This is a rewriting of a post dated April 4, 2007. The blog output is so low these days that I am resorting to rewrites! ( in fact, I’m busy with other things...)

I don’t know if you’re like me, but most people around me still don’t really appreciate my interest for Bollywood. I haven’t made many converts! They still think it’s a sort of fad, it’s not very serious; all these soppy melodramatic films, that aren’t worth the time spent watching them. Or (worse) they simply aren’t bothered, and leave me to my obsession. They’ve gotten used to it! Some of them still didn’t know, and when they discover, they look at me with a mixture of surprise and disappointment. “You too! You’re interested in this Indian stuff?” They’ve seen Slumdog, and sometimes Lagaan and Devdas, but that’s it, and don’t see the interest of spending more time justifying their impression they know what it’s all about.

So now that I’ve seen all those movies (150?), read those books, thought about the phenomenon, and exchanged with filmi lovers around the world, what can I tell them? Should I just say: they’re short-sighted, they don’t know, and that’s the end of it? Does the distinction between “Bollywood” and “Indian cinema” solve the problem? Should I focus on masala only? There are certain aspects of Bollywood masalas that are a waste of time. And it seems to me, more and more, as I reflect on them now. I probably can stand less fooling around now I have become accustomed to it, and even less star-gazing. Especially as the amount of star-surface is increasing more and more too! It’s been some time I haven’t seen a recent production, but there you are, watching the oldies has inoculated in me a vaccine against the cheaper or more flashy recent pictures. OR, the more recent ones have turned that way, simply from having seen the older ones.

Of course, I remember feeling that refreshing simplicity of story-telling, and not minding simple feelings expressed truly and convincingly. I had arrived at a moment in life when a dose of gaiety and fun was welcome. And love was just great! Silly to say, perhaps, but around 50, you have that soft spot, don’t you, that still feels soft, when perhaps you thought it had hardened! I’m an intellectual, but I’m like most people, I like feeling that divine emotion and watching its progress, its difficulties, its various steps. I don’t mind a sad ending, if it’s justified. Love is not always successful. But it’s always love. The previous post, on Roja, shows that perfectly.

I still marvel about the masala mix of music, dancing, and colours. And all that craziness, and that popular celebration of life. “Whatever works”, says Woody Allen, and yes, there’s some truth in that. Bollywood works because people need fun and joy, perhaps even more than principles and rules. Or at least, you need them both. You know, the old carnival thing. The stories can be exaggerated to the point of silly superficiality. But the beauty of those splendid homes, the clothes, the lights, the luxury: why not, who cares? Even if it’s prepared for the cinema, I also appreciate the  village atmospheres, where poor people are more tired, more frequently ill, less educated of course, etc. I know this is more often the “real” India. The films that hint at these realities with the right dosage aren’t perhaps as frequent (but I don’t really know, I’m guessing), but probably present all the same.

And of course in the course of these three or so years of passion, I have been blessed by the discovery of beauty and meaning, which are the two pillars of art. Such movies as Bandini, Teesri Kasam, Shree 420, Deewar, Charulata, Agantuk, to name a few, are like the capital cities of the countries in a newly discovered continent (In a similar way, the first emotionally charged Bollywood blockbusters I saw in the beginning have seared themselves up there too). I’m grateful (and almost ashamed I waited so long) for having known people like Satyajit Ray, Yash Chopra, Shyam Benegal, Nargis, Nutan, Waheeda Rehman, the Kapoors, Naseerji, Shabanaji, Amitabh, among the best. They are now part of me, I cannot forget what they have given me.

Then there’s the music. Over here in the West, some people find Bollywood voices too shrill, too sharp, especially some women’s voices. How is that? Taste again, of course, but there is such a variety of them! Not every voice sounds like Lata Mangeshkar! I for one am a devout admirer of the great lady. She’s truly amazing. Shreya Ghoshal I love also, but Lata – this morning I was listening to… never mind the title. Her voice, that of an old lady when she sang that song, I knew it, came out, pure as a mountain spring, and I just mused, and wondered. There are some tunes that I whistle all the time, that are catchy, pleasant, musical, everything! What I particularly like in a number of songs is that “elevated” part of the song, when something rises within it, transcends the succession of refrains and establishes a sort of celestial moment at the centre of the song, before one is brought down to earth again. This happens for example in Tumhi dekhon naa, by Alka Yagnik and Sonu Nigam. I also appreciate very much the sort of explosion of voices all combined at the end of certain songs (Saajan saajan saajan, by Alka Yagnik and Kailash Kher). But of course most of all the duet-sung melodies are the secret of Bollywood songs. These days I’m listening to a selection by Shreya Ghoshal, pure delight (Gache je dur chole mon niye, saat ranga ek pakhi, Shono chochk melo…)

