Guest columnist DR. SAPNA SAMANT considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

DIWALI has come and gone. As is tradition every year there is a filmi dhamaka with all the goodwill, cheer and disposable income. Gold at Dhanteras, gambling at Laxmi Pujan, new clothes, sweetmeats, bakshish and, this year, a double filmi dhamaka over the holiday weekend. The Bombay film industry released two of its biggest blockbuster movies Om Shanti Om (OSO) and Saawariya this Diwali. Big films, many expectations. The rumours, one-upmanship games and post-mortems had begun even before the films were out. Which trailer is better, who has got more money through overseas sales, whose music is superior etc etc. We Indians love our films and disregard all this talk because it is us, the public, that decides what is good and bad. This public cannot be taken for a ride because yeh public sab janti hai. Acchi picture hai ke bakwas. This Diwali we came back with the verdict in the first week itself. If both films were good the crowds would have seen both but there is only one winner this Diwali.

OSO or Saawariya? Aaah, those in the know already know. They don’t need reviews. Anyway the web is full of reviews. The story, screenplay, dialogues, songs are all out there and the fashions are already being copied by the neighbourhood darzi. (I just added some more orders to give my tailor back in Bombay.) So instead of reviewing the films in this article I try to look at the worlds created in the films and why there is only one winner this Diwali. It should give the ‘non-Bollywood’ filmgoer/filmmaker a glimpse into the psyche of the Indian film audience. It is by no means comprehensive and mostly my personal opinion, of course.

First Saawariya. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali is known for his over-the-top visuals. Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), Devdas (2002), Black (2005) have increasingly fantastic sets, loud jewellery, extravagant clothes and all that. Apart from his relatively simple Khamoshi (1996) I could not connect to these films. He made a hash of the sparse Bengali Devdas with the operatic treatment and Black was so self-indulgent I stopped the DVD half way through. Yet any Sanjay Leela Bhansali film is always an event and worth critique because he is a talented technician and even his OTT worlds have a certain appeal. Saawariya has a beautiful, blue world. A kind of mixture between Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty, 1990), any old Sohrab Modi historical (Pukar, Mirza Ghalib, Sikander etc) and Udan Khatola (S.U. Sunny, 1955). In this la-la nagar arrives Ranbir Raj (Ranbir Kapoor), a young, broke singer. He makes friends first with the local prostitute Gulab (Rani Mukherji), then with his landlady Lillian (Zohra Sehgal) and ultimately all the locals begin to love his zest for life. But Raj has his heart set on the hysterical Sakina (Sonam Kapoor) whom he spots under an umbrella one night. From then on it is the story of Raj trying to woo Sakina and convince her that she should not wait for Imaan (Salman Khan) who has loved and left her. At the end of the fourth night Sakina leaves with her lover Imaan and Raj is heartbroken. That’s it. Sanjay Leela Bhansali based his film on Fydor Dostoevsky’s short story ‘White Nights’. Adaptations are always a problem. How much does one leave out and leave in? How much does one deviate? How can a story from one culture be adapted into another without losing the flavour? Does the core of the story change? Bhansali did it with Sarat Chandra’s novel Devdas and the bhadralok Bengali did not really take to it. Devdas was like a Gujarati character from any of Ekta Kapoor’s television dramas while his childhood sweetheart Paro ran through long passages with her saree pallu fluttering behind like in a Garden Sarees advertisement. That was meant to evoke pathos. (It is funny!) Yet all the characters remained true to this opulent world. With Saawariya, Bhansali forgot the first rule of writing. That all characters have to belong to the world they live in. They have to dress, talk, eat and behave according to the rules of their world. Especially a fantasy world, even if it is a faux reality world like in The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998). That is why The Lord Of The Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-03) works and Sohrab Modi’s historicals and Udan Khatola worked. What is the purpose of creating visuals that are alienated from the characters? Raj is like a young, hip and very silly college kid. Gulab spouts corny dialogue (another huge failing) and Lillian is a memsahib from the British Raj era. Sakina and her family belong to some carpet-weaving, sharara-wearing Mere Mehboob (H.S Rawail, 1963) world. Which young Indian Muslim girl dresses and talks like that? Do we have to exoticise and stereotype our own people? Worst still is Imaan. Was that character meant to be intense? He looked fresh out of some jihadi camp in the HinduKhush. I could smell the stench of his unbathed body from the screen. One can argue that in real life we all live in different worlds and yet exist in this one big world. But then these worlds clash and there is conflict and something changes, as is the nature of this one big world. In Saawariya’s la-la nagar none of the worlds clash. There is no conflict. Instead of empathising with the sorrow of unrequited love one wonders at Raj’s stupidity. And just because it is a musical there is no need for songs to pop out every minute or so. Perhaps this is Colombia Tristar’s idea of a ‘Bollywood’ musical considering Saawariya is the first mainstream Hindi film for the Hollywood studio. With a film-mad Indian public and a growing economy, India’s popular culture is suddenly the next big money spinner. And Hollywood is going to tell us how we should make our films? Welcome colonial masters. NOT! (See footnotes for further reference.)¹

The public crowns its own king.

