The Hindu Business Line : It's not luck by chance

It’s been a very busy three months : 27 films in all, frenzied promotional activity, and a spectrum which covers big budget ‘hungamas’ and smaller ‘indies.’ So what does Bollywood’s first quarterly report card say? At best, about average.

January was a good month, February wasn’t so great, and March, well, it could turn out to be the dreaded Ides, unless something magical happens in the last week.

Last January, Taare Zameen Par spilled over from the previous December, and dominated the month. This year too, Aamir Khan repeated that trick. His Ghajini (which released in the last week of December 2008) became the only movie that people were flocking to.

The long, violent hark-back to the 1980s style revenge drama, souped up a little, but not by too much, swept aside all new entrants, which included Akshay Kumar’s first flop in a long time. Chandni Chowk To China, vociferously in the making for three years, and constantly in the news for being the first big Warner Bros production in India, tumbled. It had everything that makes for a hit. High-rider Akshay Kumar, fast-mover Deepika Padukone, the first-time-shooting-on-location-of-virgin-territory-in-China. What it didn’t have, for all its tom-tomming, was the crucial connect with its audience. Akshay’s fooling around was acceptable in Singh Is King, not here, and Deepika’s decorative dances were more space fillers than occasions to hoot and clap and laugh. End of story.

Unravelling the mystery

What did perk up January was the performance of Raaz, The Mystery Continues. The sequel to the 2003 Raaz had none of the original cast, and nothing resembling the older story. The only common thread was the presence of the supernatural. Strange visions plague a bearded painter who roams around with a satchel full of paintings; those same things happen to a pretty young model who’s engaged to a TV journalist.

The film is crammed with classic horror tropes: bodies flying in the air, splayed spread eagled against a wall in a deserted compound, faces melting into ghoulish shapes, tantriks chanting in deserted open grounds, and a schlocky climax. Raaz, The Mystery Continues has made Adhyayan Suman (Shekhar Suman’s son who starred in a flop debut last year) visible. He was, of course, helped by the buzz that he is leading lady Kangana Ranaut’s real-life love too. It has also cemented Emran Hashmi’s position as the B-lister whose films make money.

And, from last week, it’s out on DVD as well. Chalk another one to the intrepid Mukesh-Mahesh Bhatt duo who produced the film, who took pride in the fact that their films are the real money spinners, despite not having big stars. They stay within their comfort zone of known actors (Emran Hashmi is a camp favourite, so is Kangana), good music that helps sell cassettes and CDs, and stories which find their audiences without too much trouble.

Luck By Chance, Zoya Akhtar’s affectionate behind-the-scenes in Bollywood, which came at the end of the month, also boosted January. The only thing that made February shine was Anurag Kashyap’s first commercial success, Dev D. His re-interpretation of Sharat Chandra’s classic is a cinematic tour de force, and went straight to an eager audience just waiting to lap up something new.

From then on, there’s been a slide. Clunkers like Chal Chala Chal (Govinda turning in a shockingly poor performance in a shockingly poor film), Jugaad (Manoj Bajpai trying to save himself from oblivion by accepting any old film which will give him a leading role), and Kisse Pyar Karoon (the first-rate Arshad Warsi’s infrequent third-rate film) lowered the tone of the month.

Billu, Shah Rukh Khan’s home production which starred Irrfan and Lara and himself, turned out to be just another of Priyadarshan’s films which tried to coast on saturated colours and static situations and overblown comics. It was a no-show, despite Irrfan’s earnest presence, and SRK’s many item-numbers with Bollywood’s prettiest ladies — Priyanka, Deepika, and Kareena.

Looking for the next hit

And March has been a losing battle so far. The previous March, UTV had a great triumph in Jodhaa Akbar, a love story with a historical stroke mythical backdrop. Like all big movies, it used the controversies it created to its advantage. It also helped that the lead pair, Aishwarya and Hrithik, made the screen sizzle. The production house opened this March with an alleged spoof on Bollywood, ironically named Dhoondte Reh Jaoge, condemning the viewers to keep searching for something to watch.

Holi release, Anurag Kashyap’s Gulal, took about six years to arrive on the screen. The film’s high points a great sense of time and place (contemporary student politics played out in a fictional town of Rajasthan, mixed with a bunch of other things) didn’t really cohere; the canvas got too big, and the focus too diffused.

Sooni Taraporewala’s delightful Little Zizou, and Nandita Das’s moving chronicle of a troubled time recently past, Firaaq, are proving to be slow starters (they opened last Friday). Both are, relatively speaking, small films, going by their budgets and the stars, but they are both high on concept and execution. Both are stories of the human condition (the first is a serio-comic look at the Parsi community, the other a touching unpeeling of the aftermath of the Gujarat riots). Both are feeling slices of life and loss. And both are excellent debut features.

But where are the viewers?

Coming up in April — no films. The prolonged dispute between exhibitors and producers over profit-sharing has reached a point of no return, and beginning next month, there will no new Bollywood release in your neighbouring ‘plex. The industry is fearing a loss of over Rs 250 crore.

Unless, of course, there’s a last minute rescue by a very filmy hitherto-unknown-knight-on-a-white-charger. Now that would be just right, wouldn’t it?

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