I’ll leave the concluding paragraph of that post I’m replacing:

I will finish by speaking about the joy and the liveliness of some of the films I like most. I believe the Indian cinema is beneficial to the world. Well, some of it, at least. I don’t watch a lot, but the films that I love contain a particular optimism which I declare necessary for this planet of ours. This prescription is a mixture of respect for things like love, friendship, family, emancipation, dreams, a taste for beauty and life, for happiness and success, among other things. When I see films in which dancing and music are so important, I know that they are what is important. Our life here is not that dramatic that we cannot sing and dance. We must not forget to sing, we must continue to dance. We must not hesitate to play with the colours and spend our money to organise those lavish weddings, because abundance of life is shown by such extravagance. If we count and weigh, we will not be joyful. Joy goes with a certain expense!  The Indian cinema is an energetic and generous cinema, a joyful cinema, respectful of people and of nature, on the whole. There are some ferments within it that might vulgarise it and spoil its spirit, but this spirit is great, and I love it.

 

I recently heard a journalist ask the question « Is Bollywood nothing more than a cinema made for India, or is there something universal about it?” – and I thought this question deserved a little post. Every one knows for a fact that the Indian cinema is the most productive one in the world, because of the amount of movies a year (is it still 800?) and of course the sheer size of the audiences. I say audiences because the crowds in the South, East and Centre are almost as huge as in the North, and from what I’m told, the penetration of US movies as yet cannot rival. So this raises the question of its local dimension, its adaptation to a public who needs a certain type of entertainment, and the question of the exportability of Bollywood.

In fact I’m not interested here in the figures of the industry’s success in other parts of the world than India. But is Indian cinema universal? Or rather, does it contain enough universal characteristics? Er… and what is “universality”?!  Is it the same thing as worldwide fame? Or does it refer to general recognition? Gone with the wind? Or Titanic? But these are surely typically American, no? What makes them also universal? Probably, something we could recognize in them which appeals to all of us, no? Well at least, most of us. In the two above examples, the beauty of the love-story, because love is a universal emotion. So, if a film deals with that sort of basic human feelings, it would have a chance of being universal: anger, fear, ambition, lust, hate… Yes, but it would need something else too, something like representativity, which would enable people in Japan, Belgium and Chile to feel it refers to them in spite of their irreconcilable cultural differences. What is this artistic quality which enables a culturally defined movie (work of art) to belong to humanity as a whole? Is it not “style”? So (next question…) what’s style?

We’re a little far away from Indian cinema, perhaps? Well, perhaps not: who knows if we couldn’t find that ingredient, style, in some Indian films. Style means personality, doesn’t it? And so we’d have to go in the direction of great directors with that element too. If by watching a film, you were able to say: that’s Satyajit Ray’s style, or that Guru Dutt’s way of filming, and of course if the movie contained a story which everybody would relate to, wouldn’t we have something universal there?

Well, I know of many such universal works – in fact, that’s what I’ve been pursuing in this blog! (Not a surprise, is it?) For example Shree 420, whose universality comes from its profoundly human portrait of man and society, of hope and despair. Or Teesri Kasam, that simple story of love and loss. Bimal Roy’s Bandini, watched recently, would certainly fit in the category, too, for its daring excursion in the mind of an unconventional young woman, whose beauty and purity, rooted in her Indianness, transcends it.  For that is the key element: a universal work of art is not universal because it is so general that all nations could appropriate it (if such a work of art exists), but it’s universal in so far as all other nations see (for example) an Indian film that deals with a collective issue which has found a new and well defined expression thanks to Indian culture. One country’s art forms enable a facet of our human nature to be revealed or dramatized in such a way as we can all recognize it as familiar.

It’s logical that the examples of movies I have provided are from the fifties and the sixties. Up to a certain extent, you need the test of time to say whether great contemporary movies can be called universal: here it’s a little bit like “classic” films. Time does two things to works of art: it elevates them (above the rest of the other works of art of the same period, which become secondary or are forgotten), and it classifies them (the way people refer to them put them in categories where it wasn’t necessarily so clear they belonged when they came out – it’s perhaps easier for movies). Because with time passing, history has been described, and taught. We would now refer to Mother India as a tragic epic with the mother-figure of Indian society held up high for everyone to recognize; but who knows if back in 1957, it wasn’t as much the leftist political message that was clear, because of the specific situation of post-independence.

