Bollywood movies have been cracking the top 10 on U.S. box
office charts a lot lately. That means now's a perfect time for a brief
primer on Indian cinema in general. To get an idea of the basics, read on.
| Although Indian cinema is one of the oldest world cinemas, and
the largest in terms of output, its evolution in parallel to the West with
little crossover until very recently leaves a lot of Western moviegoers with
the impression that it's daunting and inscrutable. But with a few simple
guidelines, any American movie buff should be able to explore Indian cinema,
particularly when it comes to the massive Hindi-language industry based in
Mumbai commonly known as "Bollywood." |
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| Bollywood movies have been cracking the top 10 on U.S. box
office charts a lot lately (the most recent one, "Yeh Jawaani Hai
Deewani," peaked at #9 in June). That means now's a perfect time for a
brief primer on Indian cinema in general. To get an idea of the basics, read
on. |
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| There's More To Indian Cinema Than "Bollywood" |
| The term "Bollywood," though often inaccurately
conflated with Indian cinema as a whole, refers just to the Hindi-language
industry in the city of Mumbai. There are several different regional film
industries throughout the country, each in a different language; the most
prominent ones are Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and Kannada languages. The
regional cinemas share a variety of common tropes (music, dancing, fabulous
costumes, high melodrama, et cetera, ad infinitum), with noticeable differences;
in a general sense, the south cinemas, Telugu and Tamil in particular, are
more floridly rowdy than the comparatively restrained Bollywood industry. The
highest paid star in Asia after Jackie Chan is the Tamil-language star
Rajinikanth, also known as "Superstar Rajinikanth" -- who, when
such things were in vogue, featured in the Indian version of Chuck Norris
jokes, owing to Rajinikanth's similarly titanic dominance over all forms of
cinematic villainy. |
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| 2013 Marks the Centennial of Indian Cinema (Or Close Enough) |
| The centennial of Indian cinema is being observed this year
because of the 1913 feature-length "Raja Harishchandra," an
adaptation of Sanskrit epics. From there a rich cinematic tradition emerged,
with Indian films being recognized for their global commercial appeal as
early as the twenties, and through on to the present day. |
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| Political
influences (see the next point) led the Indian film industry -- which is not
to say filmmakers themselves -- to evolve in direct but discrete parallel to
their Western counterparts: The Golden Age of production was roughly
concurrent with the various New Waves in Europe, the rise of blockbusters in
the 1970s coincided with the time they took off in America, and so on.
Increasingly in the 21st century, there's been a tendency, particularly in
Bollywood, to emulate American and European films (shortening running times,
cutting musical numbers, etc.), though this has yet to carry over to the
regional cinemas, which still proudly flaunt their idiosyncrasies. |
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| Know Your Indian History |
| A great deal of the creative isolation of early Indian cinema,
and the development of its own set of rules largely separate from those of
the other world cinemas, dates back to regulations the British government
established to promote British films over American ones (in the days when
Britain ruled India). After winning political independence from Great Britain
in 1947, the national film industries, already aesthetically independent,
remained that way. |
| Beyond the aesthetic impact of politics, the thematic content of
many Indian films naturally reflects Indian history and politics. Countless
films deal with rebellions against the British, or remember rebellion against
the British fondly. The partition between India and Pakistan is a frequent
subject as well, with political tensions between the two countries providing
stories for everything from Cold War-style espionage between the two
countries to doomed romances between an Indian boy and a Pakistani girl, to
-- this being India -- both at the same time. |
| Even a cursory, surface-level understanding of events like this
can help greatly in understanding the context of Indian films -- not because
they'd be incomprehensible without it, but because they are made, for the
most part, for Indian audiences familiar with all these events, so
occasionally details are elided to avoid over-explaining. It's not that one
can't “get” Indian films without that, it just helps one get them in a
different way. |
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| Masala: What Is It and Why Is It So Awesome? |
| Not all Indian films are masala films, but masala films are
uniquely Indian. Masala films are the cinematic equivalent of the melange of
spices used in Indian cooking that provide the name. Every conceivable genre
is thrown into the pot -- meaning the screenplay -- and cooked up by the
director. It makes perfect sense: In making a movie for the whole family to
see, what Hollywood calls a four-quadrant blockbuster, why not throw every
existing film genre into the mix? |
| With multiple genres happening simultaneously -- let's say, a
romance subplot, a comedy subplot, and a melodrama subplot all alternating
under the auspices of an action adventure main plot -- there are, invariably,
tonal shifts that can take some getting used to. Everything is heightened:
the hero's heroism, the heroine's beauty, the villain's evil. |
| Another, simpler way to look at masala is as you would approach
Shakespeare, or any classical dramatic literature: sudden thunderstruck true
love next to low comedy next to high drama next to history. And, when
necessary, sword fights. |
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| Songs! |
| In 2009's "Wanted," hero Salman Khan saunters into a
warehouse full of bad guys and proceeds to very thoroughly beat the crap out
of every last one of them, single-handedly. He then saunters back out of the
warehouse and lip-syncs a song about what a badass he is, with dozens of
backup dancers, bright colors, and a drop-in by fellow movie star Anil Kapoor
(who doesn't appear at all in the rest of the movie, he's just coming by to
