2002- A New Movement in Indian Cinema
2002 saw the beginning of a new movement in the Indian film scenario. Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding started the trend. Then came Bend it like Beckam followed closely by American Desi.
All these three films belong to a new genre, which is becomingly slowly popular. They don’t cause a landslide victory in the box offices. Nevertheless they are being viewed much more than the regular Bollywood fare. Because they are made on a string budget the expectations are less. Thus people find themselves being pleasantly surprised when they end up viewing the film without getting bored. Firstly the same painted faces in the same monotonous dance sequences are not there. Absence of unnecessary and painful comic subplots keeps the story telling effect compact. Comic relief is provided in the witty dialogues and everyday situations. Ordinary human beings acting out of negative feelings of jealousy, rage or insecurity replace larger than life villains. The storylines are all taken from everyday situations not spanning lifetimes. Yet the structure of the plots in these movies is quite tight. There is the building up towards a climax. There is catharsis and there is transformation of character too.
In Monsoon Wedding the story is woven around the preparations for the celebration of a wedding between a city bred girl and an NRI. The girl is seen to be in a relationship with a married man but agrees to a marriage of convenience. And as relations from all over the world start coming for the wedding, various other strains of stories from the lives of other relations surface. But strangely the interest in this movie is more in the atmosphere, which is created: an atmosphere which many of today’s vertically mobile middleclass find themselves in. It is at once as traditional as the wedding mantras and as liberated as the sexual explorations of the bride to be.
American Desi is again a film of the same genre as Monsoon Wedding and Bend it Like Beckam. Here the protagonist is again born and brought up outside India as in Bend it Like Beckam. He is the typical Mr. ABCD (American Born Confused Desi). Krishna Gopal Reddy sports everything American; right from the twang to his attitude towards girls to his shortened name: Chris, even to the extent of disdain towards everything Indian. Ironically the graduation years away from home, which he thinks, is his passport to the ultimate freedom (which every American teenager dreams of) turns out to be an exploration of his Indian identity. There he finds himself sharing a room with a Punjabi, Muslim and another Indian boy. Contemptuously he tries to avoid their company. But soon things change as he finds, to his surprise, that his girl friend is an Indian and proud of it. Here another Indian (a South Indian) senior student also pools in to help Chris woo his girl friend. Thus he finds himself, in a hilarious situation, trying to cook Indian food. But his discovery of his Indian-ness culminates in his silent acceptance of being called Krishna and his mastering of the Garba dance form.
Bend it like Beckam is a movie about Jess/Jaswinder an Indian girl born and brought up in UK and her obsession with football. She teams up with a British girl with similar dreams of making it to an all women’s football team. When her traditional and conservative family is obsessed with finding the right matrimonial matches for her and her sister, she is bent on getting through a football coaching camp. There is also a romantic triangle in the movie. In her endeavors to overcome family pressures to “bend it like Beckam” she is unknowingly drawn to the male coach. The other angle is formed due to the fact that her British girl friend and her football mentor share a history of togetherness over a long period of time. Thus the storyline never sags. It is held taut with the tension between the three of them; with the tension between what her family thinks is good for her and what she is really passionate about. The tension climaxes when her sister’s wedding is slotted on the day of her final football match. And she has to make a choice. Here the script allows external factors like an ardent well wisher and a father’s love to bring about a resolution.
It is a movie, which evokes the same kind of milieu and atmosphere like the Monsoon wedding. It is about the new atmosphere in which NRIs find themselves growing up in. It is a fusion of the west and the east: the western free and far more mature interactions with people of different cultures and sexes and the protected, security of the treasured social unit of the orriet: the family. This fusion is reflected in the language, which is a mixture of Eng, Hindi and Punjabi. It is vividly brought to our attention by the music, which is a potpourri of Punjabi balle balle, old Hindustani classical and modern English It is reflected in the dresses. It is made more visibly effective towards the end when the female protagonist rushes out from her sister’s wedding in a sari towards the venue of the final football match. The language, the music, the costumes, the accents of two cultures at this juncture merge from one to the other. The two cultures do not clash but complement one another wonderfully.
The rising popularity of this kind of genre I think lies in the fact that a large number of urban Indians who didn’t cross the seven seas can live their dreams through these movies. They depict a realistic portrayal of the life they could have led if they had decided to leave their country. The language, intonation, expressions used in these movies is an echo of how it really is in many families across India. The absence of known superstars help to increase this sense of realism.
There is also an added attraction in these movies as most of them are getting viewed on PCs. It is almost like a package of family video that one has redesigned and edited to give the format of a movie.
