An Indian Story
A film industry in search of a story amidst a civilization in search of its identity.
No other question should be of greater importance to Indians than the question of our identity - ‘Who is an Indian?’ The question may appear trite and perhaps cringe but it is central to our future. Because without a common identity, there is no shared destiny. Without a shared destiny, we are not a people.
We have grown up hearing two extreme versions of the answer to this question. Except, these two versions are the opposite of each other, and we have silently accepted this philosophical stalemate as part and parcel of being Indian.
One version, usually championed by the political Left, considers India to be a natural embodiment of Enlightenment values - liberalism and western-style democracy. These values are a necessary precondition to the ‘idea of India’, almost as though Enlightenment is India’s as much it is Europe’s. Without these values, India is not India. It doesn’t matter that our neighbour to the east - China, a civilization as old as ours - rejected these very ideas, and now ranks ahead of us in almost every indicator of human prosperity. The lazy liberal clap back is ‘Hey hey hey so what? China is not a democracy. It doesn’t matter they are happier than us.’
The other version, usually advanced by the political Right, tells us that India is what India was before the thousand years of foreign rule desecrated it. That the Indian civilization’s greatness was preeminent, defined by a unified ethos. If we were to just spiritually go back to that great past, perhaps to the India of 250 BC - the heyday of a unified Indic empire, our future shall be great too. Except the India of 2024 is not the India of 250 BC. This reluctance to see India as what it is, and instead romanticise it as what it was, prompted VS Naipaul to call modern India in a perpetual state of static ‘equilibrium’1, where nothing changes, everything is acceptable, and no spiritual breakthrough ever happens.
This duality of impulses - of either seeing India through a western lens, or seeing it only through an inward-looking lens, is at the very heart of our Indian existence. It begins early in us - it is the schism between what we learned at home as kids from our grandparents, about the greatness of ancient India, and what we learned in school where the Preamble of India’s constitution championing Enlightenment values was printed on the first page of every NCERT textbook.
There is no point resolving this duality. It resides in each one of us, as a natural consequence of our history. Perhaps this duality is our identity. We can only be aware of it, and see it colour every part of our Indian living.
The awareness of this duality has helped me simplify the complexity that India presents at every step. It plays out in our film industry as well, the largest generator of Indian stories and narratives.
Last week, as I was watching Jigra, and not enjoying it at all, I noticed something peculiar. The film was laced with references and homages to Tarantino, Nicolas Winding Refn, Robert Rodriguez, Wong Kar-wai and a host of other non-Indian filmmakers. Some scenes felt like they were written for the sole purpose of namedropping these references. This referencing is a subtle type of signalling. It tells a particular cultural in-group that the film is made by one of theirs. This in-group is the Indian cinephile community, consisting of filmmakers, critics and movie buffs. Their social capital is their education in non-Indian and non-American films. I know the in-group well because I have been a part of it for most of my life.
This is the group that genuinely wants to make better films, by placing itself in opposition to the mainstream. But they see Indian film ecosystem through a non-Indian lens - through the lens of the films that they have watched and liked from around the world. Their complaint is that the Indian audience is not cinematically literate and therefore their films do not get appreciated here.
So when a film like Jigra doesn’t succeed, it’s not because the film is bad but because the Indian audience is backward. In other parts of the world, the local cinephile community celebrates its own film industry; our in-group distances itself from it.
When Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite became the first non-English film to win the Oscar for Best Picture in 2020, the filmmakers thanked the South Korean audience for pushing their craft higher. The Indian in-group doesn’t think there is anything to learn from the Indian audience.
They are the spiritual distillation of the impulse that wants to see India only through a non-Indian lens. It has a perverse sense of self-hatred towards our indigenous filmmaking aesthetic. Their flaw is their belief that a foreign aesthetic can just be imposed onto India, and the Indian audience will just have to catch up. That is not going to happen.
On the other end of the spectrum is the mainstream film industry which sees the Indian audience through a purely inward-looking lens. It force-fits the lessons from every successful film to its own old biases.
