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I saw a movie this past weekend that reaffirmed my love for escapist entertainment. It had some extremely well executed action scenes, romance, cool heroes, bad villains, and was a bit silly but I will nonetheless defend it ardently. It was not Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It was a Bollywood movie starring the legendary Amitabh Bachchan: Bbuddah... Hoga Terra Baap.
In terms of the number of people it reaches, the Hindi film industry based in Mumbai, popularly called “Bollywood,” is the world's largest. It's as old as its American counterpart, and has evolved in fairly direct parallel, almost completely separately. The result is that the dominant popular form in Hindi cinema is the masala film, a cooking metaphor meaning a combination of several different elements or genres. This basically means that even in crazy intense action movies, the hero will take five minutes after killing twenty dudes single-handedly to sing a song about how awesome he is. And then in the next scene he'll be a gigantic dork falling for the nice, virginal, impossibly beautiful girl who thinks he's an uncouth ruffian. And then there'll be another song. And then crazy, intense, over-the-top bloody action. Then an intermission. Then another couple songs. Some more really intense violence. Then an out-of-nowhere plot twist that casts the hero in a whole new light. Somewhere in all this, the girl's fallen in love with him. Then the hero goes off to kill every single one of the bad guys, with completely unnecessary flourishes that serve only to make him look cool, thus rendering them completely necessary. Then the hero gets so intense that the screen itself vibrates. And of course, he kills the bad guy and gets the girl. (This is the plot of 2009's Wanted, starring Salman Khan, not to be confused with the stupid 2008 McAvoy/Jolie thing; for one thing, Salman Khan could pick his teeth with James McAvoy).
Indian movies aren't as beholden to psychological realism as American movies are. Sure, American movies have lots of dumb stuff in them sometimes, and don't make any sense, but the way in which they're dumb and don't make sense can be rationally explained. In India, things make sense if there's time for that kind of silly secondary consideration after the more important matters are seen to: romance, thrilling adventure, and larger-than-life exploits by the heroes and heroines.
This is the most important difference between Bollywood and Hollywood now. Hollywood—with very few exceptions—has actors who play leading roles. Bollywood has movie stars. There are three unrelated guys with the last name Khan—Shahrukh, Aamir, and the above-mentioned Salman—who are bigger stars (in the sense of: “whoa . . . that guy is awesome”) than just about anyone America has to offer. And if you count people who aren't named Khan you can throw in Akshay Kumar, Hrithik Roshan, and Ranbir Kapoor into the mix as well, not to mention the original gangsta who rules them all, Amitabh Bachchan.
The thing about Indian and American cinema being parallel makes it impossible to come up with a direct American analogue for Amitabh Bachchan. So, we're going to have to make do with this: picture the biggest badass you can, some kind of chimera made out of the most thunderously awesome elements of guys like Steve McQueen, Burt Reynolds, Lee Marvin, whomever you consider strikes the greatest fear in the hearts of bad men. Then picture the next level. That's where Amitabh is chillin in his shades and impeccably tailored suit, smiling amiably and saying something mildly poetic about his unspeakably badass deeds. It's a little self-aggrandizing perhaps, but hey. He's Amitabh Bachchan, you're not. So don't presume to judge.
Back in 1975, Amitabh was in a movie called Sholay that's basically the final word on everything. It's three and a half hours long and is utterly engrossing for every frame, with several absolutely mindboggling action set pieces, drama so heightened it's practically mythic, true love, blood vendettas, the most ruthless and terrifying villain ever; Sholay is basically just 200 proof awesome sauce. The director basically went, “I'm going to make a Sergio Leone movie and set in India.” And succeeded. Even if it wasn't for the long, long list of other things Amitabh was awesome in (I'm gradually making my way through his CV and loving every second of it) he could point to Sholay as proof of being a giant the likes of which the cinema has rarely, if ever seen, anywhere in the world.
