entertainment
Mainstream goes out-of-the-box
Cleverly and strategically, many recent mainstream films have significant social messages woven into the script. The audience can reflect on much after the film is over 
Shoma A. Chatterji

Can ‘out-of-the-box’ films pull the mainstream audience? Or, can mainstream films deal with out-of-the-box subjects and stories? The two phrases — ‘out-of-the-box’ and ‘mainstream’ sound very contradictory and as if, in opposition to each other. But if one takes a closer look at some recent films, it appears that the dividing line between mainstream and out-of-the-box is now so blurred that it is difficult to recognise the difference between the two.

The word ‘mainstream’ refers to common, current and popular culture and taste, especially with reference to cinema. So, mainstream films are targeted at a mass audience and its running life in theatres is determined by mass audience and its response. It is filled with elements of entertainment that guarantees the ticket payer good return for the money he has spent and the running time of the film inside the theatre. "Out-of-the-box" means something that is away from mainstream entertainment and targeted at select audiences consequent upon release in niche theatres for limited periods.

The most recent examples of out-of-the-box concepts one can cite as classic examples are Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider and Ketan Mehta’s long-awaited film Rang Rasiya. Very cleverly and strategically, these mainstream films have significant social messages woven into the script the audience cannot recognise immediately but can reflect on much after the film is over and a slice of the audience remains haunted by the major premise. Haider, the director, claims is a cotemporary, Indianised adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But through its relocation in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir amid acts of terrorism and violence, the love story rightly subordinates the love angle to the angst and pain of the mother-son relationship.

As a critic fittingly writes, "Seldom if ever, has a Shakespearean tragedy been given such a magnificent treatment in cinema of any language. Sure, the narrative is fractured and fatally flawed at times. But like the hero’s villainous uncle, who lies limbless writhing in pain in the Kashmiri snow, pleading for death at the end, the narrative dares you to end the pain of people who wear their brutal existence on their sleeves." Yet, there are songs, several dances, too, with one dance replacing the drama in the original play. The repeated play on the phrase, "main hoon, ya nahin", translated from "to be or not to be" is enlarged to a larger existential question on life that is universal and fits into everyone’s lives.

Rang Rasiya presents it aesthetically and as an element essential to the content. The film is the story of the severely criticised painter Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906), who painted without inhibition though he was distanced from the late M.F. Husain by nearly a century. The film has been adapted from the Marathi biographical novel Raja Ravi Varma by Ranjit Desai. Raja Ravi Varma is not famous for painting women in the nude. He is renowned for his paintings of mythological women wearing the saree. Many of his paintings, however, display his women in white, translucent saris that reveal more than they conceal, proving his belief in the artist’s freedom of expression. It is about the painter’s deep involvement with his muse, Sugandha portrayed by Nandana Sen.

This trend of weaving social messages into the entertainment mode without raising slogans or sounding pompous perhaps began with films like Taare Zameen Par, 3 Idiots, Vicky Donor, Chak De India and perhaps even Lagaan in a manner of seeing. Taare Zameen Par was a strong indictment on the callous indifference of parents and the school education system into rarely known learning disabilities. "Since film is an art form that mirrors life, the experience of watching a movie is likened to journey into a world constructed by artistic imagination," writes film scholar Irrena Chang.

A recent example is English Vinglish, which takes serious pot-shots at the patriarchal marginalisation of an ordinary woman though she is a self-respecting earning woman. The film shows how the protagonist, Shashi Godbole (Sridevi) earns a comfortable income through her indigenous business of laddoos. In the US, she gets a big ego-boost when her English teacher calls her an entrepreneur. But back home, she is made the butt of jokes because she cannot speak English fluently. Her husband has the gumption to tell her to give up her laddoo business and she stares back at him and asks "why"?

Visual imageries have changed. Perceptions dramatically altered. Newspaper headlines, TV grabs, ad campaigns and Bollywood — virtually every media in India has become a trigger for narratives and subjects and filmmakers draw from these as inspirations. A recent example is that of Two States, besides characters like Kanjilal Mehta, who takes god to court in OMG — Oh My God, or the heavily pregnant Vidya Bagchi in Kahaani out to take unconventional revenge on her husband’s killer, and Barfi with a deaf-mute hero and a mentally disabled young girl, who understands nothing but love. These are subjects filmmakers would not have touched 10 years back and actors would have declined before reading the script.

When ladies have all the fun The success of Reese Witherspoon’s Gone Girl indicates that the hullabaloo over unfair representation of women in Hollywood is uncalled for. Women continue to call the shots on and off the silver screen  Ervell E. Menezes AnNE Elliot Dunne, the Gone Girl, has certainly made waves and raised a chorus for "female protagonist" movies. The Celluloid Calling survey of the Centre for Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego claimed that only 16 per cent of all filmmakers were women. This is even less than the previous year. That Gone Girl is produced by Reese Witherspoon also reflects womanpower on celluloid and reality. Along with Nightwalker, it appears to be honing a new Hollywood genre called "stunning realism" where lines of "done" and "doing" are constantly crossed so as to virtually erase them. The hero in Nightwalker is a crime photographer who casts ethics right out of the window. Rosamund Pike’s performance in Gone Girl is winning her many accolades What Rosamund Pike does as Anne in Gone Girl has to be seen to be believed and could well win her the Best Actress Oscar this year. Shades of Hillary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry decades ago. It also completely overshadows her co-star Ben Affleck, who is also made to look quite ridiculous. In Gone Girl, it is the author Gillian Flynn, who calls the shots and director David Fincher had to fall in line. I personally found it hard to take the latter half but there are others who loved it for graphically depicting the duplicity of married life. But it is not in David Fincher’s usual mould and one has only to see that classic Fight Club to know his genius. In Gone Girl, Fincher is sandwiched and silenced between writer Flynn and producer Witherspoon. To get back to that survey, it points out that of the 250 films made in 2013, only six per cent were by women filmmakers. But statistics are like the bikini. It hides more than it reveals and that in this case, it is genderless. In cinema, it is various social themes that decide the fare and one notices in the 1970s (1965 to 1975 was the Decade of Change) with feminism going great guns, it was the men who felt emaciated. But that phase passed, it is like the swing of the pendulum, it never stays at six o’clock. It must be mentioned here, however, that Hollywood is essentially escapist while European and South American cinema is about social issues. But that changed between 1965 and 1975. To come back to Gone Girl, the heroine herself disappears and in the process makes her husband Ben Affleck, a prime suspect for murder. That Anne’s ex-boy-friend Dezi (Neil Patrick Harris), a wafer-thin caricature if ever there was one, has to pay the price for his liaison is another example of womanpower. And she gets away with it. That’s "stunning realism" Hollywood style. It may not be elevating but it surely is thought-provoking and as the saying goes "why should boys have all the fun."

HOME