Dear southern cartel, Bollywood is doing fine, thank you

Agreed, 2022 was an all-time low for Hindi cinema. But does it mean we should start writing epitaphs for Bollywood? Yash of KGF’s remark—that we should not “disrespect” Bollywood—smacks of condescension.

Just who is “disrespecting” Bollywood? If the audience rejected many of Bollywood’s products in 2022 it doesn’t mean Hindi cinema is losing ground. Inversely , if a handful of South films did well across India, it doesn’t follow that Tamil-Telugu-Kannada cinema has replaced Hindi cinema as the pan-India food for the soul.

And just who are these replacement magicians from the South who are giving Hindi cinema a run for its money? Rajamouli’s RRR, Rishab Shetty Kantara and Yash’s KGF? Is there more? Oh yes, something titled Karthikeyan 2 which is a terrible film , an amateurish wannabe Indian Jones .

Even RRR and Kantara sailed through on the strength of their cultural specificity. India is urgently reclaiming its Hindu identity and these two films cashed in on the growing national sentiment .

As for Yash’s KGF. Both the films in the Franchise are terrible products. Loud violent aggressive and sexist in tone, KGF has no respect for any of the basic rules of cinema. It is more like a hypnotic chant from a adolescent video game where the mumbling hero is the anti-social messiah of the downtrodden. It didn’t matter what the hero was saying, or doing. His presence alone defined the film’s arrogantly proletarian tone.

RRR is visually striking, remarkably so. But its nationalism and anti-colonial war cry is as bogus as in Manmohan Desai’s Mard in which, we may recall with a squirm, dogs and Indians were not allowed in colonial clubs. RRR was Mard without Bob Christo’s risibly raucous colonial villainy.

But there were plenty of villainous White colonists in RRR , all trying to be the Bob Christos of this millennium. And if Mard had Amitabh Bachchan, so did RRR; we couldn’t recognize him as he was split into two heroes,both prancing around and heckling the gora log and behaving like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire,as though to show that the ‘song’ never set on the British Raj.

I am not saying I didn’t enjoy RRR and Kantara. I did. I loved their mass appeal and their indefatigable energy. But they are not great films. They are certainly not a threat to Bollywood. Sure, Hindi cinema had a bad year. But we did have blockbusters Brahmastra, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, Gangubai Kathiawadi, and Drishyam 2.

2023 starts with Pathaan which will do for Shah Rukh Khan what Cirkus couldn’t do for Ranveer Singh. Ranveer needn’t worry . He has Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani coming up . Then there is Kartik Aaryan’s Shehzada redefining the mass-entertainment space with his supreme swag. Here is a prediction: these Hindi films will be so huge they will effectively obliterate the slur of 2022.

All these three films in the first quarter of 2023 will decimate the disastrous boxoffice performance of 2022. So please, dear South, stop feeling sorry for Bollywood. You have made hit films. You haven’t made great films in 2022 anywhere except in Kerala.

That’s a different story.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.

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