Of course, that was 36 years ago. Bbuddah... Hoga Terra Baap posed the question, “Does the Big B still have it?” (Also, dude, come the fuck on, he gets to be called “The Big B,” that just categorically fucking rules.) I went to see it with some friends who all know a lot more about Indian movies than I do, all of us quite excited to see Amitabh whomp the crap out of some baddies. Much to our delight, he most certainly did. From the second he walks into frame, he's just the coolest. Women love him. Men fear him; if they don't, they're quickly made bloody and/or dead. He plays a retired gangster called into action for One Last Job, who reacts in funny and/or violent ways when people call him an old guy (“bbuddah”). Without spoiling a couple of genuinely funny and surprising plot twists, it is eventually revealed (not surprisingly at all) that Amitabh is the good guy, and he manages to take out all the bad guys all by himself.
If that description makes it seem like a humdrum action/action comedy movie, two factors need to be taken into account. The first is Amitabh. I cannot stress this enough: this is one of the coolest movie stars ever captured on film. The whole movie is built around him being the legendary hero he is. And that brings up the second factor: writer-director Puri Jagannadh uses camera moves and edits quite skillfully to reinforce his leading man's cool. And lest one get the impression that the only attraction here is Amitabh, secondary hero Sonu Sood, as a fiercely competent cop, manages to present himself as a near-equal, if not in experience than at least in badassery. Sonu Sood has a scene with Sonal Chauhan, the girl he's been in love with all his life, where she comes to let him know she likes him back while he's working out, and it's just electric. He's every bit as good as the passionate lover as he is at putting bullet holes in bad guys, which is to say quite.
That versatility might be the most important thing about Bollywood heroes (and it's important that they're referred to as heroes: they're larger than life). Where in America we have action heroes, romantic leads, and song-and-dance men, in India they have to be all three all at once. Well, except for the “song” part, they have playback singers to take care of that, but still. Amitabh can kill the shit out of any carbon-based life form you throw at him, and on a dime turn around and be the soulful romantic passionately in love with the heroine. Sure, his dancing's a little minimalist, but he still looks cool in his songs (his son Abhishek, himself rather a big star, is not so fortunate in this regard, but hey, nobody's perfect).
Salman Khan is another noteworthy example of this versatility. Salman Khan makes this huge, goofy
, incredibly sincere, tremendously entertaining movies that are tonally all over the damn place but you still walk out of them going, “Hell yeah! That was fucking awesome!” And, really, isn't that what we go to the movies for? That feeling of excitement, the exuberantly enthusiastic conversation and re-enactment of the big fight scene over post-movie beers, the fun?
That's why Bollywood movies are great. Sure they can be a little tonally inconsistent. Sure there are whole subplots you could cut out and not have it really matter in the grand scheme of things. Sure they're a little long. But boy oh boy are they fun. And when the music's good, it's great. The best song in a good Bollywood movie is invariably a balls-to-the-wall club banger or a sing-along anthem. Take this item number, from 2010's Dabangg, featuring the many-times previously mentioned Salman Khan (who, if you haven't guessed, rules) and, tying things to the ostensible inspiration for this piece, has Sonu Sood as the bad guy (see video above).
I know I haven't discussed the heroines much in this piece. The gender politics can be a little regressive in Bollywood, and the heroines are almost always defined by their relationship to the hero, but while the roles may be limited in scope, the actresses playing them are not limited in talent. There's Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (Who is also Amitabh's daughter-in-law; that Abhishek is one lucky SOB, boy, lemme tell ya)
There's the lovely and talented Katrina Kaif (above right), who is hilarious in the comedy Tees Maar Khan, opposite leading man Akshay Kumar (who's awesome in it):
And while she hasn't done anything in a while, Preity Zinta was both adorable and quite good in the wonderfully romantic Jaan-e-Mann, as the girl Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan are both madly in love with (that's them in the poster below; Salman's on the left, Akshay's on the right. Preity's the insanely good looking woman in the middle).
If you at all miss the days when movie stars were giants, bemoan the need to over-explain everything into mundanity, or are open to the cosmic advice, “just go with it,” give Bollywood a shot. For a more in-depth introduction, let me refer you to Filmi Girl's excellent Bollywood For Beginners series. Bollywood is not subtle, but the way in which it isn't subtle is tremendously entertaining. Remember, if less was more, they'd call it “more.”
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J.M.
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... Most of the indian movie has the same love theme between hero and heroine with music, dance, action and almost 3 hour long. Now they follow more Hollywood style. I think it will be a competition in the future between Hollywood vs Bollywood. and Hollywood movies are playing in every cities in India too  ) |
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