A new breed of producers and directors are coming up with a string of mint-fresh narratives, literary adaptations and historical recreations. Is this Bollywood shift — towards meaningful yet popular cinema — here to stay, asks Saibal Chatterjee

Commercial Hindi cinema is a world apart. In the form we know it today, it is as far removed from the nation’s reality, literature and history as our planet is from Mars. But, going by a slew of atypical Bollywood films lined up for release in the weeks ahead, the Mumbai industry’s frames of reference seem to be undergoing a sea change.

A bit of the spirit of the golden era, propelled essentially by content-driven, thought-provoking, emotionally enriching narratives, is on the verge of making a welcome comeback. Films like Parineeta, Paheli, The Rising, Taj Mahal and, to a lesser extent, Sarkar, which examines the world of a Bal Thackeray-like political patriarch, could script a new beginning for the mainstream Mumbai cinema.

These films represent popular cinema that pivots around a substantial thematic core. Their narratives, in certain cases, are culled from acclaimed literary sources, an attribute that gives the films a degree of depth and range that conventional Hindi cinema rarely captures. So is the long-lingering promise of the birth of a new Bollywood, unshackled from its blind dependence on formula ingredients, finally set to be fulfilled?

Well, Bollywood’s conventional ingredients are unlikely to ever fade away. Parineeta, Paheli and The Rising do use songs and dances as key components of their style and they, by and large, stay within the parameters of conventional Hindi films. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the idiom as long as the substance is meaningful enough.

Thanks to the emergence of a new breed of Indian filmmakers, not just in Mumbai but also in India’s other major production centres, the flow of an alternative variety of popular films has increased appreciably. Filmmakers around the country, encouraged no doubt by the successes registered by the likes of Mani Ratnam and Rituparno Ghosh, are exploring fresh storytelling devices.

They are increasingly veering round to the view that there is more to their craft and business than merely pandering to the tastes of the generally undemanding domestic consumers. Says Akbar Khan, director and co-scriptwriter of Taj Mahal, a big-budget historical saga scheduled for release in August: "The film is carefully scripted keeping an international audience in mind. There is no melodrama in it, but Taj Mahal is true to the spirit of the Bollywood historical genre."

Mumbai filmmakers are now not merely thinking global; they have actually begun to act global as well. Says Khan: "Taj Mahal is not for the Indian Diaspora alone. The film has the potential of making inroads into the mainstream international movie market as well."

It is not without reason, the producer-director points out, that he chose to involve renowned South African writer Fatima Meer in the scripting process. "She has lent a historical perspective and authenticity to Taj Mahal," Khan adds.

A measure of the paradigm shift in Bollywood is provided by showman Subhash Ghai’s growing faith in the virtues of offbeat cinema. Even as he works as a producer with usual suspects like Satish Kaushik and Abbas-Mustan, he funds a film like Nagesh Kukunoor’s Iqbal – The Rampur Express. "Iqbal has shaped up extremely well," Ghai enthuses. "It’s a great story about a deaf-mute village boy determined to break into big-time cricket."

Sensitive portrayals

Unusual storylines, literary adaptations, historical recreations and tales of contemporary relevance promise to take Hindi cinema beyond the limits of designer movies, family sagas, skin flicks and hackneyed and superficial urban angst dramas. Vishram Sawant’s D, a worthy prequel to Ram Gopal Varma’s spiffy underworld drama Company, and the Vidhu Vinod Chopra-produced Parineeta, based on a Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay novel, are already in the theatres.

Ready for release are films like Amol Palekar’s Paheli, a reworking of a Rajasthani fable, Ketan Mehta’s The Rising (Mangal Pandey in Hindi) and Vishal Bhardwaj’s The Blue Umbrella (Chhatri Chor in Hindi).

While The Rising is a period film that revolves around the events leading to the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, The Blue Umbrella is an adaptation of a children’s story authored by Ruskin Bond.

Interestingly, high-profile production outfits, Bobby Bedi’s Kaleidoscope and UTV Motion Pictures, have bankrolled the two films — one a mega-budget product, the other a small cinematic essay, but both nurturing undisguised global ambitions.

Parineeta, helmed by debutant Pradeep Sarkar, opened last week. Next week, yet another film inspired by literature, Paheli, based on Vijaydan Detha’s interpretation of a well-known Rajasthani folktale, will open all-around the country. Significantly, Paheli has been produced by Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan, who describes his exploration of an uncharted territory as a "whim". Despite the presence of a superstar in the cast, Palekar’s film can be expected to be content-centric. "Shah Rukh Khan is in the film not because he is a box-office draw. He is in the film solely because he fits the role like a glove," says the non-mainstream filmmaker who has rarely worked with conventional Bollywood stars in the past, preferring instead to craft small, realistic Marathi-language films.

