’’If the whole world’s a stage, and we are all actors, then who are the audience?’’
The Indian Film Industry seems to be asking the same question every time. In fact, this has been the story for several years now. Most of the movies that are made in Bollywood usually flop, with less than 5% movies actually making profits. No wonder the film industry keeps wondering ’’who are the audience?”
However, from the past couple of years, the industry has witnessed a small revival of sorts. The decades of decadence has finally caused the film-makers to wake up, and start improving their quality of film-making. Hindi movies have surely come a long way since those horrible times in the 1980’s when Jeetendra and Mithun were the leading lights of some hopelessly clichéd, and ridiculously silly movies.
The current Bollywood generation of film-makers has a new found confidence, in being able to make different movies. Some have even ventured towards experimental movies, and have even pulled them off successfully. A new generation of young film-makers has infused freshness into movies that had been seriously threatened by the never-ending melodramas of the Subhash Ghais and Saawan Kumar Taks. Technology and awareness has lifted the Bollywood moviedom from the mediocrity that they had descended into for long years.
The new breed of directors has also realized the golden mantra ’’You can’t please everyone every time’’. In short, they target their movies to a niche audience, and live and die by them. You have the multiplex movies that are targeted for the up market yuppie audiences, with minimal melodrama, and a lot of trendy dialogues which the IT generation can easily relate to. You also have the ’’Parallel’’ movies which depict reality from a very dark angle, like the Madhur Bhandarkars and Prakash Jhas. And then you have Ram Gopal Verma and his protégés who churn out gangster flicks and horror movies at shoe-string budgets.
Another new trend that 2005 ushered in to Bollywood is the ’’Skin is in’’ trend. With due respects to Mallika Sherawat, A-grade stars were never found indulging in excessive skin shows. But in 2005, Preity Zinta in Salaam Namaste finally broke free of the ’’Top stars have to be prude and virgins’’ shackles. With Live-In relationships gaining social acceptance, ’’Salaam Namaste’’ managed to pull in the multiplex audience in decent numbers. The success of Salaam Namaste, however, fooled YashRaj films into believing that they had hit the magic formula with ’’Skin show and Pre-Marital sex’’ taking over from ’’Cute couples and the Dream Sequences’’. They tried the same trick with ’’Neal’n’Niki’’, and burnt their fingers badly. Tanisha baring her cleavage and Uday’s made-up face and lipstick-smudged smiles just didn’t have any appeal.
The new wave of movies has certainly changed Bollywood. But not so much. The biggest grossers of the year were still the David Dhawan type movies, ’’No Entry’’ and ’’Kya Kool Hain Hum’’. ’’Bunty Aur Babli’’ , the other top-grosser, was hardly what one would call intelligent cinema.
Bollywood in 2005 was like Jassi from Sony Television. Despite the remarkable makeover, the soul remains unchanged.
My picks from 2005:
Best Movie : Parineeta
Best Actor : Amitabh Bacchan for Black
Best Actress : Rani for Black
Best Debut : Vidya Balan for Parineeta
Top Stars of 2005 : Abhishek, Amitabh, Salman, Saif, Rani
These are my personal choices. Leave your comments and let me know what your choices for 2005 are.