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Bollywood bites the bullet - Times Of India

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Bollywood bites the bullet

TOI Crest A u g 21, 2010, 11.50am IST

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Aamir Khan

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IN-DEPT H COVERAGE Kashmir Shammi Kapoor

Often, we don't see things that are right under our nose maybe because we don't want to. Ever since terror spread its first tentacles back in the 1980s Punjab was all afire, Kashmir had begun burning and the North-East was on the edge Bollywood has either totally zoomed out of troubled zones or been shifty in its take on the war within.If there was a terrorist at all, an aatankwadi, he was a caricature, like Dr Dang or Mogambo. It was all natak, no nuance. Not anymore, though. Our flagship movie industry seems to have grown up and matured, tackling the uncomfortable issue with both outward elegance and inward gaze, grappling with it and, as 'Tere Bin Laden' showed, laughing at it. TOI-Crest traces our cinema's shifting focus on the fraught framesAs India moves through its sixties, it is a good time to explore how the freest of our creative zones our cinematic imagination is evolving. There have been recent changes in Hindi films wrought by the phenomenon of 'terror' which has impacted stories, settings and characters, reshaping the very meaning of this cinema. The changes that have been sewn have been remarkable and quiet. 'Mainstream' Hindi cinema has traditionally been known for escapist fare. The industry held political beliefs but kept these understated, making films as elastic as a vinyl record, as light as a gossamer dream. PostIndependence, countless Hindi films were located in 'paradise' itself. Kashmir was the backdrop for movies set in manicured Mughal gardens, dainty shikaras wobbling on the Dal Lake, girls in colourful firans with long silver earrings waving cheerfully as Shammi Kapoor drove past. Even as the region's political ambience darkened through the 1960s, Hindi film heroes ignored storm clouds on the horizon, singing their way across Kashmir's meadows, heroines in tight trousers smiling indulgently astride bored-looking ponies.Things began changing with the 1980s. Inside Kashmir as militancy spread, Hindi filmmakers found it increasingly difficult to film. Terror meant attacks, retaliation, damage, death and grief. It also meant silence. Once, the Valley could be shown echoing with the coquetry of lovers, the swish of golf strokes, the clatter of tea trays and the clipclop of horses. But suddenly filmmakers were unnerved by the silence that fell over it, a spell bolstered by rumbling army trucks and crackling wirelesses. As Kashmir had bitter spoonfuls of terror stirred daily into its

(A sti l l from Mi ssi on Kash m i r )

