Brave new cinema

Pushed by a breed of politically and socially aware filmmakers, mainstream Hindi
cinema is discovering a radical core, writes Saibal Chatterjee

Screenwriter-director Anurag Kashyap has mellowed down with time but has lost none of the inner frisson that triggered films like Paanch, Black Friday and No Smoking. When he asserts that his last release, Gulaal, a politically charged love story that plays out in a benighted Rajasthani feudal setting, is "an expression of my anger at the system", he speaks not just for himself but also for an entire breed of young Mumbai filmmakers who are using the medium to articulate their views about the world that they live in.

This band of ‘expressive’ Bollywood directors includes one-time documentary filmmaker Kabir Khan, whose second feature film, New York, has hit the box office bull’s eye. "I don’t think I would ever be interested in making a film that does not spring from the reality of the world around us," says Khan. His debut feature, Kabul Express, was set in war-ravaged Afghanistan.

Actress-turned-director Nandita Das’s Firaaq may not have achieved the kind of commercial success that it deserved but the sensitive film did make a strong impact with its convincing cinematic portraits of men and women grappling with the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat communal riots.

Says Nandita: "My identity as an activist has never been independent of my work. I’ve always been involved with film projects that were essential even if they weren’t in great demand. So, when I decided to direct a film of my own, I couldn’t have changed my approach."

Cinematic narratives woven around headlines yanked out of newspapers have given contemporary Hindi cinema a new spin, helping it acquire a new edge, a fresh vitality, and a degree of relevance that it hasn’t had for years. "This had to happen," says Kashyap, the maker of the quirky Dev D. "The ‘new wave’ has gone mainstream with a vengeance thanks to the advent of a crop of writers and directors whose creative impulses stem from the diverse ‘real India’ environs that they belong to."

Interestingly, Kashyap’s in-your-face reworking of the classic Sarat Chandra tragedy alluded to recent incidents that rocked Delhi — the MMS scandal involving a schoolgirl and the BMW hit-and-run case — all seamlessly incorporated into the tale of the self-destructive protagonist’s downward spiral.

Says Raja Menon, director of Barah Aana, says, "There is definitely a growing market for films that don’t follow the norms of mainstream movie-making," feels Menon. The response to Barah Aana, a black comedy peopled by characters that we see around us everyday — drivers, waiters, watchmen — but choose to ignore, is proof enough, he adds.

"These down and out characters represent the flip side of the economic boom," he says. "They are very much a part of the Indian landscape no matter how hard we try to pretend that they are not." The inference is clear. Says Menon, "It is possible today to make a film about a driver, a waiter and a watchman and get it released."

Barah Aana is the story of three very, very ordinary men — one of them (Naseeruddin Shah) is ‘dead’ in the official records, another is a migrant watchman (Vijay Raaz) who is pushed around in the big city like a heap of garbage — who stumble upon what they believe is an easy way to make money. But as they hurtle down the path of petty crime, their troubles multiply and they quickly sink into a quagmire beyond their control. Barah Aana eschews songs, dances and cheap thrills. In an earlier era, it would have been stymied at the scripting stage.

By addressing contemporary socio-political issues while adopting innovative ways to deliver entertaining fare, directors like Sudhir Mishra (Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, 2003), Rahul Dholakia (Parzania, 2005), Rajkumar Gupta (Aamir, 2008), Neeraj Pandey (A Wednesday, 2008) and Manish Jha (Mathrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women, 2003 and Anwar, 2007), among others, have been pushing the boundaries of what is viable and acceptable within the mainstream moviemaking space.

One of the more interesting stories in this new emerging filmmaking scenario in Mumbai is that of Irfan Kamal. His father, Kamal Master, was a super-successful choreographer who made megastar Amitabh Bachchan dance to his tunes in films by Manmohan Desai and Prakash Mehra. Irfan grew up steeped in the ethos of masala movies, but when he decided to branch out as an independent filmmaker, he moved as far away as he could from where he had started.

The yet-to-be-released Thanks Maa, Irfan’s maiden film, is a gritty, starkly realistic drama about a Mumbai street urchin who finds an abandoned baby and sets out in an impossible search of the infant’s mother. "For me," says Irfan, "cinema isn’t just entertainment. It is life. So it has to be rooted in reality no matter what."

He has turned a little idea about rag pickers and abandoned children into a searing drama of survival on the mean streets of a big city. "My story does have a pronounced element of fantasy embedded in it — the central premise of the Thanks Maa narrative might not be possible in real life — but I took pains to ensure a stamp of authenticity on the way the film plays out. The research that I did on the subject of street children and statistics regarding babies that are abandoned in Mumbai helped," he says.

Sudhir Mishra is currently working on a feature film "on a tight budget" inspired by the plight of civil liberties activist Dr Binayak Sen, who has been languishing in a Chhattisgarh jail for more than two years. "There are many Dr Binayak Sens in this country who pursue their cause away from the media glare," he says. "This film is not about him, but about somebody like him," the director explains. "It’s a tribute to his spirit."

Rahul Dholakia is a 10-day schedule away from completing Lamhaa, which probes the pain and suffering of strife-torn Kashmir through a tale set against the separatist movement. But it isn’t a small film — the cast of Lamhaa includes Sanjay Dutt, Bipasha Basu and Anupam Kher. And as Dholakia has discovered, blending the mechanics of big-budget moviemaking with the rhythms of politically pointed cinema is anything but a cakewalk.

Piyush Jha, on the other hand, has just wrapped up Sikandar, a less star-studded film about a young Kashmiri orphan boy who wants to be a footballer but discovers that peace is an elusive commodity in the Valley. With the likes of Madhavan, Sanjay Suri, Parzan Dastur (who played the main protagonist of DholakiaParzania) and Ayesha Kapoor (who essayed the role of the deaf-mute and blind girl in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black) in the cast, Sikandar was shot in a single 35-day schedule in the heart of Kashmir.

"Sikandar explores the plight of the orphans of Kashmir, but the film is cast in the mould of a fast-paced thriller," says Jha. "It is important to tell a story in a way that grips the audience. Only then can you slip in the elements that create awareness about the issues in question – in this case, the conflict in the Valley and its repercussions on children."

Jha asserts that Sikandar "does not shout from the rooftops" because that would defeat the very purpose of making the film. "My film isn’t targeted at the already converted. It has been taken to a popular level so that the message reaches a wider audience," he explains.

Indeed, the Bollywood mainstream today embraces a wider swathe of ideas and themes than ever before. Hindi cinema as we know it can never be the same again.

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