Cover Story: Films; Boy Meets Girl

By refusing to give up songs and dances Bollywood checks the growing acceptance of Hollywood.

Sanjay Dutt, gold chain and brawn, is sweating profusely, screaming for a fix ... the drug don is in cold turkey. Policemen have surrounded the house and Dutt is pleading with his mother Reema Lagoo for help. With deliberate slowness, Lagoo picks up Dutt's gun and shoots him dead. Deliverance at last. Vaastav, 1999.

FACTOIDS

ť 154 Hindi films were released in 1999. These included 42 dubbed films.

ť There was no Hindi movie that could be described as a universal hit last year.

ť The highest overseas territory sales per film in 1999 was Rs 6-7 crore for a Shah Rukh Khan starrer.

ť The Khans -- Shah Rukh, Aamir and Salman -- were the highest paid at Rs 2-3 crore per film. The top actresses got Rs 1 crore a film.

Flashback. Sunil Dutt has done a Lochinvar and is riding away with the girl he loves. The villagers come to Nargis. The son has gone too far. She borrows a villager's gun and shoots down the fleeing Dutt. Deliverance at last. Mother India, 1957.

You could say it's the same old story. Indian cinema continues to re-run the similes, the plots, the cliched climaxes. But actually much has changed over the past five decades. The technique, the look, the presentation, the clothes, the choreography, the music, even the attitude.

Bollywood finds itself in a precarious position: come up with global successes or give way to Hollywood, TV, bowling, the Net. It has -- in the past -- successfully evolved with the changing times, for example, in the manner in which it altered the setting of the essential girl-meets-boy story. The socialist romance of the '60s (Aradhna, Kashmir Ki Kali) gave way to disillusionment in the '70s (Zanjeer) and then to chaos in the '80s (Mr India). The '90s echoed the confidence of a knowledge-driven post-liberalisation India through Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (kkhh) or Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ).

Technique too has changed. In the age of static camera, the dream sequence in Aawara, the song Hothon pe aisi baat in Jewel Thief or the pizzazz of Sholay's train sequence stood out. Not anymore. Thanks to the Film and Television Institute of India. Its alumni may not boast of too many great directors but it did provide the platform for upgrading filmmaking. Witness the dazzle of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam or Mani Ratnam's eloquent craft in Dil Se. Aamir Khan, turning producer with Lagaan, is following Kamal Haasan (Hey! Ram) in introducing sync sound, Hollywood style.

New ideas have come in with the demographic change in Bollywood -- the old generation has virtually handed over the torch to a brat pack. Yash Johar's son Karan is just 26, Yash Chopra's son Aditya is 28, Vikram Bhat is 30, Sooraj Barjatya, 32. Bhansali, at 35, is among the oldest. The target audience too at 15-35, is younger. It is this segment -- with its exposure to Hollywood and programming on satellite channels -- that decides whether the tills will ring.

So targeted and focused has filmmaking become that last year not a single film did well both in India and Bharat. India is urban and urbane, brand-conscious and connected in terms of the satellite as also the web. Bharat is, of course, non-airconditioned non-Dolby theatres in B or C grade towns where Mithun Chakraborty draws attention.

Beginning with Hum Aapke Hai Koun, Hindi films like Taal, KKHH, Dil Se, Dil To Pagal Hai and DDLJ (and some like the Rajnikant starrer Muthu) have set a new benchmark in terms of overseas earnings -- thanks to an ever-increasing diaspora. And it's not just the Indish audience. Karan Johar released 15 sub-titled prints in 1998 in South Africa and raked in more than Titanic did. This year, Adi Chopra plans to release 30-odd sub-titled prints of Mohabbatein. No wonder films now go beyond the Bambaiyya patois and straight to Yank slang -- from Shah Rukh Khan's "Yo dude" in KKHH to Amisha Patel's "shit", which landed Kaho Naa ... Pyaar Hai in censor trouble.

Even the geography has changed. Urban and indeed foreign vistas beckon. Success barometer: films like DDLJ and Pardes, half shot overseas in exotic locales from the Swiss Interlaken to Sun City in South Africa. More significantly, the script itself is set in a different and, increasingly, overseas metro milieu -- far from the locales of Hrishikesh Mukherjee or Basu Chatterjee.

And the themes. You now have the "friends and lovers" situation where the husband is willing to reunite the wife with her ex-lover. Plus romance, of the NRI, e-mail (Dil Hi Dil Mein Hai) and media (Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani) types. Farah Khan's yet-to-be-titled debut movie features a prom night. And it doesn't matter if nobody in CPCI -- Central Province, Central India -- cottons on. Like the others, Khan can rely on cities and overseas to bring in the bucks.

However, this modernism is still within a broad Hindustani framework. Sophisticated audiences do not necessarily translate into more sophisticated content. The woman may wear leotards but she still has to fit into the patriarchal purdah system. Karisma Kapoor may wear designer togs but she tears up the divorce papers in Raja Hindustani and Mahima Chowdhury may have reached Las Vegas but refuses to bed her fiance Apoorva Agnihotri till she's married in Pardes. And yes, Shah Rukh sleeps on the same bed as Kajol in DDLJ without "sleeping" with her.

What has also not changed is the means of communicating passion -- even in the Net age. It still remains the good old song around trees. Even the gory and realistic Satya or Shool could not leave out songs. To start with, in the new marketing idiom, it is the songs -- thanks to the numerous countdown shows and proliferating music channels -- that draw the first suckers. There is also the deafening moolah power of the audio market: audio rights pay for as much as 30 per cent of the cost of movie and if you are Yash Chopra, as much as 50 per cent. This necessitates six songs in every film. And songs mean love.

Ergo, whether it is the 1950s or the new millennium the movie maker can't escape Bollywood's parameters -- actually a straitjacket. It will be difficult to produce a Sixth Sense for at some point, Bruce Willis would have to fall in love with the child's mother and sing a song on the couch. At the same time, however, the song and dance routine gives Indian cinema a uniqueness.

It is this uniqueness that has prevented Hollywood's otherwise successful imperialism from conquering Indian theatres. Unlike the British or Canadian or Japanese who yielded 70 mm space to Hollywood productions, Indians have held their own. Even a Titanic could not sink Bollywood. So boy will still meet girl ...

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