Bollywood rising

The young Indian generation which grew up in the 80’s and 90’s would agree that Hindi movies were broadly classified in two groups. One group consisted of art movies or what was then called “serious cinema” and the other comprised of entertainment movies also called the “masala films”. The main problem was that though the serious movies tried to convey some message to the Indian viewers, the number of people actually watching the movie was miniscule and the masala movies were far from being serious dished out the usual “dancing around the trees”, “hero saves the heroine” and definitely the family sagas and melodrama which these days thanks to Ekta Kapoor has percolated down to television. The movies had become so predictable that we could tell the climax of movie just by watching the first half and not to mention the blatant plagiarism from popular Hollywood movies.
Recently the Hindi film industry popularly known as bollywood is churning out movies which really adhere to international standards on all the fronts. No we are not just talking about “Lagaan” which had reached the top five in “Best foreign film category” at the Oscars ,but about the movies which were not only commercial success but conveyed some meaningful message as well.

2006 has been a great year for bollywood.Personally speaking my first favorite would be “Rang de basanti” which captured the spirit of young India and portrayed the exact emotions such as our confusion with the corrupt politicians and whether we are really capable of bringing about a change in the system .Next in line would be “Lage Raho Munnabhai” which did a remarkable justice by bringing out the values propagated by Mahatma Gandhi in such a manner that even the common person can follow at least some of his values .The best part being the silent non violent protest by sending of “Get well soon cards”. Regarding “literature meets cinema” we have a classic movie called “Omkara” .Though it did not convey any message as such but the story brought out the earthiness of India and the popular Hindi dialect ( not shudh Hindi ) and it was made so well that nobody can find out that the story has been adapted from the play “Othello”.

We need more and more of such movies which have real Indian story in them and yet the standards are international. Even the songs of these movie gels with the story and are added not just as fillers. Thank you Rakesh Mehra, Rajkumar Hirani and Vishal Bharadwaj for dishing out such a great fare. So three cheers for the resurgent bollywood and may we get more such great movies in future.