What ails Indian Cinema?

A wrong title at a wrong time, given the mass orgasm Indians are having at the success of ‘Slumdog etc etc…’

The media is almost making us believe that we’ve arrived; the age of cosmetic cinema in the shinning multiplexes of a ‘shinning new India’. With reports of Bollywood movies grossing millions and receiving awards in the International space, it may appear indeed that Indian cinema is at an all-time high. A closer scrutiny, however, may reveal a different picture...

Firstly, the millions (so proudly reported by the Indian T.V channels) flow-in primarily because of the NRI population, rather than a true broad-based International audience. Organizing a Filmfare award in Dubai or Maldives in itself can hardly create a global audience. Secondly, the self congratulatory myth of Bollywood finally making it big internationally is largely created by a myopic and popularity-focused media taking recourse to selective highlighting. Films from countries like Japan, Iran, Korea, etc. (producing far lesser films in numbers) have a much bigger and broader international following. The Indian media is either ignorant of these, or chooses to keep its audience comfortably basking in a narrow, parochial self-glory.

Cinematic tradition, like any other art form, has a historical context and continuity. While sifting through my memory, trying to dig out what cinema had meant to me, I couldn’t resist repeating Bergman: “Film as dream, film as music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.”

Unfortunately for us, Bergman, like Ray, Truffaut, Antonioni, Fellini, etc., is dead. While in many countries, a new generation of filmmakers, like Gus Van Sant (USA), Zhang Yimou (China), Wong Kar-wai (Hong-Kong), Majid Majidi, (Iran), Richard Linklater (USA), Tareque Masud (Bangladesh), Krzysztof Kieślowski (Poland), etc. are trying to keep the experimenting tradition alive and to create their own cinematic language, in India, we’re a generation without memory, without history, without knowledge, basking in the transience of junk entertainment, a T.V promoted ‘make-believe’. Unfortunately, we still do not know the difference between acting and modeling. We are primarily concerned with copying, stealing, and organizing Filmfare awards, flushing everything with vulgar glamor and money.


One of the most deep-rooted causes of the problem is the tendency of the film-makers to be formulaic (dance, action, melodrama). Most of the film-makers in India are driven not by any artistic urge but by a vague, mythical notion of ‘what sells’, altogether bypassing the rigor and discipline of creation. As a result, there’s neither much experimentation with the art form, nor much variety in themes. This, precisely, is the problem with formula: it eventually replaces the imagination of the creator, creating a tendency towards short-cut and mass manufacturing; while in true art, there’s neither a short-cut, nor a chance to replicate or mass manufacture. Hemingway had once said: ‘For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning, where he tried again for something which is beyond attainment.’

Well… what’s true for literature is true for cinema as well.

Another troubling trait in the Indian film industry is a wholesale focus on packaging and promotion (though again in formulaic patterns), while neglecting the product itself. Unscrupulous self-promotion to grab attention in an over-crowded space, plagiarism, and manipulation is sadly replacing the art and the essence of film-making. While packaging and promotion may serve some purpose, but in itself cannot substitute for the product itself. Hence, irrespective of the self-congratulatory statements and uncouth media promotions, the fact remains that a large part of Bollywood and Indian cinema continues to cater only to junk entertainment.

The industry is much too cluttered with dynastic heredity and much too focused on instant fame and big money to have space left for the true artists, for creativity, or for experimentation. The sad aspect is that even if there are exceptions (like ‘Ocean of an Old Man’; a brilliant, evocative film by FTII graduate Rajesh Shera), even if there are encouraging initiatives like FulMarxx Shorts Fest, these hardly find their way through the manipulative nexus of the industry or the mainstream media.

Unless the industry finds ways of encouraging new voices and new experiments in syntax and themes, unless the media takes the responsibility of constructive criticism and highlight new artistic voices (a classical example is André Bazin’s Cahiers du cinema in the fifties and the sixties of France) , unless the audience becomes matured and open enough to appreciate and patronize (in some form) non-mainstream films (media again needs to play a big role here), Indian cinema will continue to be what it is: an ugly, grotesque, money-making machinery capitalizing on titillating a mass of junk-focused audience.

- Siddhartha
You can also read this essay at http://passionforcinema.com/what-ails-indian-cinema