Frustrations in Indian cinema

    Paisa Vasool! Really! How much do we pay to go to theater to watch cinema these days? 350 to 500 Rupees or 15 to 20 bucks !! I have to mention the name "bucks" as many of the viewers including me for that matter are from that part of the world where bucks are said now and then. Taking this into consideration, I see a lot of viewers appearing dis-satisfied for the entertainment they get. We don't have many paisa-vasool statements these days because of 2 reasons. One is an obvious thing where I have described all these while and the other is the obvious standard of the movie. I stated "obvious" in both the reasons because sometimes I feel the blatant obviousness is not recognized by the movie crew which means to say that the movie watching junta is not given enough importance while making a movie. Also maybe these are reasons for not recognizing our films at a global level inspite Mr.Anil Kapoor and Big B reminding us again and again that we have an international reach. Remember, Slumdog Millionaire was created by a British and was never an Indian movie. It only had an Indian story .Pun Intended. These are the reasons why Indian movies fail to have global reach. Trust me, when you start watching Hollywood movies, you almost completely lose interest over our movies. Why does this happen? These are few of my points here: 

1.) Songs: Songs according to me hamper the flow of a movie. Recently I watched a Tamil movie,7th sense . There was a scene where the protagonist of the movie gets rejected by the heroine and boom a sad song happens just when the audiences were able to feel the disappointment of the hero in it. Then the audience start cursing the song in the movie and the movie loses it's flow. This happens over and over again in Indian cinema. Even you might have experienced the same frustration while watching the movie. So a song should either appear as a separate album like an OST and should not interfere in the movie or else it should not hamper the flow of the movie, Songs can appear only in musical or maybe a romcom according to me. 

2.) Genres: Indian movies are not classified into different genres like action, musical, romance, romcom, thriller, scinece fiction etc. This is one of the disadvantages. The problem is we have all packages including sentiment packaged into one which are called masala movies. This sometimes confuses the audience and gives a tough time for judges to select the movie for international awards. For eg, Ra One or an Endhiran should be a super-hero movie genre. There cant be any songs or music or sentiment in it One of the very best examples where the director had got it right was Alaypayudhe (Saathiya in Hindi) where it was of romantic musical genre. The songs were well placed in the movie and had good narration. For eg, in Hollywood, Serendipity/500 days of Summer was a perfect example of a pure romantic movie . Why don't we produce genres like this?  Even 2012 which was silly sometimes was found to be extremely good and entertaining because we knew what was in store for us as the movie was classified as a disaster movie genre. We need to produce more Dil Chahta Hais(rom-com), Nayagan (gangster epic), Die Hard/Transporter/Bourne series(action) etc.. 

3.) Heroism: To be a star, you need to strengthen your image and deliver the same style, mannerisms and larger than life persona. But to be an actor, you need to constantly break the image, reinvent it every time and discover newer ways to portray characters, even if it means changing your look and appearance with every film.MGR-Rajni with the superstar status accorded to them, have never felt the pressure to prove themselves artistically just like Sivaji-Kamal with the accolades and awards won, have never felt that they were wrong to experiment with the box office. Most of the heroes are still obsessed over their title-tag baggage. This usually happens in Tamil/Telugu films and I don't want to point out about whom I am talking about. We need a focus shift towards directors once again. We need producers to understand that good cinema stems from storytelling rather than just one or two individuals. We need our filmmakers to be able to tell their stories with flourish rather than blow up all the money to hero-worship one person’s ego. The case in point in Ra One again( sorry SRK fans) which I thought was a very expensive mid-life crisis and even Dasavatharam by my favourite hero Kamal who showed his ego in that movie dominating every aspect of the movie making. We need our actors to be stars and our stars to be actors. We no longer live in the world where Big B or Rajni used to beat the pulp out of villains and the directors/actors/producers or sometimes even the audience must understand that! They should understand that content is the king and not the actors. As Sudhish Kamath, a famous critic rights says "We need our actors to be stars and our stars to be actors."

4.) Indian Cinema should also not be called Bollywood, Kollywood, Tollywood ,Sandalwood, and other woods. :P I fail to understand why we don't unite any of them into Indian cinema. The case for these ----woods only helps in increasing the ego between film industries of many states in India. Also a case for infighting and no global recognition. For eg, Shwaas which was a very inspiring Marathi movie got stamped and over-written by Bollywood and there was not much recognition.

5.)Heroines: We need women back in our cinema, not just as glam dolls, but as real women with real issues. This point seems to be changing however in a positive way.

6.)Last but not the least, I feel the intelligence of the audience also needs to improve. I don't blame the audience for this as we rarely get good films at the box-office. However this is also a case in point.

    I am no big scholar in movies here. U might agree or disagree with these points. These are some of the obvious points that I find while watching any Indian movies. Do post your comments on what are the good/bad movies that you have watched recently. 

Cheers,

Uday