Z : Zeros & Stars in Hindi Films / Bollywood #AtoZChallenge 2019

While I was growing up, a Hindi film was considered successful, if it ran for weeks at a stretch in a cinema hall near you. 25 weeks run was called silver jubilee! 50 weeks run a golden one! And a 23 years run (...and still counting) in Maratha Mandir (a cinema hall in Mumbai) is called Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The Big-Hearted Will Take Away the Bride). 

The mention of DDLJ is also to make one of my readers (PB) happy who missed it in yesterday's post. Also here is my experience of watching DDLJ in Maratha Mandir when it was running for 12 years already. 

Also when I was growing up we didn't use to read reviews (in fact there weren't many in public domain) before watching films. Word of mouth was enough! 

Things changed at the turn of the millennium! Number of screens increased with multiplexes and more films started getting made. This made it extremely difficult for films to have continuous long run at cinema halls, as each new film squeezed the previous one out pretty soon. Satellite television made it lucrative for film-makers to quickly show their films on small screens cutting short the jubilee dreams. Another thing that changed at the same time was easy availability of internet and advent of social media. Critics of all hues mushroomed. And writing movie reviews on internet became an industry. With these changes emerged two new cliches and they both are pretty sad ones!

• The parameter of a movie's success now is the number of Zeros in its box office collections! The movies get categorized into clubs like Rs 100 crores club, Rs. 200 crores club and so on! Sometimes rank bad movies get a huge opening because of their promotions and star cast that before even people realize that its shit, the movie has already made 100 crores. Even viewers now discuss films based on these zeros. The discourse on internet is all about this. Trade Analysts are tweeting these figures daily. Art be damned! It is heartbreaking when an excellent movie like Sonchiriya (the golden bird) is not watched by many because of its poor opening day collections. 

• Movie ratings or Stars which critics give to films are based on their subjective opinions and their inherent biases. But some critics today, carry so much clout that they can make or mar a film even before its release. Their individual opinions get amplified on social media and many get impacted by it. Also most critics in India in their reviews give out spoilers and plots of the films. This also makes the viewer biased and can set expectations which may spoil the movie watching experience. 

Anupama Chopra gave the movie Kalank (Stigma) 3 Stars and she gave Avengers : Endgame only 4 stars. Who will avenge this gross injustice? Is there even a comparison here? The self appointed expert on movies, Raja Sen, declined to review a movie (The Tashkent Files) recently because it didn't align with his political ideology. Such arrogance!

I feel movies should fulfill three purposes: 

Happy Level - Entertainment (like Singham)

Happier Level - Entertainment + Engagement (like 3 Idiots)

Happiest Level - Entertainment + Engagement + Education (like Taare Zameen Par)

If in a movie I get Entertainment I am happy with it! Anything over it delights me! Sheer ecstasy! 

I love movies. I love watching them in cinema halls. I don't care what each movie earns or how many Zeros are there in its revenues. I don't care how many Stars critics give to a movie. What matters is the sheer joy of watching a film in a dark hall. I will not let Zeros and Stars take that experience away from me.

Do you think I have missed out on a cliche in this month long challenge? Like blasting cars in Rohit Shetty films! Then tell me in comments space. I will write a post on it. But for that you have to read all 26 posts in this challenge, if you haven't already done that. 

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My theme for this year's #AtoZchallenge is Hindi Film Industry / Bollywood cliches. You can read the theme reveal post here.

2017 Challenge Post from Letter Z: Zebra / Jebra - A post about linguistic jokes. Click here to read.

2018 Challenge Post from Letter Z: Zoom in - The post reflects on memories, photographs and the zoom-in feature. Click here to read.

Y : Yash Chopra's cliches - Hindi Films / Bollywood #AtoZChallenge 2019

Earlier in this #AtoZChallenge2019 (Theme - Hindi Film Industry / Bollywood cliches), I did a post on Karan Johar's cliches. Because he heads one of the most powerful production houses in Bollywood and in the films he has directed, he has introduced several tropes / cliches which are worth documenting. But did you know that Johar often calls Yash Raj Films - the film production and  distribution company founded by Yash Chopra - his film school? So, I found it apt to do a post on the cliches introduced in Bollywood by Chopra.

