Bollywood attitude to World Cinema: I pee on you!

By Thor Ganguly Unlike past years, the Indian Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival last month was for once not embarrassing: no collapsing tents or Ministry of Culture people unsure of what movie poster they’re standing in front of (but are supposed to be promoting). This reprieve from national embarrassment sadly did not last. A cool party aimed at sharing ideas of our films Vs their films seemed to be going quite as planned. Everyone seemingly gathered to exchange notes on weighty issues, such as what world cinema worked in India, what Indian films worked abroad, etc. The crowd was a hip, diverse mix of European Indophiles, the cultured wealthy and globe-trotting Indians with a more than fleeting interest in seeing our cinema improve. [caption id=“attachment_21710” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Much has been written about how Bollywood has gone global but all this fuss begs real questions. AFP Photo”] [/caption] Perhaps unhappy with this show of competence, a middle-aged middle manager at a leading Bollywood studio proceeded to get thoroughly drunk. He began by espousing the greatness of India, and then veered into near-gibberish in front of his audience of art-house European Indophiles. He then attempted a sloppy flirtation with a Turkish editor in a low-cut dress, and followed it up with a valiant effort to break a glass on a waiter’s head. Sometime later — when he assumed the other guests had moved on to other boring subjects like future auteurs — he found himself a corner and proceeded to urinate. Much has been written about how Bollywood has gone global. German women scream for Shahrukh Khan in Berlin, Rajnikant has a statue in Japan, Yash Chopra has an honorary rank equal to a senior Minister in the Swiss government and so on. But all this fuss begs the real questions: do we really care about the rest of the world’s cinema and watch it? Do we really care about what they think of us? Or make an effort to be part of the world? To all of the above, the answer seems to be a big fat no. Bollywood globetrotters Through joint ventures, investments or just showing up at festivals with our films, Bollywood seems to be to making concerted effort to participate on the world stage – or so it seems. The reality on the ground, however, doesn’t quite measure up. Here’s how an indie film director describes his experience at the Toronto Film Festival:

When my film was at Toronto, I went with my producers, I was hoping they would be trying to cut deals with American cable operators or exhibitors (as everyone does at Toronto, the world’s biggest film market). But they essentially went shopping at malls everyday, didn’t catch a single film at the festival, and only showed up for my film. And then immediately went to an Indian nightclub because Akshay Kumar was expected.

Another disgruntled New York PR agent confirms this odd apathy that grips our Bollywood producers on foreign shores:

I had arranged a lunch for an Indian producer who had asked me specifically about making contacts in American movies. I arranged a lunch with the producer of The Social Network. This guy is impossible to get an appointment with, even for Oscar winning directors. He likes Ray movies, and he thought maybe there are more Rays this Indian producer will pitch him. But the whole time the Indian producer talked of some Indian actress who’s apparently the next Sharon Stone and she’s starred in some thriller involving a snake.

The question at Cannes or Sundance or The Oscars is essentially the same one that rears its head at The Olympics or World Cup soccer: why doesn’t a country of a billion people produce something world-class? Worlds apart Five, ten years ago no one in the Western film circuit knew of Bollywood. But that’s not true any more. Most Bollywood directors and producers, being very PR savvy, reach out and aggressively market their films. And yet, among the hot new directors that keep popping up at festivals every year and later go to Hollywood (Fateh Akin, The Koreans, Winterbottom, Florian Henckel Donnersmarck, PT Anderson, Innaritu, Fernando Meirelles and many many others), there isn’t a single Indian name. As global festival directors and Oscar/ Golden Globe nominators explain, the problem for their audiences is not — as was popularly believed in the past – the song and dance, or the craft (everyone agrees most Bollywood films now are technically at par), or the over-the-top storytelling. The real problem is a vast divide in world views. A former London Film Festival curator explains, _“_When I used to watch these movies submitted, the young people in my creative team would burst out laughing at a moment supposed to be deep, and get emotional at a moment I knew the director meant to be comic. It’s just 360 degrees to how we look at the world”. Indian cinephiles will in turn reply: why does one need global validation? World cinema is all about pretentious Thai directors with unpronounceable names, Iranians making extremely slow little narratives about children with balloons and French infidelity tales so subtle and existential that it’s impossible to tell what’s cheating on what. Those guys can all go stuff themselves. And Hollywood – with its hangovers, Hobbits, Green Hornets, pirates, and martial arts pandas – can do the same. No one cares if our films don’t make sense within your value system, Mr. Western Producer, because they sure as hell make sense to a billion-plus people on this planet. And who needs Hollywood-type superheros when we have action superhero Akshay Kumar or Frito Lays superhero Saif Ali Khan or comic T shirt superhero Ranbir Kapoor? Urinating on world cinema is perhaps a step too far, but the message from Bollywood is clear: you watch your films and we’ll watch ours. No matter how hard good samaritans on both sides try to bring the world closer, they remain stubbornly apart. And once in a while, the difference becomes so vast that cross-cultural interpretation entirely breaks down. “We loved this Indian film and we put it in our horror section. The characters were taking so much time between their dialogues, and walking so slowly, we thought they were ghosts,” reminisces a scheduler of an Italian film festival, “Later we found out from the director that is was a love story. And the characters were very much alive.” The movie? Rituparno Ghosh’s critically acclaimed Raincoat which won a National Film Award, and earned its heroine, Aishwarya Rai, a nomination for Filmfare’s Best Actress award.