2014: The year of the Women

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2014 clearly belonged to the women in the hindi film industry. There was Queen, Highway, Dedh Ishqia, Mary Kom, Sonali Cable and Bobby Jasoos. All women centric films and this in addition to Sunny Leone being the most searched "object/piece/news/person" on the internet. The men still seemed to be trapped in their image of being the overgrown kid. Kick, Happy New Year, Bang Bang being evidences of the same. It is in movies where they decided to support the lead (often the women) did they stand out. Randeep Hooda (Highway) Rajkamal Yadav along with Ali Zafar, Nasseruddin and Arshad Warsi (why do we see so little of him) are case in point.

2014 otherwise was bad for Indian cinema as compared to the cinema of the world (noticeably Hollywood for me) which had far better products to showcase (Boyhood, Gone Girl, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Lucy, Interstellar to name a few). Interestingly, if you see the top 10 Hollywood grosser like Hindi Film industry were mindless sci-fi or America's fascination with supermen kind of characters. Back home, our grossers were equally mindless if not better.

In between we did manage a few gems like Queen, Highway and the last in the line, Ugly. Each one where small and delightful films, with strong scripts and screenplay. I have been harping on this point for quite some time, the lack of story in cinema today. It is a pity and in the long run will have impact. If you see the cinema of the 80's and the early 90's (when cable was virtually destroying cinema and TV moderately) there was a serious catharsis of idea and the mindless pot boilers that got generated in the name of cinema had their takers. In between there were the art house films which was limited to a few releases often with no takers. The early 2000 showed some promise and there were small gems that got released (Dil Chahta Hai, Chadni Bar, Zubeida, Saathiya, Company to name a few) but since then with each passing year we have been ushered in cinema which is meaning less and lacks story. In a previous post at the middle of last year I had raised an issue around this point.

The problem is both from the demand and supply side. We as audience are comfortable with some overgrown men dating girls half their age in fancy locale and with some action and a funny scape. Beyond the same there is nothing much home to talk. And these film work and they work big time, I am still trying to wonder why. Reading a book Easy Riders, Raging Bull by Peter Biskind one realises that cinema in the 70's broke through the norms and the traditions that was so Hollywood before a new generation of Directors and Producers and Actors and Actresses and technical people swooned into the circuit. And that changed cinema for Hollywood, forever. They brought in radicalism and even at the cost of being nihilist. They brought in norms even at the cost of sneering at fastidiousness which was indeed brave. The modern cinema of Hollywood is based on the foundation of such radicalism and fanaticism of bringing change. And I would prophesy something like this required in Hindi cinema. Look at Sholay or Mughle Azaam, they painted a scale which was eponymous in those days and these movie today are known for their grandeur and scale. Today, no one will even think of something like that (surprisingly with so much money at stake now). Look at Jaane Bhi Do Yaron. A dark comedy with a brilliant script funded by NFDC. Today. we dare to laugh at ourselves leave aside others. We need to soul search.

Till then we live these little gems that came through in 2014 to mull over. Highway, Queen and Ugly will be at the top and followed by Filmistan and Haider. Go on 2015, show some courage and show some light at the end of the tunnel...         

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