say hi). At the end of the song, Salman Khan is successfully established as
The Star. |
| Songs in Indian cinema don't necessarily have anything to do
with the story, though they can, but they're usually just there because…well,
who doesn't like music and want to see stars dancing? A special subset of
this is the item number, a showcase for a particularly attractive female
performer who may -- but more often may not -- appear in the rest of the
movie. These are mainly for marketing coups for certain music labels, but
when done well can be works of art in themselves. |
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| Singers! |
| Contrary to the trend in Western musicals, where great care is
taken to have the actors themselves sing -- regardless of whether they
actually can -- Indian films have not only never made any effort to hide the
fact that nearly all of their songs are lip-synced (with rare exceptions made
for stars who actually can sing, or are famous enough that their desire to is
indulged). |
| The artists, called playback singers, who provide the stars'
singing voices -- like Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, or
Sukwinder Singh (to name but a tiny fraction) -- are as legendary as the
faces on the screen. There is no question of "settling" for a
career as a playback singer, but it can be every bit as prestigious as
acting. |
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| What Makes A
Bollywood Star A Star? |
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| One of the ways in which the Indian film industries, and in
particular Bollywood, resemble classic Hollywood is in their systemic
manufacture and cultivation of movie stars. Like Hollywood, the history of
Bollywood is rife with failed star launches. |
| On the other hand, when it works, it really works. This is
partly because of the heightened nature of so many Indian movies, but also in
part due to the institutional support they receive in maintaining their
glamor and larger-than-life image. Indian movie stars really feel like movie
stars. Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor, Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna, Dev
Anand, Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, The Three Khans (Aamir, Salman,
Shahrukh). Madhubala, Waheeda Rehman, Asha Parekh, Shamila Tagore, Parveen
Babi, Zeenat Aman, Hema Malini, Rekha, Sridevi, Kajol, Madhuri Dixit,
Aishwarya Rai, Rani Mukerji, Kareena Kapoor. |
| Stars, even more so than in the West, essentially play
themselves; heroes will be introduced in dramatic low-angle shots to make
them look thirty feet tall, heroines lit glowingly as divine visions. Some
films lay it on thicker than others, but there's never any question about who
the stars are. |
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| The Release Schedule Has, Let's Say, Some Quirks |
| Some aspects of the release calendar may look familiar to
American audiences: Big holiday blockbusters come out on Eid (the holiday
commemorating the end of Ramadan), sort of like the way they do during U.S.
holidays. Less familiar is the way Bollywood in particular basically shuts
down during cricket season. While the Indian Premier League is on, very few
releases of any consequence hit theaters, a dry period comparable to January
in the American film industry. |
| The Hindi industry's version of the Oscars, the Filmfare Awards,
skew slightly more populist (which would delight all the authors of "the
Oscars are out of touch with popular taste" thinkpieces that raise
everyone's blood pressure each year). More importantly, the Filmfares give
out an award for "Best Action," which is just wonderful. |
| Parallel Cinema: Indies and Arthouse Cachet |
| Ironically, a lot of Western film lovers have an easier time
with Indian arthouse and indie fare, both of which are known as
"parallel cinema" in India. (That's an ironic title given the
parallel evolution of the American and Indian film industries.) These titles
favor naturalistic/realistic approaches. Some filmmakers known as parallel
cinema filmmakers will employ elements of pop cinema, like songs and movie
stars. One such example is Mani Ratnam's 1998 film "Dil Se," which
starred Shahrukh Khan, and blended serious political commentary with a
lyrical romantic tragedy. |
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| The most famous name in this movement is the great Bengali
auteur Satyajit Ray, one of the most celebrated filmmakers in the world, let
alone south Asia. The height of Ray's career coincides, by no accident, with
the Golden Age of Indian cinema, stretching roughly from independence until
the 1960s. Indian art cinema today often recalls American
"Indiewood" films of the late 1990s and early-to-mid-2000s: a
hybrid of arthouse and pop, backed by the industry itself but maintaining
distance from mass-market blockbusters. Like their American counterparts,
some are better than others, with the best quite good and the worst not very. |
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| It All Comes Down to Family |
| In too many mainstream Hindi films to count, the big tough hero
who can throw cars with his mustache and is master of all that he surveys
comes home to find his mother yelling at him about his lack of
responsibility, his need to get married and other pedestrian concerns. It's
not just something that's played for laughs, either. |
| Generally (in mainstream films at least), in a choice between an
individual and either a literal family or a group standing in for one, the
moral point of view expressed is that the family/group should come first and
nearly always does. For Americans, maybe the most individualistic people in
history, this is occasionally a tough pill to swallow -- but more than any of
the other items on this list, it's essential that one understands the source
of this ingredient before approaching these films. |
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For American audiences, Indian films offer a cultural challenge
unlike others posed by different foreign cinemas. Because of the relative
isolation of the Indian film industries with regard to the West, since it
took almost a century before any broad tendency to emulate other film
cultures arose, India occupies a unique place in film culture, one
every cinephile should explore. With the right mindset, immersion in these
waters can be a wonderful experience indeed.
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