Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: The 'new' in New York

New York is a nice film. The bubblegummish romp with terrorism, set in New York after 9/11, has its heart in the right place. My only quibble — the end was too gimmicky and the ideological underpinning is somewhat weak. Both, the hero (John Abraham) who becomes a terrorist and the FBI officer who chases him (Irrfan Khan), don’t argue their case strongly enough. But honestly, that is of no consequence when you see New York.

The film is well-shot (on location) and has a confidence and energy that make you forget that you are watching an Indian film. In fact, you can see more and more of this with Indian films. Whether it is a Vishal Bhardwaj who blows your mind with his application of Shakespeare to the bhai-genre with Maqbool and Omkara or Sriram Raghavan with Ek Haseena Thi and Johnny Gaddar, we have started experimenting with ideas, stories and characters that have several shades, with brilliant results. Chak De India or Jodha Akbar use sports or pieces of history to weave heart-warming tales. Salaam Namaste or Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na turn old stories into a fun romp, thanks to their energy and some great production values.

Creatively, Indian films have come a long way. There is now a pride in saying that you watch Hindi films, something many people would never have admitted to earlier. The bottomline — Indian films are becoming world-class. (Since Hindi and Marathi are the only two Indian languages I can watch a film in without subtitles, this column is restricted to these. Hindi is also the largest slice of the film-industry pie in value.)

Remember our idea of showing a white man was shoving Bob Christo or Tom Alter, the two white actors in the Hindi film industry, in front of the camera? If you wanted to show a bunch of foreigners, then lots of Indians wearing blonde wigs did the trick (remember Purab aur Paschim?). Now we shoot the entire film in the US, UK, Germany, Italy or wherever the story is set. We have co-production treaties with many of these countries, which actively court Indian films. Many (not all) of our scripts are original and fresh.

Much of this had to do with money. Not just foreign exchange, which was restricted, capital itself was scarce in the ’70s and ’80s, the worst period in Indian filmmaking history. The coming of organised capital and the opening up of retail (multiplexes, digital screens, home video, cable and DTH) have meant the ability to reach out to different audiences with different products — a point mentioned several times in this column.

The second reason, however, is something that hasn’t been dwelt upon. A lot of this experimentation and its success also have to do with the audience.

If Indian filmmakers — new and old — are experimenting, having fun and generally finding that going with their individual creative calls actually works, it is because Indian audiences have changed. If only two in hundred people appreciated an Ardh Satya or a Saaransh in the eighties, 40 in hundred probably do so now. The reason films like Iqbal or Bheja Fry work is because we are a fairly sated audience. There is cable TV and DTH with hundreds of channels that expose us to a variety of options from India and abroad. Then there are thousands of newspapers and magazines that shape our thinking and expand our horizon. Remember, till 17 years ago, we were a one-channel (Doordarshan), one-newspaper per city and one-national magazine country.

As we discover the world, through all kinds of media, our taste buds as an audience have developed. This has happened even as the film industry went through structural changes that allowed it to cater to this change in palette. Of course, a lot of people who enjoy Iranian or French cinema may not agree. New York, to their mind, is hardly high art. Probably not, but for popular cinema to have reached this far in just eight-odd years (since corporatisation) is a huge change.

The Indian film industry deserves a big round of applause.

The writer is a media consultant.

vanitakohli@hotmail.com