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environment, how could stories featuring freedom and frolic be based there?Accepting this reality was not easy for Hindi filmmakers. Kashmir, after all, was the ultimate escape, a place of crystalline freshness where the soul breathed freely, untied from the worries of the metropolis and the exigencies of the town. In Kashmir's 'vaadiyan', the plains-based Indian enjoyed a little laugh, a little love, a liberty or two. However, this Kashmir, presented tenderly in Technicolour as 'ours', suddenly vanished from life and film. Its evaporation was a significant disappearing act. "The Kashmir narrative was increasingly marked by nationalism which invokes violence," comments sociologist Shiv Viswanathan. Perhaps depicting such violence, where once pools of lilies and chinars watched over lovers, was too much for Hindi filmmakers. Tellingly, it was Mani Ratnam from the South who took cinema back to a dark, dangerous Kashmir, not a Hindi filmmaker whose memories were embedded with houseboats and poetry.Through that decade, Hindi filmmakers found it hard to tackle terror. With separatist movements bursting across the country, terror was presented in the form of drug-peddling, gun-toting 'militant' villains whose ludicrous henchmen would never learn how to uncork a grenade properly. Terror was battled by heroes who were policemen or vigilantes, taking on militants or politicians depending on who currently was more terrifying. The 'terrorist' in '80s Hindi films was an easily identifiable figure, a neo-colonialist 'Dr Dang' in Karma (1986), a missile-owning 'Mogambo' in Mr India (1987). He was an unambiguous, unrepentant sinner. He had no layer beyond evil, no suffering other than hubris, no end but defeat."Dr Dang and Mogambo show the Hindi film industry was not unwilling to engage with terror," comments Neeraj Pandey, director of the 'vigilante terror' movie A Wednesday. "They were just doing it in their usual escapist way, making terror look larger-than-life rather than a part of daily life." The 'ancestral' aatankwadis had one simple aim; mindlessly spread terror. They were colourful figures of black and white, with no shades of grey. They had no clear location and no identifiable history.The real challenge came a little later, from a place many filmmakers called 'home'. As Punjab exploded in violence, Hindi filmmakers had to reconsider a great shift. Who was a terrorist now? Y oung people who could not bear the establishment's maltreatment? The system which brutalised its own? Or an insidious 'foreign hand'? Filmmakers chose from these options but the terrain was tricky and conclusions often inconclusive. For many filmmakers, the 1990s, with liberalised India leaving poverty, pogroms and blasts behind, finally footloose and Duty Free, came as a welcome break.Then 9/11 happened, halting India's shopping spree, forcing filmmakers to look at the links connecting Babri Masjid to the Gujarat pogroms, militancy in Kashmir to terror in Mumbai, violence from America to Ahmedabad and back. "Terror has come closer and closer to us," says Pandey. "It's no more only in Kashmir or cross-border. It has come into
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the metropolitan." Ishita Moitra, co-writer of Kambakht Ishq, currently writing for Shah Rukh Khan's production house, has her own take. "Terror has become such a pervasive part of life now that filmmakers cannot avoid it anymore. The theme is so important that companies like Y ash Raj and Dharma, traditionally known for love stories, are making terror films,'' she says. "Even the Pakistani film industry is grappling with terror. Khuda Ke Liye was a magnificent, bold film on the theme. Everyone wants to understand a terrorist's psyche or depict different dimensions to terror."Some of these depictions are ritzy, glitzy 'Bollywood' affairs, full of sound and fury, hair gel, pectorals and pounding soundtracks which do little more than obscure the seriousness of the issue. "Some depictions of terror in Hindi films have done terrorists a service," comments Kabir Khan, director of Kabul Express and recent hit New Y ork. "They show terrorists as perfect killing machines rather than the brainwashed cowards they are. These glamourised depictions have no human face. They're simply showing machines running on machismo. That doesn't help viewers understand the complexity of what's going on."Neither does the average Hollywood film, adds Khan. "It's difficult showing regular American viewers a counter-perspective on terror. They're used to only one point of view. Their filmmakers show people killed in Afghanistan or Iraq but they can't accept us showing images of 9/11. They refuse realities that don't fit their picture. The Western media plays to that refusal. Terror is shown only in one dimension, jihad, which makes for sexy headlines but isn't the entire picture. I try making films that fall somewhere in the space between ground reality and the Western media dealing with terror through print, television and film." Trade analyst Taran Adarsh has his own view. "Our movies cater to Indian sensibilities,'' he says. "We show terror impacting us inside India or affecting us outside. Our movies present our perspective to the world beyond."Agreeing that portrayals of terror in Hindi films can be skewed, depicting, for instance, only Muslims located within a framework of terrorism, Adarsh adds, "The level of bias is debatable. Still, there's a diversity of views. On average, I'd say terror is handled much more maturely in Hindi cinema than in Hollywood films."Pandey agrees and says there's diversity in how our filmmakers treat terror. "But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Y ou'll see more and more films engaging with different kinds of terror as the phenomenon merges with diverse political factors, like Naxalism. The state's law and order apparatus must be strengthened. Otherwise, filmmakers will increasingly express frustration in films."The audience's temperament, too, is changing. There was a time when films depicting 'the nation' and 'the terrorist' in black and white terms set the box office on fire. Today, films with more nuanced takes are succeeding. Adarsh explains, "There are no rules. Some 'terror' movies did well, others bombed. The important thing is, the subject is no longer a turn-off for filmmakers or audiences. Viewers are ready to be surprised."
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