India’s Edgy New Cinema

International Herald Tribune – November 15, 2005

Anupama Chopra – N.Y. Times

 

 

MUMBAI In July, the director Vishal Bharadwaj - whose latest film, "The Blue Umbrella," is a lyrical meditation on how man's acquisitiveness disrupts harmony - pitched a project to a Bollywood producer best known for B-grade Hindi movies, in which comedy and cleavage can be more important than the plot or the characters.

 

Bharadwaj's proposal was complicated: a sophisticated thriller with voice-overs, flash-forwards, and some scenes that would begin at the end and work backwards. But the producer mulled the idea over for a few minutes and declared that it was "hatke" - Hindi for "different" - and that he would bankroll it.

 

"Five years ago, I couldn't find one producer," Bharadwaj said, "and now I have to choose among 10 willing to finance anything I want to make. I am blessed to be working in these changing times."

 

Traditionally, there were two schools of Hindi cinema. The center stage was occupied by Bollywood, which enthralled Indians globally with song-and-dance extravaganzas and melodramatic stories big on family values. The other was the Satyajit Ray-inspired realistic art-house films, which flowered in the 1970s and '80s. Like the auteurs of the French New Wave, these art filmmakers tried to create a distinct language of film, but their work was relegated to festivals and television, where it wilted in the wings.

 

Lately, a third type of Hindi cinema has emerged. It is composed of smaller, offbeat films that are more realistic than Bollywood tales and more cutting edge than art-house ones. The films have an urbane, uniquely Indian sensibility. Many, though not all, are in Hinglish, the hybrid of Hindi and English that is spoken in metropolitan India.

 

These films have none of the overt glamour or sunny disposition of mainstream movies. Emotions are messy, characters have pasts and endings aren't always happy. But neither are the movies treatises on social issues far removed from the filmmakers' own experience, like so much art-house cinema was. Working with low budgets - $450,000 to $1.15 million, as opposed to more than $2.5 million for a Bollywood film - they are defying conventions and labels.

 

As the director Homi Adajania, whose first film, "Being Cyrus," is being released in December, put it: "After all, India is not just Bollywood and a Punjabi wedding."

 

Adajania's India is most certainly not. "Being Cyrus" is a dark, unsettling film about the members of a dysfunctional Parsi family who let a stranger into their lives, with dire consequences. Adajania, whose characters speak in English with a smattering of Gujarati, said he was interested in "the stark underbelly of life." The film's only crowd-pleasing aspect is the lead, Saif Ali Khan, an A-list Bollywood star who usually plays charming heroes.

 

Grimness is no longer box office poison, however. The first hit of 2005 was "Page 3," the director Madhur Bhandarkar's scathing look at high society in Mumbai. It featured pedophilia, drug-fueled rave parties and unabashed nastiness. The film, made for $575,000, grossed $2.3 million in India - a stellar performance, even though it didn't have what Bollywood insiders call "face value" (like stars or hit songs). "Iqbal," another low-budget film, also emerged a winner. The story of a deaf-mute village boy who yearns to be an international cricket player, it opened to euphoric reviews and recouped its $685,000 budget in five weeks.

 

Seven years ago, "Iqbal's" director, Nagesh Kukunoor, kick-started Hinglish cinema with "Hyderabad Blues," which was released in one theater in Mumbai and went on to become a hit. But the current crop of Indian independents can count on far wider release, thanks in large part to the arrival of more multiplexes.

 

The first Indian multiplex, the PVR Anupam, opened in New Delhi in June 1997. Until then most filmgoers patronized cavernous theaters with 1,000 to 1,500 seats. Crippled by steep entertainment taxes, enormous operating costs and dwindling audiences, many of these movie houses were in an advanced state of ruin, even in the largest cities, like Mumbai and New Delhi.

 

After the PVR Anupam opened, some state governments announced entertainment tax exemptions and prompted a multiplex boom. There are 73 multiplexes in India, with 276 screens and about 89,470 seats. The numbers are expected to increase to 135 multiplexes with more than 160,000 seats by the end of 2006.

 

Significantly, multiplex viewers are more upscale than the general audience: multiplex ticket prices average $2.25, compared with $1.15 for the single-screen theaters, and the most expensive seats at multiplexes can cost as much as $4. According to a May 2005 report by YES Bank and the Film and Television Producers Guild of India, multiplexes constitute only 0.6 percent of about 12,000 cinema halls in India, but they account for 28 percent to 34 percent of the box office take for the Top 50 films in 2004.

 

The more affluent multiplex viewers have given filmmakers new fiscal and artistic freedom. "A film is a conversation," said the director-producer Ram Gopal Varma, head of a production house, the Factory, which turns out about six films a year. "The multiplex gives me flexibility and enables me to have a conversation with my intended target audience without worrying about small towns and villages." That is perhaps why even major stars are now willing to do the occasional offbeat film. Bhandarkar's next production is "Corporate," centered on relationships and rivalries in the Indian business world, and on a dusky, statuesque star, Bipasha Basu, who is mostly famous for her sex appeal.

 

She said she hoped that Bhandarkar would help change her image.

 

"I want to do a realistic film," she said, "to create a balance in me as an actor. This film will not present a fantasy Bipasha Basu."

 

So far, Bhandarkar is the only filmmaker who has created a genuine offbeat blockbuster. But his peers say they are glad, finally, to be part of a flourishing independent film culture. "In films, you have to follow your heart," Bharadwaj said. "Multiplexes have made it easier for me to do that."