Bolly good time

Last night, the wife and I watched “Ishqiya”. Last week, we saw “Wake up, Sid” and “LSD”. All three are very good movies. Two are made by debutant directors, and the director of the third, Dibakar Banerjee, is only three films old. Will this period in history be looked back on as a golden age in Hindi cinema, I wonder? There have been so many good movies in the recent past, many of them by new film makers. “A Wednesday” and “Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na”, released last year, are other impressive movies made by first time directors.

What has changed since the time I was growing up? Why do so many more movies appeal to me now, than, say, ten years ago?

The language of our cinema has changed, and is more appealing to the young urban Indian – more everyday conversation and “underplay” rather than “overplay”. Filmy melodrama has been given the boot. Note that even tearful scenes nowadays very often end up with a twist of humour. Perhaps we have become apologetic about having a good unadulterated cry. Having a self deprecating laugh at the end of an emotional scene somehow makes the melodrama more acceptable. “Dil Chahta Hai” was a significant milestone in this journey. No one seems to say “Kutte Kameene! Tera khoon pee jaaoonga!” any more in our movies.

There is a rush of young directors, who have brought with them a much needed freshness to the business. When I was growing up, directors were men in their forties and fifties in safari suits. Now they are, quite often, men and women in their twenties and thirties in t-shirt and jeans. The younger generation no longer wants to spend a decade assisting someone before they strike out on their own. We no longer wait until middle age to buy a home, or make a movie.

While the average quality of movies has certainly gone up a notch, what I do miss a little bit is the “epic” movie with strong emotional content. Granted, the movie industry churned out a lot of crap in the seventies and eighties. But occasionally, there also came along a mind-blowing piece of emotionally charged cinema capable of producing goose-bumps and making the heart pump faster, even on repeat viewing. Are we capable of producing a “Shakti” or “Deewar” today, I wonder?

This minor point aside, I think it’s a great time for Hindi movie lovers.