Like ShahRukh Khan (SRK). Who produced and acted in Om Shanti Om.

Now here is a fantasy world too. That of the Hindi film industry. The producers, directors, nubile actresses, male stars, technicians, chamchas and the oh-so-lowly junior artistes. Here life is a big film set with even the all important Indian mother spouting filmi dialogue. It is a world director Farah Khan knows intimately. She grew up in the Hindi film industry. Her aunts Honey and Daisy Irani were well-known child artistes (her mother was a child artiste too?) and her father Kamran Khan was a small time filmmaker. Farah started out by performing dance shows, graduated to choreographing and picturising songs and worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Mira Nair. (See footnotes for further reference.)² She directed her first feature Main Hoon Naa (2004) with SRK in the lead role. He also produced it. Main Hoon Naa was the biggest hit of year showcasing a very sexy Sushmita Sen, superb song picturisation and great music. The screenplay had (to me) a near perfect emotional graph as it should be in Hindi films. Main Hoo Naa was the epitome of the modern masala film that seemed to take from the sophistication of Vijay Anand (Teesri Manzil, Jewel Thief, Johny Mera Naam etc) and the illogic of Manmohan Desai (Chacha Bhatija, Amar Akbar Anthony, Coolie etc)

OSO is an extension of the same formula. A masala film that stays true to the ‘Bollywood’ genre of entertainment and paisa vasool guarantee. That also means repeat value for the Indian film audience.

So in this Hindi film world of the seventies exists Om Prakash Makhija (SRK), junior artiste, whose mother (Kirron Kher) and dead father were junior artistes too. Om loves Shanti (Deepika Padukone), the heroine of his films. He also dreams of becoming a hero one day. Om’s friend Pappu (Shreyas Talpade) supports Om’s endeavours in winning over Shanti and life is all fun until Om suddenly dies one day. Post interval, in a film world thirty years later, Om Kapoor (SRK) is the hot new hero in town, a spoilt brat who gets his own way until an old villain pops up from a past life. Om realises who he was/is and seeks revenge. In a filmi way.

This saga of rebirth and reincarnation is not new to the Indian film public. Farah Khan pays tribute to the biggest punarjanam films of them all-Karz (Subhash Ghai, 1980) right at the beginning of her film. The title Om Shanti Om is from a song in Karz. Throughout OSO Khan constantly refers to various films, actors, characters, songs, dialogues, costumes, dance moves and everything from the world of Hindi cinema. If the first half is a rehash of the sixties, seventies and eighties of Hindi cinema, the second half is a khichdi of the nineties until now. For those of us who grew up watching the Sunday evening Hindi movie on Doordarshan (state owned public television) and Chhayageet/Chitrahaar once a week OSO is like a trip down nostalgia lane. Khan has even got Shabana Azmi to do the same dance move from her film with Vinod Mehra and Shatrughan Sinha (Wotsitsname? The song is hum tere bina bhi nahi jee sakte aur tere bina bhi nahi jee sakte...) In the first half Deepika Padukone looks so much like the young Hema Malini I thought she would break into the song babul pyaare... from Johny Mera Naam (Vijay Anand, 1970) anytime while in the second half six-pack SRK does same-to-same Hritik-like dance moves. And villain Mukesh Mehra (Arjun Rampal) could be the suave Pran.

Like they say in Bombay – is film mein action hai, emotion hai, drama hai, comedy hai aur gaane bhi hit hai! No wonder the audience laps it up. It is a world that draws you in; a familiar world in which people behave as they are supposed to; a world that is an extension of a hundred years of Hindi cinema. There is no need for footnotes or awkward voiceovers and explanations. OSO is homage to popular Indian culture, a loving piss-take that the Khan duo has had fun crafting. In fact the film is a wonderful resource for anyone doing Bombay Cinema 101. The only problem with the script is that Om Kapoor’s character is not well-developed neither is the pace in the second half. It is a rush job. And the scene-of-crime action-replay song does not have the zing of a similar song and situation from Karz (ek hasina thi, ek deewana tha.)

But it does not matter because the public has chosen the winner this Diwali. We know what we like.

Om Shanti Om.
Shanti Shanti Om.