The Hindu Business Line : Formula for change

Three films in the past fortnight are pointers to the wildly different pulls that currently rule Bollywood. The Rising, the story of Mangal Pandey, as brought to the screen under the collaboration of lead actor Aamir Khan, director Ketan Mehta, writer Farrukh Dhondy, and producer Bobby Bedi, represents the direction in which big filmmaking has been moving in the past five years.

My Wife's Murder, which comes from Ram Gopal Varma's banner, is a classic minimalist multiplex movie... no-frills-no-songs-let's-get-on-with-it. And Barsaat — whose lead players are ironically youth icons — is a film with all frills, bad songs and let-the-tears-flow syndrome.

The saga of the British sepoy who spearheaded the `first rebellion' of the Indian freedom struggle, did record business in the first four days, earning Rs 23 crore (industry estimates). Further deals for TV and satellite rights have already placed The Rising among the top earners of the year. Business-wise, it's already come good. Which was only to be expected, because it was designed that way, with all its backers covering their bases.

Led by Aamir Khan, who was reportedly paid Rs 7 crore (Aishwarya Rai's exiting the movie after a very public spat because she wasn't being paid `enough', only served to arouse extra interest), and produced by Bobby Bedi, whose marketing acumen ensured that Aamir's `Mangal Pandey look' was part of public consciousness for a full two years, and distributed by the mighty Yashraj Films, there was no way this movie would fail monetarily.

There was also intense curiosity about Aamir's return to the screen after a full four years. He delivered both Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai in 2001, and both were path-breaking films, the latter the standard-bearer to a kind of film never made in Bollywood. He went underground after that, first during his messy break-up with his wife and then because he was so busy with the making of the movie. In his own words, on the sets, he tends to behave like an assistant director (the unkind snigger that he ghost directs his movies), checking everything from continuity to the way the rushes look. So when The Rising hit the screens, there was a near-stampede for seats.

The sobering fact is that midway through the first week, cinema managers were reporting a dip in collections. Rajinder Singh, who handles one of plush South Delhi's hottest properties, Chanakya, puts it down to the sheer number of prints available to viewers. "Earlier a film released in two or three prints," he says, "now it is like carpet bombing, sometimes with over 300 prints, so the same number of people have already seen the movie in its opening weekend that would have seen it in a month."

But the more unpalatable fact is that The Rising has failed to live up to the expectations aroused by its cast and crew. Apart from Aamir's fans, who were waiting patiently for him and his luxuriant moustache to unfold, Rani Mukherji is current Heroine No 1. Aamir is excellent in the movie, but Rani is reduced to a walk-on part; you blink four times, and she's gone. Plainly, Ketan Mehta, who had created some unforgettable cinematic moments in his Bhavni Bhavai and Mirch Masala, wasn't up to crafting a big-canvas historical. It may not all have been his fault, though.

Mehta may have been trying for an impossibility, because Farrukh Dhondy, whose celebrated tie-up with Bobby Bedi yielded reams of newsprint a couple of years ago, comes up with a weak, lax screenplay. Which brings us, full circle, to the truism everyone is mouthing these days: the story is everything.

In The Rising, it is more knave than king.

On to The Factory's latest product, My Wife's Murder... It's got Anil Kapoor in everyman garb, Suchitra Krishnamoorthy (director Shekhar Kapoor's wife and a sometime actress) as his nagging wife whom he kills accidentally, and Nandana Dev Sen, who seems determined to stick around in Bollywood (this is her second significant speaking part after Black). Interesting cast, interesting story, but the movie, after setting a spanking pace, sags towards the end.

For a tight-knit story to collapse is unforgivable, especially because it is styled as a mystery-black comedy-man-on-the-run drama, all rolled into one. Lesson Number Two: sure, the story is paramount, but it needs to be executed just right. It's not just enough for Varma to keep overseeing movies which seem to be copies of Hollywood thrillers (we've got the Bhatts, Mahesh and Pooja, for that dubious distinction; one scene at least is a direct lift from a recent Hollywood film, in which the husband kills his wife). That smacks of condescension, and viewers are quick to smell and reject that attitude, which filters down to the movie.

Barsaat boasts of Bobby Deol, a combination of affable actor and cool dude, and two beauty queens, Priyanka Chopra, who seems to be starring in all the big-budget movies this year and the next, and Bipasha Basu, who has come out of hibernation, with a sleek, svelte look. The stars are all very contemporary, the locations are bright and beautiful even if South Africa is strictly not New York, but the film, directed by Suneel Darshan, gives you that sinking 60s' feeling — where leading ladies were subservient to the whims of the masterful hero, and had to wait patiently while the lord and master dithered and dallied, and finally chose one, leaving the other all noble and teary.

Perhaps the director hasn't noticed, but we've moved ahead since. At the show this writer watched, there was more impatient derision, than sympathetic sighs. Now a girl would dump a man, if he deserts her on his wedding night, leaving her to wait worshipfully, while he chases another. Bury deep these stories, Bollywood. Come up with something new.

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