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Bollywood needs a Miramax
Will B'wood ever be able to throw up its own Miramax, asks Saibal Chatterjee.
A comprehensive 50-film retrospective is currently underway in New York’s Museum of Modern Art to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Miramax, the production and distribution company that has succeeded famously in bringing an art-house sensibility into the mainstream movie business.
Indeed, few people have had quite the impact that the brothers Weinsteins, Harvey and Bob, have had on contemporary independent cinema from the world over. They set up Miramax Films in 1979 and have over the years repeatedly and amply demonstrated that critical acclaim and commercial success, intelligence and entertainment can go hand in hand to the benefit of everybody concerned.
Even though Miramax, based in New York, away from the madding epicenter of Hollywood, operates like a small independent production company, its approach has invariably been that of a major old-style studio. Harvey and Bob Weinstein are, in many ways, reincarnations of the studio bosses of yore, the likes Louis B. Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn. What sets them apart is their understanding of international cinema, an attributed that is reflected in the foreign-language films that they choose to back.
The films distributed and/or produced by Miramax have fetched the company well over 200 Oscar nominations and 50-plus Academy awards. In a span of 16 years, 23 of Miramax’s acquisitions have been nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
Starting with quirky, low budget films like Steve Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotapes, Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game, Jim Sheridan’s My Left Foot, and Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror, Miramax has graduated over the years to bankrolling big films like Chicago, Gangs of New York and Aviator.
Their nose for quality in the cinematic arts is legendary: Miramax has consistently acquired works like Krzysztof Kieslowski Blue, Red and White, Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions, Atom Egoyan’s Exotica, Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Alfonso Arau’s Like Water for Chocolate, Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful and Guiseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, among numerous others, for distribution. They have rarely had reason to regret that strategy.
They have enabled the world to discover the remarkable depth of Asian filmmakers like Wong Kar Wai, Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou and Abbas Kiorastami.They have also been behind the production or distribution of some of the most remarkable Anglophone films of the last decade – Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient, John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love, Jane Campion’s The Piano and Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting.
