PERHAPS the biggest news to come repeatedly from the mainstream Hindi film industry in recent years is that it is said to be undergoing a great change. Can mainstream fiction feature films anywhere undergo a serious change, many people ask. Are they even capable of it? On the other hand, many others herald this as the next golden age, citing the many new kinds of films being made, which is not a false assertion either. Is it possible that they both may be right? Or that they are both wrong, and the truth is something else altogether? How does one come to a conclusion about something like this?

It’s difficult for a practitioner to keep his own feelings out of it and observe the churning in his profession from the outside, or as we say in filmi lingo, to look at the top shot. Therefore, perhaps the best I can do with any honesty and accuracy is to give a sense of how many of my colleagues and I view the films we are making, and the changing environment in which we are making them. This is a view from Andheri, the film ghetto of Mumbai, a few square kilometres from where a big part of the world’s second largest film industry does its thing, and where many of us live and work.

Let me begin with a few bumpy realities for anybody trying to earn a living from making fiction feature films anywhere in the world, the operative phrase being ‘earn a living.’ The moment you expect your films to earn you a regular livelihood, your art becomes different from other arts, and your life different from other artists.

A fiction feature film needs large amounts of money to make, and even more money to take to the audience. People must come in lakhs, if not millions, to watch your film, and recommend it to others, for your livelihood to continue.

When do these millions of people turn up? They turn up when your film has that mysterious feature called ‘entertainment’, which means different things to different people, but in your case, has to mean the same thing to millions. This is the truth all feature fiction storytellers come to terms with sooner or later in their careers, with varying amounts of pain and heartbreak involved. To have that indescribable and fleeting quality in their narration which entertains millions, not just the few whose worldview matches their own, is a battle commercial storytellers fight with themselves every day, on every page, in every scene, in every sentence, in every film.

The storytellers know if they don’t achieve that elusive, delicate balance between art and the entertainment, nobody will support them and their art anymore, neither the investors, nor the audience. But this struggle isn’t always without its rewards, and over the decades, writers and directors have dreamt up stories in which they have found self-expression and creative satisfaction while entertaining others and reflecting their lives in some way. Even the worst popular films did it in some way, if not always in a way which was admired.

As this delicate dance between the storytellers and their audience plays out in today’s Hindi film industry, examining the kind of stories it’s choosing to tell and the ways in which it’s choosing to tell them may be a good way to understand the great change it’s experiencing.

 

The times in which a storyteller lives affects his or her personality, with individual experiences of living shaping his worldview. If a good percentage of popular films in the ’50s and the ’60s had progressive themes and dealt with social concerns, it was also because the storytellers of the time could not help seeing their lives and those of others around them in the context of the still fresh freedom struggle and its pinnacle of achieving independence. If a large number of films from the ’80s were cynical, faithless, formula ventures, much of it had to do with the times. Many of those storytellers perceived the situation in all other walks of life as hopeless, with corruption, cynicism and bluster reigning supreme, and their films were no different. Losing faith in the ability of their own stories to be able to touch their audience, and in the audience’s intent to give their feelings as storytellers a chance, they created the ‘formula’, which had enough noise and fury, enough sex and melodrama, to somehow keep the audience ‘occupied’ for three hours.

Similarly, if many of the stories being told today appear celebratory, fun-oriented, somewhat lacking in community concerns, and focused squarely on the life in a few metros, it shouldn’t be a big surprise. Most of the films which find a big release today are financed and made by those whose own experience with life has been similar. Growing up in the times shaped by economic liberalization, telecom explosion and satellite television, has made them more confident, secure, hopeful and less suspecting of life’s softer luxuries than their senior generations. The accentuated gulf between classes due to the economic changes in the country reveals itself in their decisions about the stories they choose to tell.

It’s rare for even the best intentioned storytellers to be able to create authentic worlds without some kind of engagement with it. On its part, most of their younger audience in the metros, the biggest section as far as making or breaking a film on the box office goes, has had a similar experience growing up, and this generation’s preferred way of talking to itself as storytellers and as audience has created a feedback cycle of only positive news about life. If both the storytellers and their young viewers had any chance of breaking out of this cycle, the rapid corporatisation of the film industry put it to rest.

