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The increasing number of medium and small-budget films reflect the changing
face of Bollywood, writes Seema Sachdeva
Divali is round the corner. The festive season has always been the best time for film releases. However, it is for the first time that the Indian audience is being offered a plethora of small budget films in the coming weeks. Except for Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya made with a budget of Rs 40 crore and Farah Khan’s second directorial venture Om Shanti Om reported to have been made at a cost of Rs 35 crore, no other big-budget films are due for release soon. More than a dozen small-budget films with production costs between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 5 crore are being released before Divali. In the pipeline are films like No Smoking, Mumbai Salsa, Jab We Met, Do Aur Do Paanch. Many factors have been responsible for the recent spurt in the small-budget films. Unlike the 1970s and 1980s which saw a few big directors and producers dominating the film scene, a new breed of young directors have cropped up over the past few years. For instance, Nagesh Kukunoor, the acclaimed director of films like Dor, Iqbal, Hyderabad Blues, is a chemical engineer. Dibakar Banerjee, director of Khosla Ka Ghosla, is an ad filmmaker and so also is Shimit Amin, director of Chak De India. The new directors are open to experimenting with new themes and genres. Also with globalisation, international cinema has come closer home. The accessibility of good cinema with innovative scripts has been responsible for the audience to open up to a more experimental cinema. This is evident from the figures that an offbeat film like Bheja Fry made at a cost of less than one crore grossed Rs 17 crore. Similarly, Life in a Metro made at a paltry budget of Rs 7 crore garnered Rs 25 crore. On the contrary, Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, which was billed as blockbuster of the year, flopped. Earlier, big-budget films such as Jhoom Barabar Jhoom and Salaam-e-Ishq were total washouts. These films failed to live up to the expectations of the audience. Despite being well-packaged and much-publicised, multi-starrer films like Ta Ra Rum Pum, Shakalaka Boom Boom, Eklavya — The Royal Guard bombed at the box office and a small-budget film like Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd did fairly well. The viewers today are looking forward to content-based quality films with offbeat themes. The changing public taste has resulted in a positive feedback for unconventional films like Water, Parzania, Black Friday and Namesake. Jagmohan Mundhra’s Provoked and Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dor too have done fairly well. Unlike earlier when a few big stars monopolised the industry, there has been a surfeit of newcomers in these films. Nagesh Kukunoor’s low-budget Iqbal (2005) made everyone sit up and notice Shreyas Talpade while Ranvir Shorey and Vinay Pathak who star in Bheja Fry have become household names. In accordance with the themes, the characters in these films are unconventional and realistic. Vinay Pathak, the leading idiot of Bheja Fry, is not the conventional hero but still manages to steal the show. Similarly, Rajpal Yadav in Main Meri Patni Aur Woh is not the run-of-the-mill hero but in this lies his strength. Films like Life in a Metro and Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd did not have a big star cast so to boast of but still they managed to appeal to the masses. While Mixed Doubles dealt with the issue of boredom in a marriage, Khosla Ka Ghosla, another small-budget film, had Anupam Kher in the role of an average Indian being harassed by land mafia. The realistic themes in these films seem to have touched the chord with the masses. The increasing number of multiplexes which offer good quality screening has also resulted in bringing the rich, urban Indian, in the age bracket of 18 to 45 years, to the movie halls. According to a report in the Financial Times London, India is emerging as the multiplex cinema construction capital of the world. Theatre operators are building 10 to 15 multiplexes a month, each of which has four to five screens. By 2010, the country will have more than 2,000 multiplex screens, five times the number it had last year, the report said. Another major factor has been the explosion of private TV channels since Doordarshan’s monopoly ended in the 1990s. These channels have been churning soap operas for a growing audience. The success of these soap operas has helped to launch many new actors and directors. Production houses like UTV and Balaji have graduated into making films. That content is the main focus of the new generation of films is good news for cinegoers. With negligible song-and-dance sequences, most of these films pack all the action in barely two hours. So for the Gen X which has little patience for over-the-board melodramatic stuff, it is Bollywood as you like it.
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