In this conversation with Galatta Plus, Anurag Kashyap gives his two cents on what’s ailing Hindi cinema right now, and more…
Edited excerpts:
You once said that the biggest problem in Bollywood is that nobody understands an original script, and it’s therefore easier to sell template films or genre films. Is it still the case?
It is, in a way, because it’s easier for them to understand. Down south, filmmakers are coming in from all directions — all walks of life, all cultures. Take Lokesh Kanagaraj, who made Maanagaram (debut): you wouldn’t have imagined then what he would become today. Cinema is largely controlled by people who are second generation and grew up in trial rooms; they’ve not lived life. Their referencing is based on cinema. So what’s not on screen cannot be cinema to them. The biggest problem with YRF (Yash Raj Films) is the trial room effect. You take a story, and you want to make a Pirates of the Caribbean out of it, and it becomes Thugs of Hindostan. You take a story and want to make Mad Max: Fury Road out of it, it becomes Shamshera. The thing is, you never make the original root of the idea into a film because, in your head, that can’t be cinema. The moment you head in that direction, you’re cheating yourself, especially in today’s times. It would’ve worked a few years back.
But now, people are exposed to OTT. When they watch a Squid Game, they’re watching Squid Game. It’s not getting inspired from anywhere else. They’re understanding the Korean culture. People are so invested in Korean culture that they know about their music scene and everything. Their world is very controlled. Cinema is the soft cultural ambassador of any country and we’re forgetting that. What soft culture are we propagating through Hindi films? Our films don’t represent us at all.
However, when you see an RRR, whether I like it or not, you know it’s Telugu cinema. And you know it’s Rajamouli. You see Pushpa, and you know it’s Sukumar. Actors are larger-than-life over there. You see a Malayalam film and see how educated their audience is. In Hindi, they don’t understand it. What they do is remake a Malayalam film. Do they know what’s happening in their own backyard?
If someone puts you in charge of Hindi and tells you to fix it, what would you do?
I would bring in a lot of outsiders and let them be. When you pick a person, let them tell their own story. Because somebody has a stream of successes behind them, I wouldn’t let them dictate how newer people coming in should make films. The films in the South work well because they’re not told how a film should be made. Here, newcomers are still getting dictated. The studio bosses, who are ex-filmmakers, will say that they understand music better than you and decide the music and casting for you and what kind of film you should make. It’s a very polite way of bullying people into losing themselves. That needs to go away from the film industry. When you hire someone new, you have to empower them instead of dictating them.
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