Poor man’s story not a hit formula now
Elia Kazan said that audiences all over the world were like blood hounds. They could smell a good film and queue up for miles, and at the same time there would be no one for miles willing to watch another film. What is it that makes a film work? No one knows this yet, but there is a strange emerging trend here. Something that is waiting to be talked about.
Madhur Bhandarkar is a director that I admire and I have seen most of his work. He has the ability to give us an insight into different worlds. Whenever he has made a film that takes us into a glamorous world, the audiences have queued up, but whenever he has done an expose on the not so glamorous, there have not been many takers. Page Three works but Traffic Signal does not. Fashion works and Jail works not.
Strange, you should think not? I do. The point here is that cinema is becoming an escapism of a different sort.
There used to be a time when the poor protagonist made great viewing. Right from Mother India to the Amitabh Bachchan films like Deewar or Laawaris. Poverty on screen never really turned audiences away but I think it does now. Blame it on the Yash Raj or the Karan Johar kind of candy floss cinema or the need to be in super rich surroundings for the entertainment hours, but plush is what we want and need all the time.
They call it the “look” of the film. The look of the film should be what the film needs but now, as Shekhar Kapur once said, even garbage on the road needs to be backlit and needs a star filter. What is the audiences’ obsession with rich? Why is Jaane Tu more appealing than Peepli Live? That’s not all, I would go as far as to say that the audiences want the English film in Hindi. Five years back an English title like Once Upon a Time in Mumbai or We Are Family would have been frowned upon. Koi ageyga nahin, the distributors would say but now the Hindi title is downmarket and too single screen.
The great divide has happened. There is an English, rich or rich aspiring India and then there is the Hindi audience that is still craving for all things Indian. Making a film that appeals to all of India is now a finished story. It’s sad that this has happened but we are looking at the face of the great audience divide.
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