A debate is raging in India over why its Hindi-language films do not win Oscars. About 800 to 900 films are made every year in India, but the world's most productive film industry just cannot figure out what it takes to win an Academy Award.
This story gets repeated every year. "Paheli" (A puzzle), directed by Mumbai film-maker Amol Palekar, was entered for the Oscars this year but got knocked out in the preliminary rounds.
The last time a Hindi film made a serious bid to win an Oscar was in 2001, when Aamir Khan's "Lagaan" (The Tax) was nominated for Best Foreign Film. It lost to a Bosnian film, No Man's Land.
Is there something else to what would seems a Hollywood bias against Bollywood?
Firstly, Hindi movies usually last three hours, one-and-a-half hours longer than many Hollywood films. Lagaan was even longer. And, their scripts are somehow not consonant with the Western mindset.
Till recently, the storylines of Hindi films were predictable and hackneyed. Many Bollywood scripts are an Indian adaptation of successful Western films, souped up with songs and dances. This frothy fare provides excellent entertainment and takes people away from their humdrum, everyday existence, but are not great works of art.
A genre of movies in the 1970s and the 1980s — represented by films like "Amar Akbar Anthony", "Mr. Natwarlal" and "Sholay", which mostly starred Amitabh Bachan — were huge box office successes, but they could not be entered for any awards, save for the ones the Indian film industry gives to itself.
This is quite unlike the situation in Hollywood, where the movies that do well at the box office also manage to bag a handful of Oscars.
Similarly, films that win accolades for good stories and cinematic techniques do not make an impact on the box office. Films by eminent directors such as Satyajit Ray, Kumar Shahani, Shyam Benegal and Adoor Gopalakrishnan have done well in European film festivals but in India, they haven't gone beyond newspaper film pages.
Accusations have been rife for many years against "art film-makers" who tailor their scripts to the demands of European film festival circuits.
The late Satyajit Ray's "Pather Panchali" belonged to a genre of films whose stark realism has been castigated for feeding a Western stereotype about India being wracked by poverty and death. Ray made these films between the 1950s and the 1970s and since then, India has changed.
A new breed of directors is taking a hard look at how they can leave their mark in a globalised world and make money in the West. The wealthy from the Indian diaspora, who are desperately trying to connect with the homeland, have given them a new market, but that's not enough. There is a humongous $300-billion ($476 billion) global film market, of which the Bollywood variety takes home barely 1 per cent.
There is a belief in India that greater recognition by Hollywood and winning some Academy Awards could help its Hindi-language film industry expand. In Bollywood, it is fashionable to talk of making cross-over films with themes that make sense to a global audience. Last year, Sanjay Bhansali's film "Black", which sensitively portrayed the relationship between a teacher and his blind student, was hailed as Bollywood's first crossover offering. It walked away with many awards in India, but was not considered good enough to win global recognition.
More recently, "Rang De Basanti" (Colours of Spring) — starring Aamir Khan, Soha Ali Khan and Alice Patten, the daughter of former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten — has again raised visions of an Oscar with its slick production values, a good story, a smart script and a great cast.
"Rang De Basanti" fits in with the views expressed by some directors and writers in a recent seminar, who said that Bollywood, like Hollywood, has to make films for its own audience. If they are appreciated by the West, so be it.
"Rang de Basanti" could represent that interesting crossover. - TODAY/zf