 

Over the last decade, the corporations have led change in the Hindi film industry. Armed with money from institutional investors and stock markets, they came with a brief to make the industry grow at a much faster pace. After much hard work, they promptly delivered the first results – in the form of now much bigger distribution, exhibition and marketing sides of the industry. The definition of a big release changed from 400 screens to 1200 plus screens. Multiplexes are a common sight now in all the metros and even smaller towns. Many new revenue streams have opened up where previously none existed. With previously unimagined amounts of money resting on the opening weekend, each Friday resembles nothing short of war. If growth is the motive, then most of these can be viewed as positive developments, at least on the business side of things.

 

In creative aspects too, the industry has gained in ways which surprised many who were unable to see beyond the sacred ‘formula’. With a growing apprehension among writers and directors that the industry may be wasting all this money and all these screens doing the same old things, and a realization among the corporates that more growth needs more variety, small investments found their way into what are known as multiplex films, new age films, or more honestly, low budget experiments. They don’t have a big audience for now, but the new industry is willing to be patient because they have opened up a small supply to creative talent to be transported to bigger films.

There are other positive developments, much to the relief of many. Cynicism among storytellers is far less than in the past decade and it has started showing in many of the films. The popular storytelling form has slowly started moving closer to life, even in big mainstream films. In many cases, unwanted set piece songs have been reducing or receding to background tracks. Cinematography and sound-craft in many cases now genuinely matches the best in the world. In all their gloss, mainstream films are slowly moving closer to average city life, at least closer than they were in the formula age.

A host of new mini bollygenres are spreading their modest wings. The media and the blogs, propelled by the same feeling of restlessness, have adopted these new age films as a worthy cause to promote. Marketing too has become smarter, learning how to use these new supporters to good effect. The productions have become more time-bound and there is greater accountability all around, which has had a positive effect on quality with most films being made with a well documented script now, as opposed to last minute ideation on the sets, even on the fundamentals.

But it would be just another popular film’s story to say that it has all been a shower of benefits. There has been a price to pay for all this and it has come in many disguises.

 

Even as the new film industry boasts of a remarkable system to distribute its fruits, the seed has remained supremely untouched. The writing still remains an Achilles heel of the industry with no investment coming its way. The corporate systems and procedures have not extended themselves to creating and rewarding any measurement of its quality, like giving royalties or stock options to the screenwriters as the film industry does in most countries. Screenwriting is still not a wise person’s choice of a long-term career, and most films are still written by enthusiastic but inexperienced freshers who find it difficult to protect the integrity of their vision from directors, producers, corporates or stars.

The new money prefers films whose success is based, not on their stories but on stars and marketing. The result is larger investments in films which are broadly of two types – the superhero spectacles preferably featuring big stars, or the marketing spectacles like slapstick comedies or pleasant date flicks, where the audience can at least walk out with a feeling of nothing lost, nothing gained. There is tremendous pressure on stories to be about the hip, the cool and the urban. The youth of the metros is the target, and what it rejects stays rejected.

The main effort in production house after production house is still to create something which carries the promise of a larger than life, happy, and generally ‘time-pass’ experience in the theatre, with a thin layer of ‘reality’ over it, mostly in terms of costume and some dialogue, a discount to the changing times which is far from being genuine or insightful. Such a ‘product’ can then be marketed as a spectacular must see event on the very first weekend itself, recovering the cost of the film and marketing it, and in many celebrated cases, far exceeding it. The music has suffered too. The films are fast becoming fast moving consumer products, and the songs, from being a part of storytelling and the films’ ambassadors, to simply their jingles. Most don’t last beyond the theatrical life of the film, because as marketing aids they are not designed to.

 

In many ways marketing has become the real story of every film. Corporate stakeholders react with alarm to the inherent gambling involved in telling a heartfelt story and feel safer to recover a majority of their investment from the first weekend itself without having to worry about what the audiences actually think of the film. Newspapers feverishly share this concern with profits on front pages of popular supplements, signalling to the audience its grave importance in judging any film, thereby profoundly scarring the way it judges films. It’s not that the soul of a story, artistic merit and self-expression don’t matter any more; they do to a lot of writers, directors, producers and even to many corporate decision-makers. But they don’t carry much currency on the stock market; so they are increasingly relegated to intense and mournful discussions in drawing rooms, coffee shops and blogs.