Yash Chopra, who passed away in 2012 at the age of 80, is considered among the best Indian film-makers. He has won 6 national film awards and is also the recipient of Dadasaheb Phalke Award (2001). He has also won umpteen fraternity film-awards. Chopra's career as a director can be clearly divided into two parts. Pre-Chandni and Post-Chandni. Chandni (Moonlight) released in 1989 and was a runaway hit. Before Chandni, Chopra used to dabble in multiple genres. He made hard-hitting social dramas (Waqt in 1965), suspense thrillers (Ittefaq in 1969), angst filled action films (Deewar in 1975; Trishul in 1978) and great love stories (Silsila in 1981). And I personally feel those are his better films. But after Chandni, Chopra's film-making became formulaic. It doesn't mean that he made bad films after that. But he stopped doing the new. Romantic love-triangles became his forte. And in how many ways you can tell the same story! Really! This post is about some of the cliches I found silly in his post Chandni films. 

My biggest peeve is representation of the state of Punjab in his films (the ones he either produced or directed). His Punjab is idyllic rural / agrarian state where you only see mustard fields. In his Punjab, everyone is always dressed in bright colors or in folk-dance costumes. And a dhol (a kind of drum), will always be heard in his Punjab with everyone just waiting to break into Bhangra or Giddha - the folk dances of Punjab. The following image is for representation purposes only, but this picture is how Chopra imagined Punjab and beautified it further in his films. 

The reality is far from it. Punjab's cropping pattern oscillates between wheat and rice. These crops consume huge amounts of water and thus water tables are lowering in Punjab every year. This is leading to disastrous circumstances and agrarian stress. How can farmers be happy and dancing in this situation! While Punjab is one of the largest wheat producing states in India, it is nowhere in top for mustard production. 88% of Indian mustard production happens in states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Even the yellow sarson is more prevalent in eastern and north eastern states. In Punjab it is grown as a catch crop only in winter seasons for a short duration. 

Punjab also has several industrial districts which are highly polluted. I wish the air was more cleaner like in Chopra films. As far as art is concerned, if you throw a brick in Punjab, you are more likely to hit a really bad singer than a Bhangra dancer. Nearly 20 new songs are produced in Punjab everyday and nearly 20% of the consumption on music streaming app Gaana is for Punjabi songs. (Refer this article) And not everyone dances to these songs. They are played in bars and cars.

I felt 2018 film Manmarziyaan (Heart's wish) directed by Anurag Kashyap represented a more real Punjab. It is no coincidence that one of the leads in it was a singer who wanted to cut an album. 

Another standard trope which Chopra introduced in his films was shooting of songs in foreign locales. Mostly Switzerland's snow capped mountains! The heroine would be dancing in a chiffon sari not feeling cold, while the hero would be covered from head to toe in pullovers and jackets. Borrowing the line from a comedian which is apt for this situation- "Mard ko dard nahi hota par thand lagti hai!" (Hero doesn't feel pain but he feels cold). Many a time, these songs were dream sequences. After all, how many middle class Indians can afford to go to Europe! By the way there is a Yash Chopra statue in Switzerland. Presumably because his films boosted Swiss tourism. 

Ironically, Karan Johar, made fun of this very trope (dancing on mountains) in one of the scenes in his 2016 film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (Oh heart! It's difficult). Watch the clip below!

After he directed Chandni, Chopra directed 6 more films. Four of them had Shahrukh Khan in the lead. Clearly no trope works better than Shahrukh for Yash Raj Films and Dharma Productions. 

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My theme for this year's #AtoZchallenge is Hindi Film Industry / Bollywood cliches. You can read the theme reveal post here.

