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CINEMA:
FUSION
Mix
'n' Match Frames
Take the
realism of parallel cinema and the glamour of commercial films and you
have a new success formula, as directors find out
By
Anupama Chopra
Salman
Khan and E. Niwas. These are two names that logically do not go together.
So what is Bollywood's bod God doing with the 24-year-old director of
Shool? Making a film actually. Salman is starring in Niwas' next
venture, Ateet. Brother Sohail Khan is the co-producer. But it
won't be the standard shirtless Salman sleepwalking through feeble comedy
fare. Ateet, a multi-crore thriller, will be hard-hitting and realistic.
"It's my style," says Niwas, "with a star."
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| Rakesh
Mehra's Aks promises to be quite an offbeat fare |
What is Niwas'
style? It doesn't have a name yet. But it is post-parallel fusion cinema,
which combines elements of the mainstream and the arthouse. So stars and
songs co-exist happily with a realistic texture and natural performances.
However, realism doesn't translate into the comatose pace or the threadbare
look of art cinema. Slick editing and high production values are as essential
as savvy marketing. Because communicating with an audience is paramount.
Niwas isn't
the only one making fusion films. Inspired by the success of Ram Gopal
Varma's underworld classic, Satya, a slew of young directors is
evolving a new style of storytelling which, provided the box office is
benevolent, might become the new wave.
 |
| Manjrekar's
Astitva takes a hard look at the middle class hypocrisy |
"It
is a time of transition," says director Rakesh Mehra, "and the
great thing is that since all formulas have crashed, people are now getting
the opportunity to do what they want to. "Absolutely. What was earlier
a trickle-think Parinda and later, Daayra, Is Raat Ki Subah
Nahin and later Mani Ratnam's films - has become a virtual flood.
Mehra, best known for slick commercials and the Aby Baby videos,
is making his feature film debut with Aks. Aks, a Rs 10-crore thriller,
partially set in Budapest, has heavyweights (Amitabh Bachchan, Manoj Bajpai,
Raveena Tandon and Nandita Das) and hot songs (choreographed by Raju Sundaram)
but it's definitely not a standard Bollywood film. "It's a converging
of many schools," says Mehra, "I honestly don't know what genre
it is."
Other directors
are making signature cinema on smaller budgets. Anurag Kashyap, who co-authored
Satya, is debuting with Paanch, which is about a group of
grunge musicians who go for the easiest route to make money and is slowly
but inexorably sucked into crime. Kashyap describes the Rs 1.25 crore
Paanch as "very noir, very Cohen brothers". Kashyap's approach
is stylised but his performances (the film stars Tejasvini Kohlapure,
KK and Aditya Shrivastav) are realistic. "There are already enough
people making marriage films," says Kashyap. "We are just trying
to tell stories that excite us."
Hansal Mehta
adopted the same approach in the recently released Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar
(DPMLY). The film tells the story of Ram Saran Pandey, one among the millions
of migrants from Uttar Pradesh in Mumbai. Except that Pandey falls in
love, aspires to be upwardly mobile and ends up as an underworld don.
It's a serious, even depressing, story told with dollops of dark humour.
And Mehta seamlessly blends elements. "I just followed my instincts
without worrying too much about making a supposedly safe film," he
says. So bodacious Kashmira Shah heaves her shimmering silver chest in
a cabaret number while the local don mercilessly beats up one of his goons.
Fantasy and grotesque reality co-exist without contradictions.
It's a narrative
style that director Sudhir Mishra experimented with several years ago
in Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin, also an underworld story. "Guys
like me are in fashion now," he laughs. Indeed. Mishra is making
a thriller set in Calcutta, tentatively titled Rakht. Mishra, best
known for arty fare like Dharavi, is going big with Rakht-the Rs
8-crore plus thriller stars Anil Kapoor, Rani Mukherjee and Manisha Koirala-but
his form remains the same. "Earlier the pure art cinema guys considered
me too dramatic," he says. "But I've always believed in heightened
realism, in films that attempt to talk to other people. Cinema can't be
a self-mumbling exercise."
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Relics
of old empires exist everywhere. Why can't the Mani Shankar Aiyars of
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