons and humans with extraordinary powers. The advance notices had been positive and the buzz surrounding the flick suggested, at the very least, an interesting viewing experience.

But the film was a huge disappointment particularly because it came from a man whose first film about nuclear threats to India from an extremist Muslim group, 16 December, trod a different path with some success.

Rudraksh got a big opening (house-full shows on the first day, a rare occurrence these days), but going by post-first weekend reports, the film is sinking.

In between all this come reports that Maqbool, Vishal Bharadwaj's excellent re-working of Shakespeare's Macbeth, has not exactly set the box office on fire.

One of the best films to have come out of Bollywood in recent years, with a fabulous line-up of actors (Pankaj Kapoor, Irrfan, Tabu, Naseerudin Shah, Om Puri, Piyush Mishra and others), Maqbool didn't find the audience it deserved because it was an intelligent film which demanded that you saw it in its entirety — all the many-layered moments, the nuances, and the broad brush-strokes. The hard work proved too much for the general audience.

So it's back to square one: Are candy-floss romances set in London and New York, which appeal very strongly to the pining-for-the-old-country-family values, the only thing that the Indian filmgoers want?

Response can be sent to life@thehindu.co.in

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