Success does have a certain relationship with universality, nevertheless. Even if critics could decide, in their beautiful isolation that such and such a movie was a universal one, it would be difficult to accept without a certain element of success. People might throng to see a well-advertised film, and enjoy it because it corresponds to the spirit of the moment, but if the success is lasting (time is a much better judge than space because today even pigmies in the centre of Africa can watch Rambo dubbed in their own language), then the movie belongs perhaps to the list.

The problem today is that we rarely have the opportunity to need to see an “old” film again: there are so many enticing new ones all the time! So I wonder about the spectator’s notion of universality, and I half suspect it to be tainted by Hollywoodian marketing tricks. I wouldn’t be surprised, for example, if someone told me that a universal movie must be packed with action and emotion, possess a clear and suspenseful story, and, all in all, be a good commercial success. If an American audience can be talked into watching a film from anywhere else in the world, it must surely be a universal film! Well, enough said for now. But feel free to leave your impressions and reactions on that subject.

Yash Chopra… Say this name and immediately vast landscapes appear, green slopes where lovers mirror their gaze in the other’s eyes, enchanting music lifts up a crowd of spring birds, dark men march towards their destiny, violence smoulders in the heart, suffering mothers obey their dharma, and love reigns supreme in spite of all odds. Mr Chopra’s reputation as an incurable romantic is so ingrained that it’s difficult to start with something very different! You might as well adore him or hate him, in fact. YC is Bollywood at its best, or at its worst. And love, melodrama… with so banal a theme, such a typically Bollywoodian feature, why does the man stand out? Where does the legend (and the money) come from?

What’s interesting in his profile is the relatively limited number of films, and the stupendous number of blockbusters. This Indian director, born in 1932, has done only 21 movies? How come such a sparse output – yet over such a long timespan - has been so successful? I know of a few other such directors, Stanley Kubrick, for example. But Indian film directors? In the prolific Bollywood culture, there can’t be that many. Yash Chopra has the rare gift of making a landmark film out of every opus he directs, or nearly. One might say he’s managed to find the mix of story and spectacle his audience was ready for. One might add he’s got that skill to be as true and evocative with social-political films as well as with love movies. He’s also associated with the greatest actors of the moment, mainly Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan for the men; and Sridevi, Rekha, Waheeda Rehman, Madhuri Dixit, among others, for the ladies. I would also add that he’s associated with the greatest musicians, Sanjeev Kholi, Hariprasad Chaurasia and ShivKumar Sharma, notably.

All this would be true. But I think it’s basically a knack for passionate stories. Stories that work. Yash Chopra knows how to exploit and tell stories in such a way that he meets the public that’s here to appreciate them. Good stories that are going to be successful need to deal with people’s main interests in life: the passions and desires which everybody feels or wants to feel. Rebellion and courage, virtue and sacrifice, love and duty. And the romantic dimension is perhaps not so much in the privileged choice of love – even though one can’t deny the place of that type of story – but in the intensity of the passions shown to transform the protagonists’ lives. Passion: does that word summarise Yash Chopra? Idlebain.com (here) says that “tradition” is a very important determination with Yash Chopra. Passion can of course be traditional, and dealt with in a traditional way. The author of that review contends that Lamhe (1991) was his only iconoclastic film. Having not seen all YC’s movies, I couldn’t say he’s wrong, but somehow tradition carries a certain conservatism which doesn’t exactly fit with passion. There is a violence and a revolutionary spirit in passion which doesn’t care about tradition. Yash Chopra has successfully innovated in ways that might have helped define tradition (that’s his classicism), but certainly he’s recreated this tradition to the point of challenging it.

He’s not a total inventor. No artist ever is, in fact. In order to be judged innovative (hip and trendy are qualifications you often read concerning YC), you have to understand the traditions, and depart from them: do something sufficiently powerful that will redefine them and set a style which others will in turn take as a basis. So if for example, Deewar takes up the “angry young man” theme from Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer (1973), Yash Chopra has created a trendsetter which critics don’t attribute to his forerunner. I haven’t seen any other Bollywood mine-films, but certainly Kaala Patthar has the depth and guts of any competitor.

