The new Bollywood

February 22, 2009

Two brothers separated in childhood grow up on opposite sides of the law. A little boy meets a little girl and loves her forever - it's destiny. A busy train station is full of people who erupt into song and dance serenaded by an invisible orchestra. "Slumdog Millionaire" brought all that to Western audiences. But for millions of Indians that's standard fare - part of what they call a Bollywood masala movie.

Sure, "Slumdog" clocks in at about an hour less than a regular Bollywood movie and with a fraction of the musical cues. It's made by a British director and its slum boy has a bit of a British accent. "But it's pure Bollywood in its feel-good factor, the fantastical story line and the absolute loopholes in logic," says film critic Anupama Chopra in Mumbai. It also turns Bollywood on its head.

"Bollywood is rooted in emotion that's real, but the scenario is fantastic," says Chopra. "In 'Slumdog,' the location is real, but the plot is fantastic."

The success of the story of a slum kid who survives communal riots, mafia dons, eye-gouging gangs, open-pit toilets and reads "The Three Musketeers" begs the 64,000-rupee question - is the world's biggest film industry finally crossing the great cultural divide?

It's more a "widening" rather than crossing over, says filmmaker Ian Iqbal Rashid. Western genres are looking around for inspiration. The "Matrix" films borrowed from Hong Kong. "Blood Diamond" and "The Last King of Scotland" were set in Africa.

"Bollywood, with its color and verve and feel-good factor, is the perfect antidote for this age of recession," Rashid writes by e-mail from London.

But whose Bollywood is this anyway? What the West calls Bollywood, the cheesy, singing-around-the-trees stuff, is long dead in India, says filmmaker Anuvab Pal. Hindi films these days borrow happily from the West. The new film "Ghajini" reimagines "Memento," while "Dostana" is a gym-toned takeoff on "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry."

Anuj Vaidya, associate festival director of 3rd I (which screened "Slumdog" at its most recent South Asian film festival), says Hindi films are getting more technically polished because so many of the current filmmakers have trained abroad.

But, he says, "if Bollywood has to cross over, it has to change dramatically."

That, says Lisa Tsering, entertainment editor of India West, isn't something the industry is too interested in.

"I saw what Bollywood calls an 'issue film,' " Tsering says. "It was about a poor rag-picker girl. And she was gorgeous, fair-skinned and dressed in what was almost a bikini."

"Slumdog" in some ways is actually about the stories Bollywood doesn't tell. Since the Indian economy opened up, its films revolve around young urbanites, jump cuts and Hindi songs peppered with English. It's about the middle class and up.

"The films that do well overseas are about fabulously rich people who live in mansions and take helicopters to work," says Chopra. "I call that luxury porn."

The new Bollywood rarely looks at villages or slums, even though more than 800 million Indians live on less than 50 cents a day. Those stories don't sell in mega-mall India.

"After 15 years of hearing about 'India Shining,' 'Slumdog' brings it down to earth," says Vamsee Juluri, professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco. ("India Shining" was a political slogan reflecting India's new prosperity.) "Does that mean we'll see Bollywood films set in slums? I doubt it."

Well, even "Slumdog," the feel-good fairy tale of the slums, isn't exactly asking Bollywood to keep it real. What it might do however is prove that a story with no big stars, subtitles, set in a dark-skinned part of the world can actually make it at the box office. Ian Rashid, whose first feature was the diaspora comedy "Touch of Pink," isn't so sure. Films like "Slumdog" (and before it "Monsoon Wedding" and "Bend It Like Beckham") were all regarded as milestones, he says, but when it comes to the next project about India, "financiers develop amnesia."

The real test, says filmmaker Pal - whose own comedy about contemporary India, "The President Is Coming," is about to open in the United States - will be to see if "other films (and there are many to be made about modern India) dig a little deeper."

"I hope someone takes the trouble to look beyond the rags to the ironies of urban India," says Pal. "Most slum kids have stolen cable TV and are glued to fashion TV, for example. A French fashion channel!"

In the short term, the success of "Slumdog" will mean that composers such as A.R. Rahman will get work in Hollywood. Indian actors have already been showing up in Hollywood, the latest being Aishwariya Rai as a femme fatale in "Pink Panther 2."

In the long term, says Vaidya of 3rd I, "Slumdog" points the way to a more outward-looking view of the world.

Instead of trying to figure out if "Slumdog" is the crossover film everyone's been waiting for, he's hoping for a lot more crossovers - in all directions.

"I was reading about an Indian-Brazilian co-production," Vaidya says. "Now that sounds really interesting."