2017 Challenge Post from Letter Y: Yumdude - A post about food memories. Click here to read.

2018 Challenge Post from Letter Y: Yes and No - The success mantra - A post about decisiveness. Click here to read.

X : XL sized egos in Hindi Films / Bollywood #AtoZChallenge 2019

Please first watch the video below from the 1991 film Yodha (starring Sunny Deol and Sanjay Dutt; two big stars from that time), to get the context of today's post.

Are you done?

Okay! On a totally unrelated note, did you listen to the background score in the sequence? Did you find it same as the one used in Sunny Deol's 1990 film Ghayal? I mean how cliched it is, that in 90s even the background scores for certain kind of sequences had a pattern. May be this subject deserves a separate post some other time.

Now what else did you notice in the video? Here are my takeaways on action sequences between any two big stars in Hindi films:

1. Both the stars get equal number of dialogues
2. They get equal number of punches, hits and kicks
3. Each one hits the other and get hits almost the same number of times
4. They fall down almost the same number of times
5. The duel will generally remain unresolved and almost always, a third party will come and intervene to cut the scene short. Like in this case it is police. But it could be a mother or a child or a love interest too.

In real fights, the guy who falls down first after a brutal punch will find it difficult to continue. But then these stars are superheroes in Hindi Films.

This treatment is not limited to only fight sequences, but the whole film will be designed in such a way that both heroes get equal songs, equal number of dialogues throughout the film etc. And there are several instances of this. Watch this clip from the 1993 film Kshatriya, starring Sunny and Sanjay, yet again. This time in a sword fight. What I found funny here is that they both get bruised by swords (bruised... not cut deeply) on the same parts of their respective bodies. And a bruise is responded with a bruise almost immediately as if that was not the intent in the earlier part of the fight. Then the two senior actors and stars in their own right, Vinod Khanna and Dharmendra come riding on their horses in a similar fashion and mouth inane dialogues. Again all shots equally divided between them.

This trend of pandering to XL sized egos of the stars in Hindi films rather than serving the needs of the story and characters is amazingly stupid, but well accepted by their respective fan bases. In the 1995 film Karan Arjun, the big stars Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan get equal billing. In the fight sequence below, the intervention is divine and most convoluted.

As the stories improved and audiences started liking more diverse content after the advent of cable TV, such films with hackneyed stories, which were designed to titillate the audiences on the basis of big stars coming together, fell by the wayside. But big stars had their XL sized egos intact. Most of them choose those roles even today that further their real life images. Example: Salman will never play a good role in an Aamir Khan film if its length is shorter. This situation robs the viewers in a way. If you look at Hollywood movies like The Departed (2006 film), which had a great ensemble cast, with such powerful actors, you can almost be sure that if such a film is made in India, with Aamir Khan in the lead, all other actors would be lesser stars.

Another Bollywood innovation is "Special Appearances / Guest Appearances". You will never see them in Hollywood. If a lesser known actor plays a 30 minute role in a Hindi Film he or she is treated as a regular cast member. But if Salman plays a 30 minute role in a film, it will be billed as a cameo or special appearance. It happened in 1998 film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Most probably Salman was paid handsomely for the role. But this special appearance tag is to cater to his real life image and his rabid fan base. He can't play a bit role in a Shahrukh Khan film. But he can generously make a special appearance. On the other hand, the actor (not a star) Christoph Waltz, won an Oscar for best supporting actor for his special appearance small yet influential role in Inglourious Basterds (2009 film).

As a true movie buff, my only wish is that instead of having XL sized egos and XXL sized brawns, the new generation stars like Ranveer Singh and Ranbir Kapoor, develop XXXL sized smarts and work together in a great film with great roles and make us drool. May be the director S. S. Rajamouli can make it possible. Make our big screen experiences XL sized again!

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My theme for this year's #AtoZchallenge is Hindi Film Industry / Bollywood cliches. You can read the theme reveal post here.

2017 Challenge Post from Letter X: Xeroxed - A post about the recycling of engineering notes and projects. Click here to read.

2018 Challenge Post from Letter X: X words and other tough things - A quirky take on how tough are the X things. Click here to read.