The Hindu Business Line : New-age Bollywood

The second quarter of the year is turning out to be unexpectedly rewarding. Number crunchers, take a break, and look at the opening up of Bollywood: Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi redefines what is possible for people who do not want to stay within the fixities of the formula.

At the end of the press screening in New Delhi, director Sudhir Mishra said that this was his `most honest' film, and that he was thankful to his producers Pritish Nandy Communications that they `allowed' him the luxury of making it without any `creative' interference.

Hazaaron... is a film that takes today's audienceback to the period between late-1960s and 1977, when the Emergency ended. It was a time of great political turbulence; student communities all over the world were rebelling against what they saw as totalitarianism. In India, too, young men and women, born to wealth and leisure, were deserting the straight and narrow for dangerous, sometimes fatal, idealism. Mishra's older brother was in Delhi University then, and the director grew up fascinated by the tales his brother told him about those who `chucked the college trip' and went off to change the world.

The film tracks the lives of three undergraduates as they drift apart and come together again, with cataclysmic results. Geeta loves Siddharth, the son of a judge. He loves her too, but he is drawn equally strongly to the Naxalite movement in Bihar, and joins the groups working with the peasants. Vikram loves Geeta, but has to be content knowing that she will always belong to Siddharth; he gets a rich wife, amasses a fortune and becomes a fixer of the kind only New Delhi can breed.

What is impressive about the film is that it is able to carry the courage of its convictions on to the screen without too many compromises. Mishra has not been as hard-hitting and trenchant as he could have been if we had had a tradition of successful political film-making. There is a shot of an Indira Gandhi figure in the distance; there are posters and the midnight arrests, but that's about it: like Mishra said, the Emergency is just the backdrop. Perhaps the most chilling, even more than the beating up and rape in a police-lock up of Siddharth and Geeta and their comrades, is the long-drawn out brutalisation of Vikram: frustrated at not being able to shoot him, they lash out with their `lathis' repeatedly at his head, and leave him, broken and bleeding.

So what makes this kind of film, so far removed from the standard `naach gaana' and `maar-dhaad', viable for a production house? Mishra has always been considered too offbeat. His first film Yeh Woh Manzil Toh Nahin (1987), somewhat similar to Hazaaron... in tone and content, didn't even register a blip at the box-office. Of his subsequent films, only Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin (1996), a noir-ish story of one night peopled by mobsters and molls and regular guys, and last year's Chameli, also a one-night story about a prostitute and a financial consultant have made money.

The reason is clear. The standard procedure movie stopped working in A-class centres a few years ago. Now the formula is folding up in B and C centres as well. Sex has stopped selling. Sleaze is not drawing them in either. So what's left is the well-told, well-mounted story, which talks about real people and real issues. Hazaaron... delivers on all counts. The Siddharths and Vikrams existed, and from their experiences a rich tapestry is woven, giving the movie its rich texture and depth.

But before Mishra and the other filmmakers, who have been waxing eloquent about realism and meaningful cinema, go off the deep end and start piling up similar scripts, they would do well to remember that each movie needs to have a specific graph, and a time and place. Even mega-fantasy spinners like Aditya Chopra know how important it is for the movie to have an address. Says Aditya Khanna, long-time exhibitor, and an admirer of Chopra's style of functioning, " It is amazing how that man, who never leaves his office in Mumbai, knows exactly what the man in Chapra and Kolkata wants to watch."

Chopra's Veer-Zaara, last year's gossamer hit, was clearly located in Pakistan and the Punjab. The dates were there too: the lovers met 25 years ago, and this is now, the present day when they meet again. Today's audiences, ever willing to be seduced to la-la-land, want their feet very firmly on the ground too — they want names, places and, more important still, they want surnames. No more Mr Ajays and Miss Geetas. So, it is Veer Pratap Singh, and Zaara Hayat Khan.

Even Karan Johar, whose Dharma Productions has spun off the three biggest romantic blockbusters in the past five years, the biggest being Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, is changing track. This Friday, he releases Kaal, directed by his one-time assistant Soham, which is so far away from his world of chandeliers and champagne and cutie-pies that it might be on another planet. The film is set in a jungle, and it has tigers, and hunters, and befuddled city slickers. Interestingly, Soham has also assisted Ram Gopal Varma.

Welcome to New-Age Bollywood, which is getting gung-ho about marrying grunge and grit with candyfloss and carnations.

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