Hooray for Bollywood

U.S. filmmakers take a shine to India's version of Tinseltown

By James Hebert
STAFF WRITER
Union Tribune

March 14, 2003

It has romance, grandeur, lavish costumes, eye-popping sets. It has a story drenched in romance and a sensibility just this side of kitsch.

In short, "Devdas" – the most expensive film ever made in India – is like that movie-mad nation's version of "Titanic," the motion picture.

Also like Titanic, the ship.

"Devdas" had been scheduled to hit theaters in San Diego and elsewhere today. But like a lot of films from "Bollywood" – the popular nickname for India's Hindi-language film industry, based in Bombay – "Devdas" has had a hard time reaching U.S. shores. It's already gone to video, and then only at Indian specialty shops, not Blockbuster.

For American tastes, "Devdas" might be too potent a blast of Bombay bombast – a melodramatic music-and-dance spectacle that, in the best tradition of Bollywood, wears its heart on its sari.

And yet at the same time Bollywood movies struggle to find wide audiences here, Western films are flaunting Bombay style.

The American-made comedy "The Guru," now in theaters, features Bollywood-style dance sequences and Indian themes. "Bend It Like Beckham," by British-Indian director Gurinder Chadha, opens here March 28 and flirts with Bollywood as well.

The 2001 film "Moulin Rouge" borrowed unapologetically from Bollywood, with Indian songs and costumes, a dizzying clash of styles and a climactic Bollywood dance number. Also that year, the critical favorite "Ghost World" opened with Thora Birch dancing to a televised clip from a 1960s Bollywood picture.

Some observers perceive Bollywood influences even in movies that don't overtly take cues from India.

"I don't know whether to call it a revival, but there are a lot of musicals being made here now, too," says Madhuri Dixit, a star of "Devdas" and one of Bollywood's biggest acting names.

"We have 'Chicago' now. It's full of dance and songs. It's heartening to see that, because Indian films have always been like that. So we are kind of trying to reach a broader audience around the world."

Wooing Oscar
That effort got a boost last year when the epic Bollywood film "Lagaan" was named an Oscar finalist in the Best Foreign Language Film category. It was only the third time an Indian film had made it that far. (No Indian film has yet won.)

"Devdas" was India's official Oscar submission for this year. It failed to make the final cut, and it did not do particularly well at the box office back home. (In fact, even as its influence spreads, Bollywood is seeing lean times in India.)

But "Devdas" did earn a showcase screening earlier this year at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, as part of the fest's "Bollywood/Hollywood" program of Indian movies.

Therese Hayes, an Indian-film buff who put together the program, visits Bombay twice a year and sees close to 200 films. She admires Bollywood movies for their "incredible dancing – it's the kind of thing you used to see here in the '40s. Beautiful actors, just dazzling."

Casting director Uma da Cumba, who worked on both "Lagaan" and last year's art-house hit "Monsoon Wedding," says Bollywood fans expect a specific kind of movie.

"We call it the formula film," she says. "You have to have a very melodramatic story. You have to have at least six to eight songs. You have to have four to five fights. And you have to have a villain."

Those conventions, she says, are rooted in the drama and mysticism of Hindu tradition.

"I think in India we've always had kind of a folk-operatic culture," da Cumba says. "We took to cinema almost as if it was our birthright. We adapted it to our mythology."

The outsized emotion of the movies – the way characters burst into song at any opportunity (or even no opportunity) – is also an expression of the Indian heart, says Mani Ratnam, a director from Southern India who brought two films to Palm Springs.

"We're not shy of drama," Ratnam says. "Melodrama is not a bad thing. It's not held in. That's the way Indians are. In India, it's not a crime to be emotional.

In a culture that gave us the Kama Sutra but now bans so much as an on-screen kiss, the movies also serve as a form of sublimation.

"The songs express the longing," says Ratnam, "the sexual longing, the physical longing, the romantic longing."

Good with the bad
Before the rise of Bollywood, Indian cinema was known to the rest of the world largely through the works of Satyajit Ray, the late director of such revered films as "The World of Apu."

The commercial Indian film industry – now the world's largest – evolved as a way to entertain the masses in a society that offered few other options.

"In India, it's the main form of entertainment," says Dixit. "We don't have amusement parks. We have clubs, but they're too expensive for the common man to afford."

But the sheer volume of films coming out of Bollywood almost guarantees a good share of bad movies.

"It's exactly the same as Hollywood," says Ratnam, who makes Tamil-language commercial movies outside the Bollywood formula. "We have exactly the same proportion of bad films. Most of the films are crass and have no intention of doing anything (but selling tickets).

"But I believe you can make commercial films with an artistic sensibility."

Whether the West can manage to swipe from Bollywood with any artistic sensibility is another question. "Moulin Rouge" treated its Bombay inspirations with respect, but "The Guru" takes a more satirical tone.

And not every fan of Bollywood believes its influence in the West is more than a passing fad.

Vikram Yashpal, an Indian-born software engineer who lives in Carlsbad, acknowledges a fondness for the musicals of his native country.

"I think almost all Indians are connected to Bollywood," he says. "My wife and I watch song-and-dance films all the time."

But as for whether it will have a lasting impact here: "My feeling is, I don't think so," he says. "I think it's the flavor of the month.

"I thought 'Moulin Rouge' was an amazing film. Some Indians say, 'Moulin Rouge' is a Bollywood film. I don't think so. What was shown was not Indian. It was something new."

Yashpal, 33, happens to be a filmmaker himself. He is fulfilling a longtime dream by making his first feature movie, now in final edits. But the film has almost nothing in common with Bollywood.

"Trade Offs," shot in San Diego, tells the story of a young Indian-American seduced by the easy money of the dot-com era.

"I wrote a San Diego story about an Indian programmer, because that's what I knew," he says.

Yashpal and other young filmmakers of Indian heritage are part of a new wave of movies that some call "Hinglish," because they're made in English by Hindi speakers.

These films, with names like "American Desi" (a "desi" is an informal term for a person from South Asia), tend to focus on the clash between traditional Indian values and modern attitudes. They shun Bollywood spectacle in favor of more intimate, realistic stories.

For now, though, the urge to copy Bollywood still seems potent in the West. The trend is not just in movies, either.

The musical "Bombay Dreams," conceived by Andrew Lloyd Webber and film director Shekhar Kapur, has been a success on the London stage and may come to Broadway next year.

Shania Twain's latest album, "Up!," was released overseas in a Bollywood-style remix version, juiced with sitar, tabla and other Indian instrumentation. The disc was produced in India. (Though not necessarily successfully: The Village Voice called it "Wal-Mart worldbeat.")

Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox has signed a deal to make three Hindi-language films in India, with plans for international release. (Indian expatriates are a huge market for Bollywood, as are filmgoers in other Asian countries.)

American filmgoers may never get used to Bollywood in its purest, corniest form. When the performers in a movie like "Devdas" look soulfully into the camera, it's likely the moviegoers who will be saying "Cheese!"

But Madhuri Dixit, the "Devdas" star, believes Bollywood is an important window onto India.

"Indian film is not just about problems, and it's not just about poverty," she says. "Here we have a love story. We have it on a grand scale.

"We showed a new aspect of India, which is rich, which is full of splendor. Beautiful music. Beautiful dancing."