But despite the obviously positive signals, the worries refuse to go away. What if the films mentioned above do not rake in big bucks at the box office? What if none of them is quite able to replicate the Devdas success story? Will Bollywood return to its Kya Kool Hain Hum and Dhoom/Kaal/Lucky ways with a vengeance? The fears aren’t unfounded: consistency has never been Bollywood’s forte.

A film industry that thrives primarily on the quantity that it churns out, it rarely, if ever, banks on true quality. Can it ever make substance its central focus? It is, therefore, with a sizeable pinch of scepticism that one talks about the revolution that is purportedly sweeping through the Mumbai film industry both in substance and spirit. The last six months have raised hopes that the habits that Bollywood seem to be acquiring of late are here to stay. The only unqualified hits that Hindi cinema has witnessed this year are Madhur Bhandarkar’s Page 3 and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black.

Neither film is a typical Bollywood flick with its song and dance set pieces, predictable storyline and counterfeit feel-good ambience. Yet they managed to garner unstinted support from an audience weaned on a more conventional fare.

The next three months seem well poised to take this movement forward. It began with the May-end release of Bunty Aur Babli, Shaad Ali’s lively, engaging and quaintly witty version of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde. It is the closest that a mainstream Bollywood film has come in the recent years to rejigging the rules of formula cinema.

Quality recreation

Bunty Aur Babli is what, in Mumbai parlance, is called a paisa vasool film. But while employing the conventions of Bollywood entertainment, it breaks the mould to a substantial extent. It keeps the audience interested all the way through with a tidy mix of sparkling star turns, a gallery of unusual characters, a set of intriguingly quirky situations and doses of drama. that escapes the pitfall of the mundane boy-meets-girl contrivances.

Are Mumbai showbiz and its consumers ready for a makeover? The indicators available on the ground appear pretty encouraging. A defiantly non-mainstream film like Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Sudhir Mishra’s gripping recreation of the days of the Emergency, has already earned three times its investment.

Even as D garners accolades from the multiplexes, another film from Ram Gopal Varma’s hyperactive factory, Sarkar, directed by Ram Gopal Varma himself, is waiting in the wings. It’s certainly not a run-of-the-mill entertainer, yet it is commercially oriented, what with a cast headed by the father-son duo of Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan. So, is the balance finally beginning to move away from sheer entertainment and towards quality recreation?

To be realistic, that would amount to wishful thinking as long as self-styled ‘showmen’ clearly well past their prime dominate Bollywood. But happily, a new breed of producer-directors, the likes of Bhansali and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, besides, of course, the ubiquitous Ram Gopal Varma, have made quick inroads into areas of influence.

It is a happy augury that Hindi movie watchers have begun to separate Black and Page 3 from all the pap that is foisted upon them by lazy Mumbai scriptwriters and directors. There is now reason to believe that films like Parineeta and Paheli will find the climate clearly conducive for narratives that travel beyond the conventional domain of puerile mainstream Mumbai movies.

It is also significant that the comfort zone of Hindi cinema’s golden age has emerged as a retreat for filmmakers seeking flashes of inspiration in a climate where original ideas are at a premium? Several acclaimed films of yore are in the process of being reworked into spanking new multiplex era movies.

For quite a while now, Pritish Nandy Communications has been toying with the idea of remaking the timeless Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam although it still isn’t clear who will helm the project. Far less uncertain are the plans for a remake of Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan, which was based on Hadi Hassan Ruswa’s late 19th century novel, Umrao Jaan Ada. J.P. Dutta intends to bring Umrao Jaan back to the screen with Priyanka Chopra reprising the role made famous by Rekha.

Films like Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s Pinjar, based on Amrita Pritam’s celebrated Partition novel, and Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool, a skilful reworking of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, have shown exactly what a filmmaker can build on a literary foundation.

It is surprising, therefore, that Bollywood rarely, if ever, turned to the rich treasure trove of Indian literature, history and folklore in 1980s and 1990s. Literary adaptations were largely limited only to non-mainstream or middle-of-the-road films like Shyam Benegal’s Junoon, adapted from Ruskin Bond’s The Flight of Pigeons, Girish Karnad’s Utsav, based on the classic Sanskrit play Mrichchakattikam, Sukhwant Dhadda’s Ek Chadar Maili Si, inspired by a Rajinder Singh Bedi story, Gulzar’s lyrical explorations of human relationships and many of Govind Nihalani’s early films.

A handful of influential Mumbai filmmakers have, however, now begun to see the world around them with a new viewfinder. Content has regained its primacy and literature has once again become a part, no matter how fractional, of mainstream Hindi cinema. The picture today is, therefore, just a trifle brighter, if not necessarily bigger, than it has ever been since the formula edged good sense out of Hindi films.

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