E-Paper
Tricks gone awry
Swades raises hopes of the revival of meaningful cinema in Bollywood, says Saibal Chatterjee.
The year gone by had more than its share of costly box office non-performers. Numerous big budget films arrived amid much fanfare only to sink into the quicksand of oblivion. As always, nobody in the industry save the seasoned Yash Chopra could quite figure the secret of consistent success.
Of course, Yashraj Films' three-in-a-row feat had little to do with quality. Sensible, if somewhat ponderous, films like Govind Nihalani's Dev and Mani Ratnam's Yuva were complete washouts at the box office while inane but titillating concoctions like Murder and Dhoom, thanks to a liberal show of skin, turned out to be huge success stories. It was that sort of year - completely topsy-turvy.
A string of B-grade exploitation flicks made it to the multiplexes even as Sudhir Mishra's sensitive cinematic account of the angst of a generation that grew up in India's political epicenter in the turbulent years leading up to the clamping of Internal Emergency, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, languished in the cans for want of takers.
What probably best summed up 2004 was the simultaneous release on the year's second last Friday of Anil Sharma's Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyo and Rituparno Ghosh's Raicoat. One was a big, bloated, turgid multi-starrer about terrorism, the other a small, intimate exploration of a man-woman relationship. No prizes for guessing which of the two films found audiences difficult to find on the opening weekend.
Life wasn't quite as cut-and-dried though for much of Bollywood. Hyped releases like Milan Luthria's Pakistan-baiting war film Deewar - Let's Bring Our Heroes Home, Mahesh Manjrekar's convoluted supernatural thriller Rakht, Farhan Akhtar's well-made but slow-paced Lakshya, Samir Karnik's romantic flick Kyun… Ho Gaya Na, Gurinder Chadha's boisterous Balle Balle Amritsar to LA (the Hindi version Gurinder Chadha's Bride & Prejudice) and Sanjay Gupta's year-end entry Musafir came unstuck at the box office.
War films bombed left, right and centre and so did horror films like Krishna Cottage and Vaastu Shastra. Particularly badly hit was Bollywood's resident enfant terrible, Ram Gopal Varma.
Varma, who has an avowed aversion to sugary NRI romances and fluffy feel-good musicals, struggled in 2004. With Hum Tum, Main Hoon Na, Mujhse Shaadi Karogi and Veer-Zaara holding sway, there seemed to be no room in this market for films that sought to go beyond the margins of mere masala entertainment.
Each of the five films that emerged from the RGV Factory during the year - Ek Hasina Thi, Ab Tak Chappan, Gayab, Vaastu Shastra and Naach - floundered in the face of competition from more crowd-pleasing fare.
