Big little films get going

Saibal Chatterjee

Is the game any easier today than it was a few years ago? Ask any independent Mumbai filmmaker, and the answer will probably be the same. The production-distribution-exhibition system is still not overly receptive to unconventional cinematic ventures. So the challenges that lie ahead of industry outliers are many. But happily, more and more young filmmakers are learning to confront the hurdles on their own terms and find ways around them.

The past few weeks have been especially exciting for those that patronize cinema of a different timbre. The release of three exceptional films has stood out in the noise generated by big-banner Bollywood films — Amit V. Masurkar’s Newton, Kranti Kanade’s CRD and Milind Dhaimade’s Tu Hai Mera Sunday. Even as David Dhawan’s shockingly scrappy and sexist Judwaa 2 continued its unstoppable run at the boxoffice, these small films held their own in the multiplexes, raising hopes of better days for stories mined from real life.

That is not to say that big-banner potboilers are about to fall by the wayside, but the fact that films like Newton, CRD and Tu Hai Mera Sunday have joined other independent titles like Vikramaditya Motwane’s Trapped, Subhashish Bhutiani’s Mukti Bhawan, Konkona Sensharma’s A Death in the Gunj and Alankrita Shrivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha among the list of Bollywood releases of 2017 is a sure sign that the space for directors with voices and styles of their own is expanding.

Alankrita Shrivastava, whose Lipstick Under My Burkha made it to the movie halls after a protracted battle with the censors, told an interviewer recently: “I am not going to make conventional films not only because I am not interested in it but also because I don’t think I’ll bring anything new to the table. If I am making a film, I should be adding some value to the landscape of cinema.”  

That is precisely the motivation that is driving the likes of Kranti Kanade and Milind Dhaimade, both of whom have turned to inspiration to their own cities — Pune and Mumbai respectively — to make their recently released and lauded films. “The middle class is a great breeding ground for relatable narratives,” Dhaimade has been quoted as saying. 

None of the aforementioned releases banked upon saleable Bollywood stars. They were driven purely by solid content and top-draw acting. Rajkummar Rao carried Trapped, a one-man show, on his shoulders. Adil Hussain gave Mukti Bhawan its heft. And highly skilled ensemble casts propelled A Death in the Gunj and Lipstick Under My Burkha to critical success. All of these positives were equally on show in Newton, CRD and Tu Hai Mera Sunday.

It helped that these titles arrived in our midst after being feted internationally. Newton, a political drama starring Rajkummar Rao as a rookie election officer who is sent to a remote Chhattisgarh polling booth to ensure smooth voting in the face of serious challenges, won an award in the 2017 Berlin Film Festival before travelling to other major cinema showcases. Tu Hai Mera Sunday premiered at the BFI London Film Festival last year, while CRD was released in the US first owing to censorship-related issues in India.

The National Award-winning Kanade received offers for a digital release of CRD but decided to hang in there in order to ensure that his film would play in movie theatres. He says: “I think people deep inside their hearts want to connect with stories in the dark, on the big screen.”

That indeed is the guiding principle behind the latest films of Anurag Kashyap and Hansal Mehta. The former’s Mukkabaaz, which had its world premiere in Toronto and kicked off the 19thMumbai Film Festival, and the latter’s Omerta, also showcased in Toronto, are both lined up for release. While Mukkabaaz, a provocative tale of a low-case, small-town boxer taking on the sporting system as well as a mentor-turned-foe, features Vineet Kumar Singh in the titular role, Rajkummar Rao is the lead actor of Omerta, a dispassionate account of the life of terror mastermind Omer Sheikh.

Kashyap and Mehta have established their names as frontrunners in the Mumbai independent cinema arena. They enjoy enough clout to be able to muscle their way into the multiplexes. It is the gradually expanding pool of path-breakers that is truly buzzworthy. It is no longer a race of a handful of competitors. The field is widening, slowly but steadily.