Destination Hollywood
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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Though the Hindi mainstream film juggernaut has rolled into Hollywood, it is still in the periphery of action. It is only when we develop a globally acceptable template that we can truly be in with it
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PHOTO: AP
SHAKE IT UP Latino hottie Shakira dances to Farah Khan's tunes.
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away there was an execrable film called Hollywood Bollywood. Directed by Deepa Mehta, who seemed to want to take out all the frustration of the Earth, Fire, Water fracas, the film was mealy mouthed and patronising and dismissed all that went into the making of a mainstream Hindi film as illogical and garish.
The wheel seems to have turned now (at least according to the media) and those very Indian song and dance sequences are all the rage.
Latino hottie Shakira's hips don't lie; they speak a sexy swinging truth set to the Bollywood beat. News channels dutifully gushed and gawked as choreographer director Farah Khan smugly said Shakira was so impressed with Farah's choreography for the MTV awards that she has expressed a desire to work with Ms Khan in a music video.
Shakira apparently loved the "Chal Chaiyya Chaiyya" number from Dil Se and has hired an Indian in Chicago to teach her classical Indian dance steps. Farah is hoping to have Shakira as an item girl in her latest directorial venture, Om Shanti Om and has also promised to put Shakira on top of a train for the music video.
While Shakira has to wait to be put on top of a train, Spike Lee went ahead and used a souped-up version of "Chal Chaiyya Chaiyya" for the opening and closing credits of his tense thriller Inside Man. The film, starring Jodie Foster, Denzel Washington and Christopher Plummer, was about a bank robbery in Manhattan and was true blue Hollywood. The use of the track was fun as it was matter of fact and not put in just for a taste of exotic India.
The quirky indie film Ghost World directed by Terry Zwigoff went with the same principle. The song "Jaan Pehechaan Ho" (Shankar-Jaikishen) is used as part of the background score in this movie starring American Beauty's Thora Birch and Scarlet Johansson. About the world of comic book collectors and girls who do not wish to fit in, the film is asAmerican as it gets!
We had more than enough of exotic India with snake charmers and lumbering elephants in movies of the eighties. And that is excluding the sumptuous Merchant Ivory productions. Bizarre was underlined and highlighted in two blockbusters - the laughable Bond flick Octopussy where Vijay Amritraj trips the light fantastic as an auto driver and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - the MAD movie satire was Inbanana Jones and the Temple of Goons!
Beyond camp
Directed by Steven Spielberg, the beyond camp film had Indy crash into an Indian village, which is in the grip of unspeakable evil. The film had thugs, Kali worship, black magic and some strange eating habits that included chilled monkey's brains and other slimy slithery treats. Amrish Puri played the iniquitous priest and waggled his eyes in the most alarming fashion. All in all it was a terrible film only redeemed by the vicarious delight of watching Harrison Ford grapple with Amrish Puri resolutely mumbling "tum shiva ke bhakt nahin ho."
The late 90s and the turn of the millennium saw three Indian directors make it huge in Hollywood. The films, Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur), The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan) and The Cell (Tarsem Singh) became humungous critical and commercial successes.
Kapur's Elizabeth brought an Indian sensibility to Tudor England while The Sixth Sense was an intelligent horror movie set in Philadelphia. The Cell was set in the fevered imagination of a serial killer.Starring Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn, The Cell bristled with a kind of kinetic energy that threatened to burst out of the frames. The dreamscapes seemed a mixture of Dali paintings and Nasir Hussain films!
Nasir Hussain reminds us of that loving tribute to his films by Baz Luhrmann, Moulin Rouge. Set in turn of the century Paris, the film was totally Indian in its sensibilities from the battle between paisa and pyaar, the song and dance sequences right down to the bald henchman! Luhrmann was inspired to make the film after a visit to Jaipur. Moulin Rouge glories in every kind of excess. The cherry on the cake is of course Nicole Kidman dancing to Anu Malik's "Chamma Chamma"!
In spite of all the cynics who say it is plain economics, there is also reverse osmosis with more and more Hollywood films being shot in India. The most talked about as of now is the Branjelina presence in Pune. Angelina Jolie, partner Brad Pitt and children are in Pune shooting A Mighty Heart about the slain reporter Daniel Pearl. Sylvester Stallone would be in India to shoot Rocky IV and Morgan Freeman would be landing in Rishikesh to shoot Moses Tate's War. Then Michael Douglas and Aishwarya Rai (ahem) will be shooting a sequel to Romancing the Stone. The baap of all this surely has to be Shantaram which Peter Wier is shooting with Johnny Depp in the lead as the gang lord in Mumbai.
A lot was expected from the triumvirate. But Shyamalam seems to have totally lost it as his later movies reveal, while Kapur says he wants to make a film in India. Tarsem seems to have gone into hibernation only surfacing to shoot the Nakshatra ad with Ash.
So while there is a lot of talk of India storming Hollywood, the signs are not propitious. In movies like The Mistress of Spices, Bride and Prejudice and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which Naseeruddin Shah dubbed a terrible experience) we still get to see exotic India.We need what Kapur called "a globally acceptable template". Then we can also talk of Crouching Tigers and Hidden Dragons claiming our space in the collective unconscious. Till such time Indian cinema will continue to be perceived as overwrought melodrama where people burst into song ("which are dubbed", western reviewers are at pains to point out) at inopportune moments.
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