Bollywood - Telling tales, The

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

The 70's was about big-side-locks, large-collars, huge-glares, the movie focused mainly on household stories, a worried father, a loving-caring mother, a job-less son, a soon-to-be-married daughter and a girl next-door. The story usually revolved around the son and the girl next-door, they fall in love, dance around the trees. Generally in between the song-and-dance-sequences, flowers-kissing-scene on screen is default. In between court-room dramas, the top-of-voice screaming lawyers, "me lord, me lord", judge with a little work to do, few lines, "order, order", and finally the most awaiting verdict, hair raising event, goons get punished and the hero gets "baa ijjat bary". Finally guy happy, girl happy, Happy-Ending.

The 80's was mostly about the angry-young-man, mother a widow, helpless. The story used to start with the hero being in his early years, father a drunk wife-basher, then the father dies or gets killed. The second part generally focuses on the raising of a child by a hard working widow-mother; mother struggles, child struggles. The role of the child becomes a shoe polisher, gets noticed by a man-and-wife, if it's his lucky day, he gets adopted. Third part and the most elongated part, the child grows up as a messiah, a Savior of the poor. Generally becomes a police inspector or a thug, but the role is to rescue dreaded people from the hands of the abettors, the mafias, or to bring justice to the poor junta from the hands of corrupt politicians. The dialogs were really hair-raising and powerful, audience used to somehow relate to the situations and dialogs. In between medical-dramas, hero meets near death circumstances, after getting shot six times, rushed to hospital, gets miraculously saved by next-to-god-like-figure 'doctor'. Finally, hero gets saved, junta happy, Happy-Ending.

The 90's witnessed musicals, flamboyant villains. The sadistic villain-hero is after college love or after the gangster for some grudge. Lot of inspiration is driven from west, the inspiration was so deep that it had to be enacted exactly scene-by-scene and the dialogs verbatim, translated word-by-word. An exodus from modeling to acting was witnessed. Later, movies based on underworld gangsters were huge successes. People used to relate with these characters because of the violence, the religious wars, the class divide, in our society undergone by every individual. Finally, junta happy, Happy-Ending.

The early 20's was all about big budget movies, larger than life sets, topless-hero's and bikini-swim-suit-heroines, the focus was on making quick buck, the work of the costume designer became far more easier. On the make or break day, the buzz was all about how many kisses did the audience enjoy, which captured headlines of the dailies, became breaking news all over the media, full-length debates were conducted discussing the morale of the situation. Originality is nowhere seen on the screen no more. Finally Producers happy, junta happy, Happy-Ending.

Because of the deteriorating quality of movies and acting, I am not much happy. Large pool of the urban audience is now switching their interests, including me. We soon recognize this crisis and hope for better quality movies in future.