Setting out to catch a multiple-Oscar-winning film is an exercise fraught with some danger. When you're hoping to be swept away by undiluted brilliance, the chances of disappointment are, to put it mildly, very high. So it was with a heady mixture of anticipation and trepidation when I set out to see The King's Speech .

The movie, in case you haven't been tracking its fortunes, won four Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay ) after it took home seven Baftas, (including Best Film, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay).

And that was in addition to the Best Actor and Best Ensemble cast at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. And too many more to list here.

That, as Jack Nicholson might say, is as good as it gets, honey.

Could this movie, any movie, live up to this kind of build-up? As it turned out, I needn't have worried. If, like me, you were overwhelmed by the perfection of this movie, welcome to the club. The King's Speech is a film of quiet beauty that has struck a deep chord in hearts and minds the world over.

I've lost count of the number of calls and SMSes I've received to discuss, analyse and simply, celebrate this film. ‘Moving' is the word most used; the part-complaint, part-plea that so many have voiced is: “Why can't we make films like this?

Why, indeed? The simple answer you will receive from those in filmdom is that such a movie would be a huge commercial risk in India. One slice of urban filmgoers might love it but it would definitely not set the box-office on fire in Azamgarh or Aurangabad. With a budget of €12 million (about Rs 87 crore), The King's Speech was a small film by UK standards but would fall into the mega-budget slot in India.

But wait. Consider. Rajnikanth's Robot is said to have cost Rs 175 crore; Shah Rukh Khan's Ra 1 , currently under production, is pegged at Rs 100 crore. A budget of Rs 87 crore, then, is a figure very much in the realm of possibility for an Indian movie.

As for the commercial risk, every film is a gamble anyway. Robot could well have lost Rs 80-odd crore, even with Rajnikanth's mega-draw at the box office. That it is now the most successful Indian movie of all time is the director's and producers' reward for their courage.

Because, the question is: Do you make the film that you believe in — whatever its budget?

Which leads us to the next question (or is it the answer?): Could we make a film like The King's Speech even if we wanted to?

This is where it gets complicated. Because the true beauty of The King's Speech is that it is such a quiet film, with so much left unsaid and more unseen.

In a story about kings, queens and princesses, a coronation and a world war, Director Tom Hooper steers clear of grand spectacle, choosing instead to look deep inside a monarch's agonising failings and feelings of inadequacy. The conflict is internal, the drama so contained that its silences are explosive. It is a triumph of cinematic craft, one that takes a courageous director and truly accomplished actors to achieve.

Of course, we are not lacking in either category. But quiet elegance is not our cinematic forte.

Every cinema springs from its distinctive culture and artistic traditions and ours, in this context, are robust folk theatre, nautanki , tamasha , the Ram Leela. Genres and forms that, like our classical music, are unbridled and often improvisational within the parameters of their artistic discipline.

So, while Shah Rukh Khan famously went K-k-k-Kiran in Darr , Colin Firth plays his stammer with nothing so loud, but with intensely awkward silences and just-visible constrictions of his throat. It is classic British understatement at work.

Subtlety, you will find aplenty in our films; understatement is rare. Unless of course, we talk of Satyajit Ray, who perhaps compensated for the rest of his brethren in this matter of less being more. So who better than the master to explain it? In his collection of essays titled Our Films, Their Films (mandatory reading for any student of cinema) he asks, in one essay, ‘What is Wrong with Indian films?

And, after some fascinating arguments, concludes: “It is only in a drastic simplification of style and content that hope for Indian cinema resides. At present, it would appear that nearly all the prevailing practices go against such simplification.” Though it was way back in 1948 that Ray wrote those lines, who will argue that they do not ring as true 62 years later?

In the same essay, he notes of Hollywood's success: “It was perhaps inevitable that the cinema should have found the greatest impetus in America. A country without any deep-rooted cultural and artistic traditions was perhaps best able to appraise the new medium objectively.”

Our situation is quite the opposite: our traditions are too much with us and so are our current predilections. When everything from our geography to our clothes, our festivals to our TV anchors, is over-the-top, how could our films and their emotions be otherwise?

Which leads me to my last question for today: Would we want it any other way? Would we want to trade in the gloriously melodramatic, overwrought Kaagaz Ke Phool for Sunset Boulevard ? The songs, the romance, the comedy and the tragedy of Sholay for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ? Or (gulp) even a Dostana for The Birdcage ? If we can still produce a Satyajit Ray in the midst of this glittery excess, I'd say, no thank you.

We're happy to be like this only.

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