There’s more to Indian cinema than Bollywood. While we do need a regular Dhoom 3 once in a while, a greater variety of film styles and nuanced stories will find a larger international audience and benefit the Indian film industry
WHEN DHOOM 3 was filming in downtown Chicago in 2012, I would walk by the grip trucks on Wabash and Lake, see the road closures on Lower Wacker Drive and feel a thrill to see Dhoom 3 on the signs as opposed to Superman or Transformers which had filmed here in the years prior.
I wasn’t alone to feel this way. There was always a contingent of South Asians who waited to get a glimpse of Aamir Khan or Abhishek Bachchan. My friends’ Facebook pages were updated with photos of the stars’ trailers, a bike stunt with the bridge over the Chicago River up, and selfies of them with a superstar barely visible in the background.
Through all of this, there would also be a group of curious onlookers wondering what Dhoom 3 meant at all. People have heard of Bollywood. “Aren’t Indian films always musicals?” I’m asked in class when the topic comes up. Well, yes, sort of. Depending on how you define musicals. “Well, so, is Dhoom 3 a musical?” comes the query, this time a little hesitantly. Yup. It’s also an action film, a thriller, and a romance. And then finally, “Do you mean there’s a Dhoom 1 and Dhoom 2 as well?” My students didn’t even wait for a response this time, promptly going to YouTube with “Hey, check it out”. A few of them got through Dhoom 2. I could hear the subdued hoots and hollers from the film “cage” (aka equipment center), down the hall as the romantic songs start abruptly and then crash into chase sequences, followed by an action-packed fight. “It makes no sense,” they exclaim, mesmerised, as they immediately bend their heads to watch the next scene on the laptop.
Many students from Chicago area film schools interned on the film’s production. This ensured filled seats in theatres when it finally released here — the first Indian film to screen at IMAX theatres. Along with screening at boutique multiplexes in South Asian neighborhoods, the movie was also widely distributed in mainstream theatres, thus ensuring a visibility that international films do not always receive.
The glamour, the melodrama, the larger-than-life situations that Bollywood routinely encounters often finds an enthusiastic audience on account of the novelty. On being asked for her impression about the Indian films she had seen, a friend, April, wrote that her favourite part about Bollywood is that “Expression is magnified in many senses of the word and it helps the viewer escape reality instead of reminding one of reality”. In her view, Bollywood cinema is more like running around on a playground having fun, instead of having a deep existential awakening that Hollywood hopes to provide us with.
As a filmmaker and a film teacher, I take pains to clarify in conversations about Indian Cinema that Bollywood is but one facet of a diverse, multilingual and multi-cultural industry. I explain that the largest film industry in the world boasts films produced in over 20 languages, but for a primarily English-speaking audience, it is often hard to distinguish one Indian language from another, encapsulating all Indian popular cinema under the umbrella of Bollywood. That there are that many languages spoken in the country is a surprise to even the most aware viewers.
However, while there has always been an awareness of Bollywood in big cities such as NYC, Chicago, LA and others that have a large Indian population, I also notice a growing interest in Indian popular cinema that goes beyond Indians, film students and film critics. The growing number of organisations and film festivals focusing on Indian art, culture, and films has inspired an interest in films from the subcontinent. New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles boast of South Asian or Indian-themed film festivals over a decade old; other cities such as Chicago, Washington DC, and Tampa Bay have introduced their own festivals over the past five years.
All these events showcase films that not only cater to a South Asian diaspora but also initiate newcomers to the world of Indian cinema — true, disparate, diverse Indian Cinema. For instance, this year, the Fifth Chicago South Asian Film Festival screened Geethu Mohandas’ Liar’s Dice (India’s entry to the Oscars), Sange Dorjee’s Crossing Bridges (first film in the Shertukpen dialect), Batul Mukhtiar’s Kaphal, Venu’s Munnariyippu, Sridhar Rangayan’s Purple Skies, and Amit Kumar’s Monsoon Shootout, over the course of one tightly packed weekend.
What all these feature films have in common is their shorter lengths. The films varied from 88 minutes (Monsoon Shootout) to 118 minutes (Munnariyippu), but all fell short of the more common 170 minutes+ of Indian popular cinema. The shorter time reflects how the narrative structures and storytelling in these films are more accommodating to an international audience, who found three-hour feature films with numerous plots and sub-plots, and a lack of visual/ narrative continuity too tedious to watch.
The recipe for a typical Bollywood masala film — add melodrama, three dances, two fights, six songs, one sacrificial death, bring all to a boil and wait for a film to emerge at the other end – makes for a delicious dish, but most appreciated by those who grew up immersed in particular mythologies. Stories such as the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and other tales make us comfortable with film narratives that span multiple generations, have multiple plots, and many, many characters.
In contrast, Monsoon Shootout focuses on three perspectives related to one event; Liar’s Dice explores the issues of migrant labour through the eyes of a young woman in search of her missing husband; and Crossing Bridges, a contemplative film, looks at a different kind of displacement with questions about identity, culture shock and readjustment.
Dhoom 3 is one facet of an Indian Cinema that is seen as extravagant with its overdramatic narrative, exotic dance sequences, and “unreal”, if not ridiculous, plot twists. But just like Hollywood is more than Transformers and Iron Man, Indian Cinema is much more than all of this. There are millions of Indian stories waiting to be told, and a growing part of the world is interested in hearing them on screen. The idea that neither the stories nor the audience need only be exposed to the more traditional mix of (cinematic) masala could mean more Indian films that tell stories of the everyday, introduce characters that could be any one of us, and focus on the details.
There will always be a place for the Bollywood that promises us escape from normal life in over-the-top proportions, but with a greater variety of film styles and nuanced stories, a larger international audience can be reached. And from that burgeoning international audience, all of Bollywood can benefit.