Sometimes his stories are artificial to the point of straining the belief of his spectators: Darr deals with such an obsessive lover that one wonders if they really exist in real life. And In Lamhe, the basis of the plot is very thin: you have to accept that a daughter can look exactly like her mother to make the story credible: a very rare situation, I’d say. Coincidences occur rather frequently in YC’s cinema, and I’d say, they’re often romantic coincidences, which are only one type of coincidence. A coincidence is in itself rare (otherwise it wouldn’t attract attention to itself that much), so a romantic one… But I think the director couldn’t car less. What he’s doing is using a plot, perhaps artificially created to work under the circumstances, and draw on the potential created by that plot. He doesn’t hesitate to add meaning thanks to coincidences which elevate the story to the level of myth, or legend. Veer’s prisoner number (786) in Veer-Zaara (it’s also Vijay’s dockworker plate number In Deewar) is an example everyone has noticed. It’s Allah’s holy number, and the film is about the need to unite Muslims and Hindus.

In stories of passion, says the director, anything can happen. It’s like tragedy, or mythology: we are no longer really in the everyday reality (movie-goers don’t mind suspending their disbelief we know that): passion justifies a level of experience which has its own uniqueness. Symbols flare up in such stories, whereas in realty, you’d probably have to draw other people’s attention to them, and to you, the decipherer. On this blog I’ve developed the symbol of water in Kaala Patthar: making a film enables you to weave together bits and pieces of experience and occurrences in such a way that the meaning it displays will depend on that assortment. Yash Chopra knows how to do that task with particular skill. His choice of characters, drawing from world myths and legends give his best films an interest and a lasting effect. So if he forgets that dimension, he quickly becomes manipulated by the fickleness of passing taste. For me, that’s what happened with Dil to pagal hai.

There is another structural element which YC implements in his best movies. Let’s let him explain:

"Relationships interest me because man is one creature who is capable of sane as well as insane behaviour. It's this nature of human beings that inspires and gives room for innumerable plots. Like in Daag (1973), Raakhee, who played the other woman, created all the drama, as did Rekha in Silsila (1981). In Aaina (1993) it was the jealous sister while in Darr (1993) it was the obsessive lover. So unlike other movies where a villain is added to create the problems, in my films villainy is substituted by a third angle." (reference)

Ah, here’s something Bollywood has to learn from the master: “a third angle”. I have in effect rarely seen mainstream Bollywood movies adopt that technique. Of course many Indian films have, but they were often socially oriented, fringe-type movies. Yash Chopra has succeeded in bringing this third angle into commercial hits. What’s a third angle? It’s a pole of interest which is neither good or evil, black or white, and is sufficiently developed to tilt the standard Manichaeism towards or more all-encompassing rendition of human experience. In Deewar, for instance, the third angle is Vijay’s swerving (and therefore very human) fight to reach self-justification. In Darr, it’s the unclassifiable obsession of the crazy lover. In Kaala Patthar, it could be Mangal’s course from utter villainy to sacrifice. All these diversions from easily identifiable Good & Evil create a third angle which adds the depth and the richness to the best of YC’s movies. And this notwithstanding a hero structure which is more three-polar and dual. Veer-Zaara gives us perhaps the best example of this structure. Not only do we really have three essential characters (Veer, Zaara, and Saamiya), but these characters are themselves included in a wider generational structure where elders shape the role and life of their “descendants”. The third angle, brilliantly personified by Rani Mukherjee’s woman lawyer character introduces a last item of reflection which Yash Chopra’s films have been recognised for.

Indeed, despite the formidable stature which YC possesses today, he has not always seemed recommendable and acceptable to all publics. We’ve already alluded to that commentator who declared Lamhe iconoclastic, because of the supposedly incestual nature of the main love concern. But that commentator has forgotten that Deewar was deemed as scandalous when it came out. The famous scenes including Amitabh and Parveen Babi in bed, for example. But Vijay’s character itself must have been difficult to deal with: he’s a vindicator of rights who turns bad, a victim as well as a perverted hero. And seen from a certain westernised angle, Yash Chopra’s stance in Veer-Zaara to reconcile India and Pakistan is politically-correct; but I wonder if all Indians agree. Finally, his decision to impersonate in Pooja (from Lamhe) a free woman who does not care about the possible incestuous undertones of her love interest was brave indeed given the financial costs of a YC film. So Tradition is not that welcome in his films, as we can see. Yash Chopra is more a maker of traditions than a follower. And yet he remains mainstream, he is recognised as one of the reigning kings of the masala type. No little feat.

PS: I have decided to say next to nothing about YC the producer, but naturally that aspect would have to be taken into consideration. Not to mention his father’s role in the Aditya phenomenon.

PS2: Sorry for the long delay at looking after this blog! And this after so many readers asked to "keep it up"! But I'm a teacher, and the back to school period has been particularly demanding this year...