The moment someone experiments with the art of cinema, the reactions are extremes! There will be a segment of the society which would love it & swear on it and the other wouldn’t shy away in showing their hatred towards it. The latest in the list of such victims is Vishal Bharadwaj’s Kaminey, which got extreme responses from public. Either they simply loved it or hated it; no one thought it was ‘just ok’ and I fall in the former bunch. The parallel parable of twin brothers wasn’t anything new to the Hindi cinema but the conviction & the vision with which Vishal Bharadwaj has done it, is simply magical. If you miss the first 15-20 mins of the film, munching your popcorn & taking your own happy time to settle down in your seat, you’ll find yourself completely lost in the La-La Land
But the bright side is Vishal Bharadwaj isn’t the only one to face such diametrically opposite remarks. It was always there in Bollywood, right from Satyajit Ray & V Shantaram’s era. You’ll not find anyone who’ll tell you the Ray’s Apu trilogy was ‘just ok’, in his case, most of us absolutely loved the films & there’re few who hated them from the word go, saying India is much more flourishing & rich than what Ray has always portrayed in his cinema. Similarly, when Mr. Shyam Benegal hit the marquee with the superlative Ankur (which, according to me, is one of the best Hindi film ever made) in 1974, critics like Khalid Mohammad entirely dismissed his kind of cinema from day one and the other slice of the society crowned Mr. Benegal as the father of New Age Cinema.
And if you think it’s only the case with the ‘art house’ or ‘meaningful’ cinema, think again! When Hum Aapke Hain Kaun released, most of the Indians went crazy & there was a euphoria created by the film. Suddenly, everyone wanted a big, joint family and Madhuri Dixit had been incorporated into every family’s world, everyone was either familiar with Nisha or wanted to know her more. Now she was not only a popular star but a hugely respected & immensely loved one! But there were people who hated the film, finding it too boring and irritating. I’m not saying that it was an experimental film but it came as a fresh, cold zephyr when Hindi cinema was producing revenge sagas & male dominated action thriller. Hence it was a brave attempt from Sooraj Barjatya to create something like HAHK in that era.
Also when Sanjay Leela Bhansali attempted Devdas, opinions were as different as cheese & chalk. Few fell in love with its grandeur & emotions and few find it too synthetic and a forced classic. It was again an experiment in terms of the scale. It was a never-seen-before range for a Hindi film & an ensemble cast which was worth to die for. His next two releases also faced the same reactions. Many thought that Black was over-the-top, pretentious and they loved to hate the film but most thought it has changed the idiom of Hindi cinema and consider it as one of the landmark films of Indian cinema. And when Bhansali tried to narrate a story in the form of a dark musical opera with Saawariya, people called it the worst film of the year and in this case 95% people hated it but the rest 5% was in awe of it completely. There can be as many examples as you want but if we try to analyse such reactions, the basic & very obvious reason would be population’s obdurate mind set towards the change. Though we all claim to like the changes & believe in experimenting but the truth is, when someone exposes you to the change, asks you to leave behind all pre-conceived notions & experience a never-before stance, it hits you like an intrusion to your subconscious, which has a comfort level with a certain kind of outlook (read cinema in our case). Hence when the first time we saw a smooch on-screen instead of two flowers, it shocked our guts because our film-makers made us comfortable with the flowers. When you see a Bollywood mother killing her own son (Mother India & Vaastav), it hits you because we’re comfortable with mother cooking “tumhari pasand ki kheer” for her son or burning midnight oil & stitching clothes so that her son can go for higher studies.
Though not completely evolved yet, I’m thankful that at least, Hindi films & their audience have grown up and I’m sure the evolution will be ‘coming soon’…films like Dev D, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, Kaminey, A Wednesday & Welcome To Sajjanpur etc. are being accepted by the audience and more than the acceptance, I’m happy to see that there is actually an audience for such films today.
But all this doesn’t mean that I don’t support our typical masala Bollywood films. There will always be a place for an Om Shanti Om, a Jab We Met and a No Entry but my only request to the makers is just in the name of “completely masala, paisa vasool” film, please don’t punish the audience with tortures like Kambakht Ishq, Chandni Chowk To China, Tashan & Ghajini etc. They’ve to respect the intelligence of the audience & audience also has to realize & clearly define their sensibilities.
The moment audience would stop taking all the crap from the stars & producers, Hindi cinema will be equally respected on the globe as any other film industry in the world.