In the industry itself, it still matters very much whether the viewers praise or criticize the film on their way out each Friday. It deeply affects every-body from the fourth assistant director to the corporate head honcho and yet, those emotions are kept out of the decision matrix. The unsaid belief is that the young audience has larger pockets and shorter memories, and a marketing blitz can always seduce them again the next time around. Where will they go the next weekend if not the nearest shining mall-cum-multiplex?

 

It’s a smart business strategy in many ways, but fails to take into account that popular films are also art and an emotional expression of the people living in their times in their own blunt way, and that benefit to the community gets deleted in the process – a shameful, even if unintended theft which remains forever unaccounted.

The once homogenous audience is now squarely divided among the big metros and the small qasbas. One appreciating all things western as long as they are served up with an Indian flavour, and the other left untouched by NRI/metro romantic comedies and the new bunch of experimental films which mostly cater purely to the urban youth. The audience of the qasbas of India, once inseparable from the audience of its cities, has now turned its back upon these films, finding comfort in the familiar genres of the ’80s, the violence and the item songs. It’s ignored by the new film industry, and it returns the favour.

There is a growing realization among many writers and directors that Hindi films are becoming smaller than what they used to be in their scope and influence in our culture, as they try to find an awkward one-sided bond with the new tikki-burgered, partly globalized urban youth. Nobody yet has found a convincing solution to this challenge posed by the economics of a new industry which favours only the urban viewer. Satellite television for whom the qasbas are more important, has sucked out the writers who understand them from the film industry by offering much better wages and job security. The only way the new film industry seems to connect to the hinterland is by regressing to the cynical formula.

 

In the urban areas, the results are more mixed. Few writers and directors have succeeded in a big way with stories of community relevance and even distinctive personal expression, as long as they didn’t short-change the audience of the still sacred entertainment. Many of the newer low budget experiments too, mostly Indian filmmakers’ expressions of global genres which influenced them thanks to satellite television, have met with niche success.

The romantic films featuring NRIs as lead characters appear to be losing steam, as a more confident urban youth loses its ardour for NRI role models. Disturbingly, the Indian film’s classical storytelling form of telling a genuine emotional story using lip-synched songs as a gentle support rather than an exasperating diversion, appears to be slowly on its way out. Not because it doesn’t work anymore – it still does handsomely when done with a genuine belief in the form – but because its exponents are retiring and the new generation seems both incapable and unwilling to fill the void.

But what are known as ‘mindless comedies’ still remain the safest bet with the audiences, and romantic comedies which turn into dramas in the second half still get the youngsters in on a Friday. The reception by most of the young to any film which is quieter and introspective in nature, no matter how well it’s made, who it stars, how many outstanding reviews it gathers, and how much support it commands in the blogs, remains steadfastly cold.

 

The entire school of what are referred to as ‘B’ and ‘C’ grade films, with its own economics and market, has hardly changed, much of its audience insulated from the forces which are changing urban India. Their films never changed, because their lives never did.

Also, the great Indian mystery of films with women as lead characters not doing well remains unsolved, and continues to frustrate many who try. One of the reasons could be that most of the writers, directors and producers are men and possibly don’t do a good job of them. While there may be some truth in that, even when made by women, they have been ignored by audiences, often without even being given a fair chance. But the efforts have not really been the best the industry can offer, and the pedestal for a popular mainstream film which is coming from a woman’s perspective but entertains every-body lies vacant, waiting for a worthy candidate.

So this is where the new film industry and its storytelling is, with many more ways of telling stories to the urban audiences, fighting for their place in the sun with the still influential old favourites, and practically nothing new for the rest of India.

The gains are extraordinary, but the loss is alarming.

It somehow feels like the rest of the society. Half a change, at a steep price.

 

* Some of the films written by Jaideep Sahni include, Company, Khosla Ka Ghosla, Bunty Aur Babli, Chak De! India and Rocket Singh – Salesman of the Year.