Consider the new obsession of the mainstream - the so-called ‘pan-India’ film, meaning a film that will be watched by the North and the South. This obsession can be traced back to two of India’s most successful films - Bahubali and RRR, both directed by SS Rajamouli. The lessons that the mainstream drew from these films seem to have been: (i) a pan-India film has to have a smattering of big stars, preferably both from the North and the South; (ii) it has to have larger-than-life action sequences and songs, and (iii) it has to have some Indic handwaving - either patriotism or pride in our glorious past.
In effect, the mainstream did not learn any lessons.
The importance of stars, action and songs is age-old Bollywood wisdom. If you’d asked a producer from the 1980s what makes a good film, he would have named you the exact same ingredients. The mainstream failed to see that Bahubali and RRR used these ingredients only as scaffolding. Underneath were stories well told and films masterfully crafted.
At its foundation, the mainstream believes that the Indian audience will never change. It will always want the same things out of its films. The mainstream can only look at what has existed, validate its biases, and extend them into the future.
This group has the same spiritual impulse that the political Right has. What has been, will be, no questions asked. For them, the Indian audience is in Naipaul’s static equilibrium.
So on one hand, we have a well-meaning, passionate in-group that despises the Indian audience, and on the other hand, we have the mainstream that stultifies it. No progress is possible with either of these attitudes.
Thankfully, there are filmmakers who have resisted these extreme impulses. SS Rajamouli’s work is a deeply original expansion of the Indian film aesthetic. His success is evidenced by his growing fandom outside the Indian diaspora. Anurag Kashyap’s early films - Dev D and Gangs of Wasseypur - were unapologetic about fusing a western filmmaking aesthetic to deeply Indic stories. He then started believing in his own myth and his films started reflecting his self-indulgence. Karan Johar’s latest film Rocky Rani Ki Prem Kahaani was such a breath of fresh air. He proved that the Karan Johar shtick still has a place within our modern sensibilities. If Jigra is a dumb film pretending to be smart, RRKPK was a smart film pretending to be dumb. I prefer the latter 10 out of 10 times.
India is the largest producer of films in the world. Anything less than total global domination is aiming low. South Korea, with fewer films and a less dynamic film industry than ours, has made a big mark with its films, shows and music. There is no reason why India cannot do the same. But it can only be achieved through genuine originality, by creating films that no other country can create. The impulse duality is what makes us unique. We need to keep our feet in India but create for the world.
From VS Naipaul’s ‘India: A Wounded Civilization.’
“Art/stories of only the strongest cultures survives”, Fellini once said.
A culture becomes strong with guns, money and technology - for it to be remembered, it needs to invest in its stories(case in point, S Korea).
And in any society, who can invest in these stories? The most powerful, the most important, the most affluent people.
India of the 21st century has everything. It also needs to tell its stories beyond the confines of hyperlocal content. It needs to tell stories that are global in nature.
A culture stays relevant by occupying the emotional memories of people. By crafting great stories. No amount of money and infrastructure can be a substitute for the telling of these stories. When the social fabric of a culture is explored, when the stories of a culture are documented - that’s when a culture becomes powerful!
Every great culture in history made sure that they document the times they were living in! Post Unification Germany in the 1800s, Florence from the 1600s(Medicis), Cholas in the 800s, Ashoka in the 3rd Cent BCE etc.
You can't make Churches and Temples today. Tell stories.
"Indians don't have design sense. Indians don't appreciate products. Indians don't pay for content. Indians only like watching actors dance in the jungles."
Aforementioned motif are rife in Tech and Business and sadly in films too. The film in-group has this disease to indulge for the sake of indulging - and tbh the fault is not all theirs, they do have a lack of local role models! Ray didn't leave behind Rays in India. Ivory-Merchant didn't leave behind any Ivory or Merchant into films.
AFA stories are concerned - Indian Filmmakers and studios are unable to appreciate what is happening around themselves, may be because they are in it!