Published in The Hindu 2002
All these three films belong to a new genre, which is becomingly slowly popular. They don’t cause a landslide victory in the box offices. Nevertheless they are being viewed much more than the regular Bollywood fare. Because they are made on a string budget the expectations are less. Thus people find themselves being pleasantly surprised when they end up viewing the film without getting bored. Firstly the same painted faces in the same monotonous dance sequences are not there. Absence of unnecessary and painful comic subplots keeps the story telling effect compact. Comic relief is provided in the witty dialogues and everyday situations. Ordinary human beings acting out of negative feelings of jealousy, rage or insecurity replace larger than life villains. The storylines are all taken from everyday situations not spanning lifetimes. Yet the structure of the plots in these movies is quite tight. There is the building up towards a climax. There is catharsis and there is transformation of character too.
In Monsoon Wedding the story is woven around the preparations for the celebration of a wedding between a city bred girl and an NRI. The girl is seen to be in a relationship with a married man but agrees to a marriage of convenience. And as relations from all over the world start coming for the wedding, various other strains of stories from the lives of other relations surface. But strangely the interest in this movie is more in the atmosphere, which is created: an atmosphere which many of today’s vertically mobile middleclass find themselves in. It is at once as traditional as the wedding mantras and as liberated as the sexual explorations of the bride to be.
American Desi is again a film of the same genre as Monsoon Wedding and Bend it Like Beckam. Here the protagonist is again born and brought up outside India as in Bend it Like Beckam. He is the typical Mr. ABCD (American Born Confused Desi). Krishna Gopal Reddy sports everything American; right from the twang to his attitude towards girls to his shortened name: Chris, even to the extent of disdain towards everything Indian. Ironically the graduation years away from home, which he thinks, is his passport to the ultimate freedom (which every American teenager dreams of) turns out to be an exploration of his Indian identity. There he finds himself sharing a room with a Punjabi, Muslim and another Indian boy. Contemptuously he tries to avoid their company. But soon things change as he finds, to his surprise, that his girl friend is an Indian and proud of it. Here another Indian (a South Indian) senior student also pools in to help Chris woo his girl friend. Thus he finds himself, in a hilarious situation, trying to cook Indian food. But his discovery of his Indian-ness culminates in his silent acceptance of being called Krishna and his mastering of the Garba dance form.
Bend it like Beckam is a movie about Jess/Jaswinder an Indian girl born and brought up in UK and her obsession with football. She teams up with a British girl with similar dreams of making it to an all women’s football team. When her traditional and conservative family is obsessed with finding the right matrimonial matches for her and her sister, she is bent on getting through a football coaching camp. There is also a romantic triangle in the movie. In her endeavors to overcome family pressures to “bend it like Beckam” she is unknowingly drawn to the male coach. The other angle is formed due to the fact that her British girl friend and her football mentor share a history of togetherness over a long period of time. Thus the storyline never sags. It is held taut with the tension between the three of them; with the tension between what her family thinks is good for her and what she is really passionate about. The tension climaxes when her sister’s wedding is slotted on the day of her final football match. And she has to make a choice. Here the script allows external factors like an ardent well wisher and a father’s love to bring about a resolution.
It is a movie, which evokes the same kind of milieu and atmosphere like the Monsoon wedding. It is about the new atmosphere in which NRIs find themselves growing up in. It is a fusion of the west and the east: the western free and far more mature interactions with people of different cultures and sexes and the protected, security of the treasured social unit of the orriet: the family. This fusion is reflected in the language, which is a mixture of Eng, Hindi and Punjabi. It is vividly brought to our attention by the music, which is a potpourri of Punjabi balle balle, old Hindustani classical and modern English It is reflected in the dresses. It is made more visibly effective towards the end when the female protagonist rushes out from her sister’s wedding in a sari towards the venue of the final football match. The language, the music, the costumes, the accents of two cultures at this juncture merge from one to the other. The two cultures do not clash but complement one another wonderfully.
The rising popularity of this kind of genre I think lies in the fact that a large number of urban Indians who didn’t cross the seven seas can live their dreams through these movies. They depict a realistic portrayal of the life they could have led if they had decided to leave their country. The language, intonation, expressions used in these movies is an echo of how it really is in many families across India. The absence of known superstars help to increase this sense of realism.
There is also an added attraction in these movies as most of them are getting viewed on PCs. It is almost like a package of family video that one has redesigned and edited to give the format of a movie.
Published in The Hindu 2002
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