Bollywood? What was that? Isnt it Hollywood misspelled? Not a chance. Its out there, a real celluloid central of the Asian hemisphere, now a contender of Hollywood in the filmmaking.
Formerly Mumbai, Bollywood is located in the heart of India, in Bombay. The biggest in the world, it produces almost double the number of movies and sells a billion more tickets each year than Hollywood. (Bollywood for the Skeptical).
Tall claim, it might have sounded to me. Knowing that India is a country cramming with billion citizens, second only to China in population, it is a place epitomized by human sufferings, where great numbers of its citizens are literally ragtag, homeless, and littering the Indian suburban landscape, and as much a permanent fixture in its social tapestry. This is the India that lingers in my memory, and portrayed in movies, and in news clippings, up to the present.
While that maybe a decadent scene of a big picture, India, on the other hand, has a beautiful history of antiquity, colorful and culturally enriching eastern philosophies catered to by the westerners. Talk about the Moguls, its conquests, romance, monumental love, and tragedy, and India would come to mind. These richness in human history has helped developed the countrys art and humanity, the very resource that made born a filmdom poised to take over the world, and surpass Hollywood in quantity and quality movie production.
A short visit to India in early 80s got me introduced to a culture and place that has so much been endeared to me. Likened myself to Odysseus mesmerized by the beauties of the Lesbo island, India, is a place where vestiges of antiquity still stand, its beauteous women, and technological innocence render its attraction to me. The rigid and inflexible mindset prominent among people in the hierarchy was obnoxious, yet tantalizingly reproachable.
Then, in another adventure opportunity, at Indias neighbor to the west, and arc political enemy, Pakistan--while there--friends introduced me to Indian movies, as it was a consuming passion for entertainment raving that Muslim country in mid 80s.
Typically running three long hours, an Indian movie was not only tedious to me, a naturally peripatetic guest, but also irritatingly boring. Lacking subtitles, a typical movie was characterized by interims of musical scores, commonly four to five, and acted upon with what is called Going around the trees scenes basically, a love scene interpolations. Everything in the music sounded shrill to me, like it was a grinding, taut string and notes produced from the sitar, and by the vocal monopolized by one singer, and Indias legendary, Lata Mangeshkar. This septuagenarian songbird, according to reports, presently holds a Guiness entry of having recorded more than 50,000 musical scores. Then, and today the same octave-ranging high pitch remain the standard. Though, the Tabla drum as a bass tends to break up the monotony.
Lyrics might have made a major difference, but without translation, its beauty was as well lost. Singing and dancing acts are standard in a movie, and the dances, native in characteristic, are alluring elements. Prudish and chaste of any blatant kissing or sex scenes, the movie, nonetheless, is emotive of seduction in the manner of acting.
In a typical household, entire family would be sat in front of the tube, spending time away with two or more movies at one time. That totals up to six or more hours of no production! But in a culture where life is simple and basic, time is spent away palpably with much more enjoyment, and life goes on merrily devoid of stress.
Recently, I had a personal viewing of few Indian movies loaned to me by an Indian friend family in the city, having made a nostalgic characterized visit. Highly recommended and newly produced movies, the curtain opened to a different visual, blessed with high tech quality that the Indians are endowed, as a nation, these days. Applied in the celluloid, Bollywood produces high definition pictures, and immersed in natural color tones, and optimal sound system. A case and point, Devdas (2002), is such a story about sacrifices of love, matched by the ostentations of a lover and husband feeling for a woman, but whose heart is beholden to a man of lesser means. The ending is tragic. Grandeur is evident in the choice of sprawling Muslim vintage homes, garish decoration, and lighting to depict the wealth and power of the husbands palatial home. It is reminiscent of the Mogul household, where servants are aplenty, always ready to caper and cater to every whim of the masters. Like productions in the old Hollywood, this Bollywood movie was produced in such grand scale, with the introduction scene equal in the Eddie Murphys lauded movie Coming to America.
Captivating and essential in any movies are the stars. In Devdas, heroine Paro is played by the Miss International and Indian beauty Aishwarya Rai. Caucasian features with fairly big, round eyes, and fairer skin, Indians have held their own birthright to beauty in the worlds women. She is teamed up with Bollywoods hot dude, Shah Ruhk Khan, handsome in his own right, but with a very charming personality.
Acting and dancing seem prerequisites of Indian male actors as much as of the women. Fleet-footed and graceful dancers, these Indian men appear not much less macho, but to me, add to their pleasant, captivating, and well-rounded performance. To see the men dance as gracefully vigorous as the women is titillating and fun to watch.
In a country where people are more abundant than employment, salary rates are expectedly less than in its counterpart Hollywood. So, in a Bollywood movie set, they can feature mobs of real people to add gaiety to the story, that in the American movies have long time been considered as cost inflating, therefore, cut down, or replaced by computer-generated pseudo crowd scenes.
Indian screenwriters are marvelously brilliant, in my opinion. Love dramas are the most common and exploited movie theme produced, they know and are experts in writing movies that bring tears to the eyes, including this author with a discriminating taste. They are exemplified in the Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), and was written around a plot of the adventures of love where a woman is betrothed to a man she doesnt love, but ends happily. Another new movie Veer Zaara (2002), also takes the plot of love with a simple twist that creates a conflict. The hero sacrifices his love when the heroine was coerced by tradition to marry a man she doesnt love, and fate for 22 years, played a dirty trick on them, but ends happily.
Cinematography adds in great length and detail of scene locations of villages, fields of vibrant carpets of blossoming yellow mustard flowers. And in the background are solitary tubewell that irrigates vast tracks of lands, and swatches of sugarcane and wheat. The strike the chords of nostalgia to the heart of this author, of a time while I roamed in similar villages in pursuit of romance and high adventure.
A great deal of the Bollywood movie success is attributed to the directors. Bollywood directors are intelligent, persistent, patient, resourceful, and talented bunch, products of film schools in England and in America. They are technically adept as the Hollywood directors who have paved the way in creativity and inventions. From Bollywood, two women directors from India have been lauded for their achievements in producing movies in India and in the west. Mira Nair set a record for her prodigious productions, including the controversial and artistic Kama Sutra. In no less stature is Deepa Mehta pioneer and bold in her production of Fire that the Sikhs in India have violently protested against its showing in India.
Bollywood has its sight set to turning itself as a contender in world cinema productions. Now, it is venturing into the movie plots of thriller, suspense, and crime genres. Although, being criticized as a copycat of Hollywood, technology, cost, pool of talents, and an accommodating world audience, will nothing but propel Indias Bollywood further into a much wider horizon of accomplishments and achievements.
Meantime, on to the Indian video shop for more!
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