Monday, December 03, 2007

Hollywood vs Indian Film Industry

I wanted to write about this topic way before this post but somehow it didn't happen. Now since I am much into movies, the thought popped up again.

I am not a specialist or something but being a person who likes to watch good movies, I wish to compare Indian Film Industry with Hollywood. Now, someone might say that its totally a waste of time as the situation in US and in India is too different and one can not compare them. But I am in total disagreement of this point. We must admit that our film industry is often ridiculed by the name 'Bollywood' a similar connotation to that of Hollywood. And it is because of a major number of 'INSPIRED FROM XXXXX' movies from Hollywood. Our movie makers get furious when they are called as Bollywood's director than a Dream Merchant of Hollywood. But believe me, there is a bitter truth behind this word 'Bollywood'.

How often do we see a beautiful script equally presented by a connoisseur eye of a director? As far as the ones that I watched, I could separate out a very few. To name them, from oldies, it could be Sholay , Anand, Deewar , Bawarchi, and almost all movies of Hrishida . And about the latest ones, well, we know them very well. I might have missed upon few, but at this moment I don't remember all of them. Except these movies, all we see is an attempt to make a movie. I haven't made any movie yet but have read a lot about what it really takes to make a movie. All I want to say that if you are anyways doing it, why don't you do it with all your hearts and heads? What is the point in making a straightway copy of a Hollywood flick? Don't we have great authors and latest technologies? Don't we have enough money ?

The real problem is the lack of a good script and real actors... Actor here means , someone who gives his 100% in acting, who might not have inherited "so called" traits from godfather actors / actresses or in some cases both, who might not have dude / cool/ hunk / macho looks, who hadn't ever taken part in or won a beauty pageant, instead who has an extremely clear voice and pronunciations, who HAS a knowledge of what is called as acting. How many of these actors / actresses do we have in our industry today? I bet, we could not cross a figure of even 20. All we see here is a bunch of useless people who have got money and know nothing about acting. There are few exceptions though, I am not at all leaving them. On the contrary, in Hollywood, we see different shades of life in their movies. Be it romantic, action, Sci-Fi film or be it a drama full of emotions or a real life story inspired from a lovely novel. I am not saying that there are no flops and BS movies there, but what I see is at least they dare to show something different, something original ( which is very rare in 'Bollywood' of course with few notable exceptions).

50+ years of experience is much more to be a versatile film industry. I am not only blaming the film makers for this situation. We, the people are equally contributing towards this nonsense. We could not differentiate between the real gem and some haphazard sequences of ostentatious display. Otherwise, all those crap beauty contestants and miss / mister universe / world / galaxy/ milky ways / comets / or whatever hadn't been established here as a actor / actresses.

Show some maturity and originality man, and then hope for the prestigious Oscar. It's not a boys game out there. And if we really want to see that our movies getting a world wide recognition as a fantastic movie, we should better stop our current stupidity and seriously think of doing something really original.

4 comments:

Swati said...

I agree about your comments on Bollywood. But I dont think Hollywood has great actors either! Infact many shine out due to the scripts/action/special effects rather than their own acting abilities.

Meanwhile, there are quite a few Indian actors/actresses who act really well but they dont have a script to support their acting.

And I dont blame the Indian directors.. We are a country where drama takes center stage.. We are dramatic lot! Love, royal weddings etc are the thngs which ppl identify with! You know a good movie like DCH was a flop in interrior regions and north. DCH was a hit only in cities and progressive places.

And movies are made for masses.

So cant blame for lack of ideas (we get, what we are) and the chori of the videshi scripts is a good sign.. atleast we are thinking of something other than the boring emotional stuff!

Onkar said...

I do agree that movies are made for masses but what I am saying is we should create more original films. Few Marathi films stand tall for their originality and ease of handling difficult / heavy subjects. In Hindi, recently we could see good movies from Nagesh Kukunoor. I mean, there is a little start towards it, but still we are very much lacking in originality and maturity both.

Mohsin said...

How about 'Gunda' dude? That's the most f****n original movie ever made..

Onkar said...

@mohsin
'Gunda' falls into few notable exceptions!!!, and I haven't denied their originality and greatness ;-)