Contemporary Indian Cinema, our Society and Youth
Watching Indian films and making films in India can be inordinately difficult if one’s thoughts and sensibilities are radically different from those of the accepted Indian society. A society gets the kind of cinema it deserves and therefore the popular mainstream cinema that rakes the moolah in Bollywood is just the kind of stuff the popular and mainstream Indian society deserves. After all, movies are made to cater to the audience.
The Indian society, its politics and governance, the societal morality and founding dictums are so hypocritic, prejudiced, biased, un-objective, anti reason and closed that it’s a miracle that Indian cinema occasionally gets the incandescence of some of the most brilliant work that celluloid has ever captured. For Indian cinema to undergo revolutionary change and produce quality content as a rule and not as exception, the consumer base has to go through the revolutionary change first. First the society has to shed off the inhibition and resistances it has been using to bind and constrain the original sin of question and search.
Despite the society and its soul remaining largely unchanged and unaffected, there have been waves of rennaisance in Indian Cinema. We have had visionary film makers like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen etc. and I’m sure a good number of other film makers who, despite the inheritances of the Indian society, Indian commerce and the factors which are imposed by default, still managed to produce cinema
that’s truly world class. It’s a scary thing to think what kind of movies they’d have made if they could be set free from the frame work that they had to work within. Ray’s “My Days with Apu” and some excerpts from Mihir Bose’s “History of Bollywood” are testaments to what film makers with
originality and vision in India had to go through. As a consequence, their work is only indicative and should not be taken as complete reflection of their capability.
My disgruntlement with Indian system as a whole is beyond the scope of Film making in general and this article in particular.
But the question that bothers me is how does the prevailing scenario affect the future of Indian film making, the intellectual Indian Youth who are in the transition spectrum of becoming film makers. Yes we have the likes of Dibakar Banerjee, Anurag kashyap and Nagesh Kukunoor from the youth brigade who are inspirational figures for the people whose voices I raise.
The likes of Sudhir Mishra, Santosh Sivan, Mani Ratnam, Govind Nihlani and Shyam Benegal might all be mighy reassuring too. Both in the past and in present, there are some outstanding example of survivors who’ve lived and whose art has lived to tell the improbable tales of victory. Their story is
the story of the victory of the human spirit against all odds. But an Youth of today, when he looks at the market dynamics and functioning of the indian film industry, doesn’t he think many times before taking up film making as something he’d want to do for the rest of his life? For an outsider, Bollywood
and Indian politics seem like similar machineries.
I’ve no doubt that for a huge quantum of the creative populace, the very fact that film making and all of its major disciplines like Cinematography, screenplay and etc are passions of such intensity that whether or not to jump into film making is not the real question, the actual question is when.
I’m really not bothered about that part of the populace. What really bothers me is the question as to what happens to that sizable number whose originality of vision and sensibility could take Indian cinema forward but unfortunately their intelligence might be leading them to pursue a different path which might
promise more chances of success? An intellectual thinker in India who’d intelligently ponder about the odds, would rather decide to take up writing as a profession than join film making. The very fact that high quality cinema is produced so few and far between in India is an indicator of the fate such people here have to go through.
For every Anurag Kashyap that you know and Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi that You see, there are a thousand unsung characters and their work which have been lost for ever.
The core ideologies of a societal framework plays a vital role in the panning out of any major discipline that has an interface and feedback relation with the society. In a society where respect is a function of success and age rather than merit and potential, where the definition of being good lies in the
conformity of lack of question, where linear obedience is a virtue, where our gods and their qualities are not subject to reason and objectivity, our moralities – axiomatic and
unaccountable to reason, I really don’t see a lot of hope for a change in the languidness of pace the frequency of Quality cinema exhibit.
Hope is not such a bad thing as was told to “Dear Red”. And so, hopefully Indian society would go forward. But I think just as the society has to go forward by a massive quantum to push the film making forward, I think film making has also got to push the society forward. The initiation would meet resistance and potential failure but constant persuasion of pushing the envelope would stand film making in India in definitive good stead.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Nice well thought provoking article on pfc after long time. I like this line very much-”The very fact that high quality cinema is produced so few and far between in India is an indicator of the fate such people here have to go through.”
