Lost in translation

Films like OK Kanmani are showing with subtitles to encourage an interest in regional cinema

What is it about subtitles in movies that Indians are so averse to? Almost always, I feel like the only outsider while watching a Malayalam or Tamil films in Mumbai. I would have missed out on some of the best regional cinema (Drishyam, Bangalore Days, Cuckoo, Fandry, Chotushkone, to name a few) last year, if the multiplexes in my city had decided to not show the subtitles. I believe that Tamil and Telugu cinema are equally, if not more, technologically advanced as their Hindi counterparts. If you thought Badlapur was dark, wait till you watched Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu; if Ragini MMS scared the living hell out of you, then Pisasu will take you to another uncharted level of horror cinema. I might sound like an Amazon algorithm but the fact of the matter is that regional cinema is too good to be ignored. The best movie critic of this country, Baradwaj Rangan, writes about Tamil cinema in such poignant prose that your heart needs to be made of granite to not check out the movies after reading his ruminations.

In the true sense of the word auteur, we only have three at the moment: Anurag Kashyap, Bala and Gautham Menon. Earlier this year, I watched Menon's latest, the painfully beautiful Yennai Arindhaal, at a multiplex in Sion and it looked like I was the only one totally dependent on the subtitles. But thank Lord for those subtitles, because of which I was able to engage with the evolution of Ajith's character as he emerged from a vortex of complex emotions. Agreed, subtitles vitiate the real dialogue and they are never accurate enough, but that's not a reason to miss out on something really amazing. People I encounter at parties or at book launches tell me that it's too much effort to look at the subtitles when all they want to do is simply enjoy the movie. That almost smacks of the American attitude. Despite the best foreign shows being available on Netflix, they are still remade in English for the American audience, because they, apparently, refuse to watch anything with subtitles. The best of Scandinavian television - Forbrydelsen, Broen- has been remade frame-by-frame with American actors for an audience that is too big to be ignored.

What boggles my mind is that the most tacky and execrable Hindi dubbings of regional cinema end up as prime time viewing on Hindi movie channels. One-third of Bollywood releases every year are regional cinema remakes and most end up doing quite well at the box office. Obviously, people love what they are seeing but somehow an audience needs to be cultivated outside a film festival to pay from its pocket and watch something in a language completely alien to it. Thankfully, the producers are continuing to persist. Every Friday morning, my local listings show me a new Tamil movie being shown in my neighbourhood, and in fine print it's usually mentioned: "With English subtitles".

Another thing that leaves me befuddled is that Tamil movies in Chennai are never shown with subtitles (apart from the solitary Sathyam cinemas). Here's a cosmopolitan city that has a massive amount of transplants from the rest of the country and they wouldn't be able to indulge in the cinema because it seems to be presumed that in Chennai everyone knows Tamil. Only the Marathi film industry seems to have understood that subtitles are the way to go. Every new release across Mumbai has words in English beaming below the visuals even in the most rundown multiplexes.

I know that there are memes and YouTube videos of regional films with the most literal subtitles doing rounds that are really ludicrous. But, believe me, the new crop of subtitle writers are extremely fluent in the language and they make sure that only a negligible percentage of the movie gets lost in translation. More of us, not just movie journalists and film students, should step out to encourage regional cinema. In case you need immediate tip-offs: Mani Ratnam's OK Kanmani and Chaitanya Tamhane's Court are playing across the country with, yes, English subtitles.

jagannath.jamma@bsmail.in