Why Bollywood doesn't reflect the India as we know it anymore
Films have been long been considered a great source to understand people and cultures and the more popular the films, the more authentic a source they become. Early this month Dev Anand’s Hare Rama, Hare Krishna (1971), a film that remains peerless when it comes to depicting the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, turned 45. The story set in the early 1970s, when a brother (Dev Anand) lands up in a drug-infested Kathmandu in search of his estranged sister (Zeenat Aman), continues to be poignant even today and it reiterates two things — cinema continues to be one of the best reflections of popular culture and how of late Hindi films have fallen short of mirroring the zeitgeist.
Experience
Intriguingly enough the very day, December 9, when Hare Rama, Hare Krishna turned 45 was also the day that witnessed the release of Aditya Chopra's Befikre (2016), a film, that to many appears to be a representation of today’s youth. The story of two free-spirited young individuals (Ranveer Singh and Vani Kapoor) who meet in Paris and experience love how it is supposed to be in this day and age, Befikre has also been seen by some as a love story of the Tinder generation. Yet, most viewers and critics could not help but agree that Befikre fails to rise above what the poster or the trailer of he offered. By comparison, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna not only explored the hippie culture that had swept the world but also made a statement on the authenticity of the environment where the society was not all too keen to give the lost ones a second chance.
In the book, But What If We're Wrong?, essayist Chuck Klosterman points that we do not need television to accurately depict literal life because life can literally be found by stepping outside. This can be applied to films as well and by virtue of that, entertainment then becomes the primary function of both television and films. But if one would want to understand the experience of subsisting in a certain place during a certain time, then the best source would be a fictional product. This is why perhaps films become an important tool to gauge counterculture. Of course, like Klosterman adds, this goal has to be achieved accidentally because “true naturalism can only be a product of the unconscious.”
It is this trait that separates Hare Rama, Hare Krishna from all the other films that have been believed to be a statement on the prevailing mood of the time. Consider the case of Dil Chahta Hai (2001). It is a film that hasbeen routinely referred to as a modern narrative. But barring Javed Akhtar's words in the song Koi Kahe where the protagonists, three young men from affluent families, go “Hum hain naye, andaaz kyoon ho puraana” (When we are the new generation, why should our style resemble the old), there is very little in the film that would look true of the times today.
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| Hare Krishna, Hare Ram [Photo: Screengrab] |
By that token, a Tum Bin... (2001) and a Chori Chori Chupke Chupke (2001), released in the same year and hardly recalled with the same gusto as a Dil Chahta Hai, seem to be better manifestations of the period. The former where a man (Priyanshu Chatterjee) travels to Canada to confess to the family of the man (Rakesh Bapat) he accidentally kills and falls in love with the dead man’s fiancée (Sandali Sinha) or the latter where the woman (Preity Zinta) hired to be a surrogate falls in the love with the father (Salman Khan) of the child and asks the wife (Rani Mukherji) for him in exchange for the child seem to be more a more realistic portrait of the society rather than Dil Chahta Hai’s verisimilitude.
Vacuum
Hare Rama, Hare Krishna stemmed from Dev Anand’s mind as the filmmaker was conscious of what was happening around him. Today, most of the filmmakers exist in a vacuum where very few of them know or would be aware of the reality of the cosmos that exists beyond their own universe.
Understanding the subculture has always been a hallmark of Dev sahab’s filmography. Even as an actor he was someone who was very conscious of the world that persevered away from the spotlight that surrounded him. His debut as a filmmaker, Prem Pujari (1970) was a film where a soldier’s son Dev Anand) with lofty ideals about a utopian world gives up being a soldier as he doesn’t believe in war but ultimately becomes the one who protects his country when the time comes.
Genesis
The film reflected the genesis of the flower power generation who wanted to tear down walls and do away with borders and when that fell flat they tried to escape life's harsh realities, which Dev Anand addressed in Hare Rama, Hare Krishna. The film became a statement and the mere title is still enough to encompass an entire generation, a moment in history.
Even later Dev Anand was one of the first to address the illegal migrant issue in Des Pardes (1978), commercialisation of religion in Swami Dada (1982), degradation of students in Hum Naujawan (1985), corruption of press in Sache Ka Bol Bala (1989), heady concoction of criminals and politicians in Awwal Number (1990) that also featured LTTE-esque elements and later Sau Crore (1991) that was based on the murder of badminton star Syed Modi.
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| Befikre. [Photo: Screengrab] |
Films are a reflection of any filmmaker's persona as much as they are the times that they were made in. For us, every giant cultural stride that comes forth as a result of some technological advance ideally ought to be laced with a somewhat commensurable step towards the opposite side that shows what makes us who we are at that particular point in history. People who live in this world might make films such as Ae Dil Hai Mushkil or Befikre, but they seem to be more about a world that probably does not exist in reality. Perhaps what it means to suggest is an escape from the reality that surrounds us and while that may not be all that bad, especially when it comes to escapist entertainment, but what happens when the lights in the cinema hall come up?
(Courtesy: Mail Today)