Can Bollywood give a pan-India hit ?

By Priyanka Khanna, Indo-Asian News Service

New Delhi,

(IANS) In the battle for attracting niche audiences, the Hindi film

industry has been so busy packaging good proposals that it is

forgetting the art of weaving fables that appeal to all kinds of

viewers.

With no film emerging out of Mumbai-based studios making it big

across India in a long time, Bollywood filmmakers are not only trying

to justify their strategy to cater to select sections of audiences but

also giving up the dream all together.

In response to a debate thrown up by writer Anupama Chopra's article

in The New York Times titled "Can Bollywood Please All The People, All

The Time?", nearly all the filmmakers felt that making a film that

works across India is nearly impossible.

The two major films that released Friday further emphasise the

growing gulf.

On the one hand was "Vivah", celebrating the Indian tradition of

arranged marriages that is a family drama tailor-made to appeal to a

select kind of audience.

The film's storyline is so predictable that its director Sooraj

Barjatya's earlier super-hit great Indian marriage video "Hum Aapke

Hain Koun...!" seemed to have more twists and turns.

And on the other hand was Sangeeth Sivan's "Apna Sapna Money Money"

with its eyes firmly set on college-going multiplex crowds.

"The universal Bollywood hit is becoming increasingly difficult to

pull off. A decade ago, the Hindi film market was largely considered a

homogenous monolith. What worked in one town was likely to work in

another. But over the years the business has splintered dramatically,

forcing industry pundits to create new labels for films," Chopra

says.

Typically, when an actor is approached by a filmmaker the first

question asked is whether the offer is for a movie that aims at the

sophisticated viewers mostly found in metropolitan areas like Mumbai

and overseas or the masses who sit on the cheapest seats.

The explanation given is that since the start of the economic

liberalisation in 1991 when India opened its markets, the disparities

among the country's many communities have increased, leading to a

fragmentation in the film world.

One India is poised for economic superstardom; the other struggles -

with an estimated 300 million people surviving on less than a dollar a

day.

The irony, however, is that even as Hindi filmmakers aspire to

follow on the footsteps of the more famed Hollywood-based counterparts

they are forgetting that a good story told would appeal to

everyone.

Hollywood films work pretty much across the globe. The best ones get

dubbed or are remade in local languages only because they have the

story right.

Hindi filmmakers are flush with funds and may not miss the financial

benefits of the demise of the pan-Indian hit in the short run and

single-screen theatres will replace Hindi films with Bhojpuri ones or

other regional languages but the connoisseurs of good cinema will

bemoan the death of the art of storytelling.

In a country where epics written thousands of years ago are still

relevant, the decision of not pleasing everyone all the time will be

regretted.

To become Hollywood, Bollywood would have to do better than gloat

over praises by a British royal prince. Indian cinema must remind

itself that no Indian film has picked up awards at international

festivals, though this year has been financially the best ever.

A splintered market, with viable sub-segments, new themes, new

talent, the irreversible ageing of yesterday's stars and stories, has

wrought a slow change at Bollywood.

Much of these efforts are aimed at de-risking the current business

model. Right-sized theatres suddenly struck the apt equation between

the demise of the pan-Indian film, a consequently fragmented market

with niche stories to tell and screening economics.

With some more cleaning up on other fronts, including production

schedules, the producer today sells his film not just to distributors

but also broadcasters and the home video segment. The film additionally

recovers a portion of its cost through the sale of music rights.

The changes in Bollywood were mainly driven by this sharper edge to

marketing.

In a world where one out of six or seven people is an Indian,

Bollywood is guaranteed eyeballs. The loyalty to native stories

underlines the industry's export record too. But the slew of remakes

only goes to show that Bollywood is yet to invest at the storyboard

stage.

Tales from within still cite scriptwriters waiting for weeks to see

a director and dialogues being written on the sets. There is a lot of

reel yet to run before the world's biggest film industry becomes a

hit.