It’s difficult to be what we really are… but at least we can try to be what we are.
You’ve rightly said it’s matter of when.
congratulations on writing the longest sentence on PFC
Hi Dabba, thanks for letting me know :D
It was unintentional and undetected thus far!!
Contemporary Indian culture is the least sophisticated of all major cultures. While democracy has its advantages it has also allowed culture to be shaped by the lowest common denominator.Indians seems to be easily overawed by over the top sentimentality and mindless glamour.
Since India missed the boat in shaping its own unique modern cultural identity due to no cultural isolation for incubation the only solution is to imitate the West and hope for the best.
To the person above me: aren’t you being way to cynical and at the end of the day unfair and WRONG! Every society has its pitfalls. Does not mean that the answer lays in aping another one and “hoping for the best
“
i don’t think soceity is progressing and i don’t think it will.all i see around are people who try to be intellectuals but really r psuedos(i m talking about young people). they don’t seem to to stand for anything n just try to be superior than each other in words then thoughts.according to me n my experience at present things in this country r pretty much onth way to decay, these not depressive thoughts but reality as i see it.may be too much of materialism or smthing else the youth doesn’t care about anything else than there own luxeries.
Aman??!
I absolutely agree when u say that youths try to outdo each other and feel superior in words rather than thoughts!
That problem is most likely a universal one.
And it’s so damaging, it’s worse than the caste system!
But equally, we have individuals who are not trying to compete with others by constantly demanding a pedastal.
Individuals who try and just get on with their own thing, without demeaning others.
They, u could say, are the ‘Society Rejects’.
Which, let’s face it, ain’t such a bad thing.
I don’t know why the response from producers dry down when you take up any socialist subject or reformist/nationalistic plot even if you weave ample entertainment in it. They don’t realise that entertainment comes in many forms and format; not just love story, dance, sex and family drama.
It’s high time when we weave divergent subject with entertainment.
@5
Oh so you think we don’t have any culture at all ,a typical answer from an average Indian who hasn’t read history at all and takes whatever is shown in the media today at face value.
Just because we weren’t so heartless as to slaughter the immigrants who came to our land (read the american history ,they slaughtered 5 million native Indians so that they could preserve their own culture and the europeans who thought that God himself had declared their race as the superior one) ,all cultures change and integrate and metamorphose ,take a look at the Japanese ,they gave up the Kimono and the Katana for Jeans and Gun ,but still they are Japanese aren’t they ,a mere 50 years of bollywood movies doesn’t demean or denigrate our culture which is 5000 year old and has sustained many and much more than what the world has thrown at it.
thanks! steve. i agree with u when u say being social rejects ain’t such a bad thing as i m also one of them, but they ralways minority.
@ steve. i m a regular reader .Well studying as of now, the struggle begins soon..
The way I see it… the Indian film industry comprised primarily of two kinds of people…The ones who are into this coz they are not good enough for any other profession…and the other part are those who dont want to be in any other profession. Unfortunately the latter part is a miniscule population and hence very few films which exude passion for story-telling and furthering the cinematic art.
However, this is not entirely a bad thing coz I believe that the high entry barriers into the film industry does weed out a lot of mediocre people with ‘creative’ illusions.
Yeah maybe a lot of could-be-great story-tellers too shy away looking at the alarmingly low chances of success, but then this is a high-risk high-return game. And am not even talkin money… everyone who wants to make films for the right reasons is taking a shot towards greatness…to be a Ray or a Speilberg or a Truffaut..or whoever… and that shot at greatness should not come easy, coz i was never meant to be…
Though i wanted to write something else.
but when i read @13 Ashish.B ’s comment.
“everyone who wants to make films for the right reasons is taking a shot towards greatness…to be a Ray or a Speilberg or a Truffaut..or whoever… and that shot at greatness should not come easy, coz i was never meant to be…”
That makes a lot of sense, is motivational and eye-opener too.
I remember, when i read biographies of many famous ppl in any field, this is evident.
Talent+Passion both are important, and to become great and unique, one has to fight against many odds.
When i try to remember now abt the famous ppl in many fields, i find that they had to face many difficulties.