Emosional Atyachar no more.....

"Happy Days are here!" they say...what with Anurag Kashyap's Dev-D getting such rave reviews and a smashing first week at the box office, one would actually start thinking that there is finally some hope for the 'indie' filmmaker, especially the young, brash types. I'm holding my horses for now, though. False alarms have been triggered before; I remember a certain Naagesh Kukoonoor(hope I got the surname right) had the same kind of hopes pinned on him after his Hyderabad Blues achieved limited success. He made some increasingly 'commercial' films after that, and his last film Bombay To Bangkok consolidated his amalgamation into the pathetic old fart we call 'mainstream Bollywood'.

The 'second wave' came with the first small-budget-multiplex-hit Bheja Fry, which made the fat, middle-aged character actor Vinay Pathak an overnight star. The 'simple man struggling in the big-bad world and getting redeemed in the end' formula became such a rage with the masses(the reason being that everybody is a simpleton at heart or some crap like that) that scores of similar films being made with the same cast playing the same characters over and over again. So much so that it became difficult to differentiate one film from another. Now how could the 'big guys' stop themselves from cashing in on this pathetic trend of glorifying mediocrity? The same formula was applied by mainstream production houses and it resulted in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and the recently released Billu Barber, both starring the epitome of robbing-people-of-their-hard-earned-money
-by-emotional-manipulation: Shah-Rukh Khan.

While this was still going on around last year, I had made up my mind that this country had absolutely no scope for me to make the kind of films that I want to make or be a part of. Starvation and extreme poverty was the only future I could imagine, if I stayed here. I hastily applied to a top rated film school in the Philippines that is run by a Hollywood Studio. They train their own employees and the graduates get to work on Hollywood projects or something like that. I didn't care much. I just wanted to get the hell out even if it meant shooting locations for FTV Asia for the rest of my life. I didn't care. Wonder of wonders, I got selected! Then, after a month of begging my Dad to finance this desperate little adventure of mine, everything started getting fast-tracked and till last week I was sitting tight with the ticket in my hand waiting for March.

Then Dev-D happened to me. I had seen No Smoking and didn't understand the first time I saw it(well, no one did) but gradually I realized what a piece of art it was. Like Mona Lisa; the first time you see it in your life you wonder what the hype is about. It takes years of reading and thinking about it when you finally realize the genius of Da-Vinci. No Smoking was like that. For me. The 'masses' dismissed as 'too abstract' and 'way over the top' and God knows what. I wondered if Anurag would make another film again. Then I saw Dev-D, with my mom. It was sort of a test. The logic was that if mom drew a blank but I liked it then it would be another No Smoking. If mom liked it and I hated it then it would be a second Bombay To Bangkok. On the other hand, if somehow, as if by a genius masterstroke both of us liked it, then we had something here. I hoped we had something here. I am always an optimist when it comes to watching a film. That is partly why I'm still in awe of the medium, you never know what’s coming. By the time the film ended, me and my mom were sitting completely awestruck by the groundbreaking pheneomenon of a film that is Dev-D. what a film!!! Of course, there were a few middle-aged couples who walked out within the first half-hour, but you can't please everyone anyways. It is a brash film alright. I wondered how it got passed by the Censor board in the first place. I had finally seen a Hindi film that had the balls to show things the way they are, and I felt proud. Finally, a perfect balance of crowd pleasing emotional drama and brilliant and ingenious filmmaking technique. I said to myself, 'now THATS the kind of film I wannna make someday...' An honest, personal, spellbinding piece of art. The best kind there is.

So is this it? Is Anurag Kashyap the Guru Dutt of the 21st century? Only time will tell. I am not getting too cocky for now. Will have to watch his next offering Gulaal, which is releasing shortly. One thing I'll admit though. I have started having cold feet now. Maybe there is a future for me here after all. Maybe.

Its a good time for any film industry, when all kinds of films get appreciated by the audience. When small, 'arty' films can peacefully co-exist with big, 'commercial' films. When everybody does their own thing and make a decent living out of it. When everybody is a winner. As for me, I'm just a monkey typing away and waiting for Shakespeare to happen. An artist to the core, hehe.....