Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

THE CANNES International Film Festival is undoubtedly the Queen of it all. Anybody who is somebody in the world of cinema loves to be there. To unspool on May 14, the Festival has had no Indian movie in Competition since 1994, the year Malayalam director Shaji N. Karun’s Swaham (My Own) was included. What is worse, there has been no Indian entry in A Certain Regard since Murali Nair’s Arimpara (The Mole) screened in 2003.

However, what are the reasons for this abysmal showing at Cannes? A recent story in “The Hollywood Reporter” may well be our first clue. Here is what it says: “Indian film specialist Rohit Sharma has formed the Shingle i-Dream Pictures International with the aim of bringing a new wave of Indian-themed movie to the world’s burgeoning Indian diaspora – films with Indian themes and locations but with an international flavour.” He gives one example, apt enough: “Though Bollywood output remains popular in cinemas, the burgeoning Indian diaspora is hungry for movies that aren’t all singing and dancing when it comes to scenes of a sexual nature, Sharma believes.”

A cinema can be local to the core. It can talk about region-specific themes. It can use very Indian symbols and signs. But the style of narration must be universal. There has got to be a certain flavour that will uniformly appeal to viewers at Cannes or Locarno or Fukuoka or Marrakech. Indian producers and directors must learn this and put it into practice.

And, despite the credit India takes at being the largest producer of films, it falls far behind the rest of the world when it comes to original plots. Let me take Paruthiveeran as an example, which screened at Berlin’s Young Forum. I have no quarrel with this Tamil film being rooted firmly in the local culture. After all, Satyajit Ray made brilliant cinema with Bengal as his base and inspiration. But Paruthiveeran, apart from lacking in a certain global flavour, deals with a hackneyed plot that resembles Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I fail to understand how India’s rich folk and classical history and literature have not been used more often in cinema.


The National Film Development Corporation of India is off to Cannes with three films: Via Darjeeling, Lucky Red Seeds and Bioscope. These will be part of the Cannes Market screenings, which does not mean that they are in the Festival. They are not. The Festival has only four sections, Competition, Outside Competition, A Certain Regard, and Classics. Except for Vijay Anand’s Guide as part of Classics, there is no Indian entry.


Comparisons are odious, but they cannot be helped at times. Ajay Devgan’s U Me Aur Hum (You, Me and Us), comes soon after Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par. Both deal with disabilities: Devgan tackles Alzheimer’s and Khan dyslexia. However, while Taare Zameen Par was well directed, splendidly performed (Darsheel Safary was exceptional as the dyslexic child) and wonderfully mounted, U Me Aur Hum disappointed me.

To begin with, the film has been lifted from several Hollywood movies, including Iris, Away from Her, The Notebook and 50 First Dates. Now Devgan need not have done this. He has enough resources and intelligence to have put together something original.

Devgan is Dr Ajay Mehra, a psychiatrist who falls in love with a waitress on a luxury liner, and woos her through some unbelievable situations, like, for instance, learning how to Salsa in a single night. They marry, and her memory lapses begin when she is expecting her child.

Badly scripted and unimaginatively photographed with tight frames and close shots that are terribly unflattering to the lead pair, Devgan and Kajol, the film is often loud. I am afraid that Devgan’s debut helming effort has fallen rather flat.


Eleven Indian directors have jointly made Mumbai Cutting: A City Unfolds, which will premiere at the Indian Film Festival in Los Angeles. Sudhir Mishra, Anurag Kashyap, Rituparno Ghosh, Revathy and Jahnu Barua are some who have captured the flavour of a city out of which the magic of cinema emerged. While Ghosh conveys the city’s seductive pull, Barua explores the effect it produces on a stranger. Revathy says this movie has a “thread called Mumbai”.

However, the idea is not exactly novel. As usual! In 2006, 18 internationally renowned directors filmed Paris in all its love hues. Each segment was about five minutes long, and the entire movie ran for 116 minutes. Olivier Assayas, brothers Ethan and Joel Coen, Alfonso Cuaron, Gerard Depardieu, Gus Van Sant, Walter Salles, Tom Tykwer and India’s Gurindher Chadha were some of the helmers. It was a great tribute to a great city, one of the most romantic in the world, and each part was filmed in a different district of Paris.


There was a mood of celebration in India when Shoaib Mansoor’s Khuda Kay Liye, (In the Name of God), opened in April. The first Pakistani film to be released in 43 years, it was distributed with 100 prints in as many screens across India. Compare this with 20 prints in Pakistan. The country’s producers would be thrilled that a ban, which came in 1965 following a war between the two neighbours, was finally lifted. Undoubtedly, India is a great market for Pakistani movies. Hindi is a language that is widely understood here, and there is also a large Urdu-speaking segment.

On the other side of the border, Indian movies will screen, and I am told Race and Tare Zameen Par opened to enthusiastic crowds. In a nation where theatres have been virtually dying for want of films, Indian cinema will be pure oxygen. The once thriving cinema industry at Lahore crumbled after 1947, when much of the talent came away to Bombay. Movies became such a part of this city that it was nicknamed “Maya Nagari” (Magic Town).

Khuda Kay Liye is one of the better films that I have seen from Pakistan, though poor production values for a work of this scale, too many artistic liberties that foray into sheer exaggeration and some stilted performances mar an otherwise gripping work. The movie follows the lives of two brothers (played by Shaan and Fawad Khan) who despite their common passion for music choose different paths. One gets sucked into religious fundamentalism, and the other becomes a hapless victim of this.

The message is clear: Islam is progressive, but its interpretation is often twisted, and this twist is conveyed through hypocrisy, deceit and pure evil.