Posted on June 25, 2020
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Baradwaj Rangan 
awkshwayrd
June 25, 2020
“the old blog days” is so right 🙂 I first discovered your blog through Jai Arjun Singh’s blog. And I discovered Jabberwock through Samit Basu the author (he used to have a blog/website I think). It does feel like such a long time ago now, pre-Twitter, pre-social media, where the blogosphere (that’s what it was called right?) felt almost like an intimate place. No SEO (not for content websites at least), no #tags, no anon people aggressively commenting on all topics. Though I’m probably viewing 15 years ago through sepia tinted lens 🙂
To an outsider though, it really felt like all the media people online were actually friends 🙂
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Devarsi Ghosh
June 26, 2020
The most important and haunting part of this video came absolutely at the end — when BR wonders if there will be writing about films today that will have a shelf life beyond two weeks since the film’s release.
I personally do not think so. No is my answer. And it’s not just about film writing. But most writing, or actually even pop culture in general. Everything is just so ephemeral now, and there’s such a pressing need among writers and creators to speak to the here and the now, and just as much there’s a need in the consumer or the audience to keep up with the here and now, that I don’t think anything will have any lasting value at this stage.
Of course, additionally, I feel all these pressures anyway create bad writing. And that aspect was touched upon in the video as well: young writers finding their style (or attempting to find one) copying buzzwords and trendy turns of phrases from the internet, partly to feel relevant and important personally, and partly to make their own piece instantaneously chatter-worthy.
There’s this Hindi word: “thehrav”. I can’t figure its exact English translation. Is it patience? Is it deliberation? I think thehrav is something that’s missing among writers of my generation. I’m turning 29 in August.
Also another thing I have noted is: young writers now, at least ones who have luckily found the opportunity to write longform pieces, such as the ones you or JAS mastered in a different time and age, on the one hand have the ambition to climb the heights in their careers as you guys did, but on the other hand, they are caught in this chakravyuh of pop culture assault 24×7, where there is no studied attempt to slowly build your intellectual and technical reservoir as a writer.
So, as, again, you guys said, when these guys TRY HARD to pretend to write one way or another, so as to come off looking like one of the greats, it just feels funny and quite embarrassing.
I personally am a reporter in the film beat. So I don’t get to do those long-winded ruminations or analysis of this and that. But I know I want to, at some point. But I don’t know where to do that. Do I start a blog? I mean everyone and their cat has a blog now. Do I start video? Well, I am not a video person. That’s the reason I’m so nostalgic about the 2000s, when web 2.0 opened doors for the likes of yous, as well as Raja Sen, Sidin Vadukut, Arnab Ray, and dozens of book bloggers I used to read at the time.
Right now, the best a young writer can hope for to find an audience or readership is to take some extreme moral position on this or that and launch a tweet assault in a thread, get traction for five days, and then fuck off. I know I sound very cynical but I guess I am.
Or a worse way: hitch your wagon to a major publishing platform that pushes you to a giant readership, and you get your social media traction and all that. But the cream of the crop, and the discerning reader, knows how to separate the wheat from the chaff.
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Jai Arjun Singh
June 26, 2020
awkshwayrd: thanks. And yes, we do tend to use rose-tinted lenses — when I go back and look at my oldest posts, there is no shortage of nasty/mocking comments there.
“To an outsider though, it really felt like all the media people online were actually friends”
Ha, yes, I’m sure. All of us are outsiders in one or the other context, and all of us feel that way about people who seem to be together in a circle that we feel left out of. Rest assured, even those of us who WERE friends back in 2004-05 ended up going our separate ways and mostly loathing each other over time!
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Jai Arjun Singh
June 26, 2020
Devarsi: thanks for the comment. Lots to say, but for now: I do often thank my lucky stars that (all other things being equal) I wasn’t born 10-15 years later than I was. For multiple reasons, including 1) I would have found it very hard to find the “thehraav” that you speak of (even now, in my 40s, I get distracted by social media and sometimes waste hours doing pointless things online), 2) the many foolish/irresponsible/uninformed things I did and wrote in my teens and early 20s would have been online, inviting instant judgement and possibly being preserved for posterity. (It’s tough enough dealing with the stupid/irresponsible things I did and wrote from my 30s onward!)
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MANK
June 26, 2020
It was a nice conversation. i particularly liked the discussion about the snobbishness that’s crept in the twitter age , where a certain kind of traditional Indian cinema is shortchanged in favor of a new gen westernized cinema. May be Super 30 is not a good example, because its still packaged and marketed as a multiplex movie than a mass movie. i think a good comparison will be gully boy and Simbba; Ranveer’s performance in Simbba is much better than in Gully Boy, but no one would acknowledge that.
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Madan
June 26, 2020
“when BR wonders if there will be writing about films today that will have a shelf life beyond two weeks since the film’s release.” – It didn’t used to have anyway before the BR/Raja Sen period anyway. Longform writing on cinema was always very niche in India. So the golden epoch essentially was just a period of less than two decades when, yes, the blogosphere flourished. Speaking of…
People today seem to have an enormous attention span for video. Where someone like me is too much a slave to the reading habit. So while I can race through a long article in double quick time, I really struggle to watch long videos even when the topic and the conversations are interesting to me. I started to watch this and stopped because I could not concentrate. I will have to try again on the weekend when there’s less noise in my brain. It’s interesting that way how attention span differs with the medium. Those long radio interviews…oh, I could never listen to them unless the speaker has a terrific lilt/modulation.
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Madan
June 26, 2020
Listening now…I relate strongly to the part where you are talking about issues forcing people to take a stand. I kind of understand where the audience may want to know a critic’s stand on a film industry issue but as Jai Arjun Singh is saying, it goes well beyond that and extends even to politics and general social issues. And the quality of the art is then judged purely based on the issues the artist spoke out on and the stand they took.
And mind, this is not a plea for comfortable apoliticism. My point is exactly what you are both saying, that your political stand has nothing to do with an evaluation of your art. At least not as I understand it. You appreciate a work of art to see HOW it has been done, that is where the artistic aspect of it comes in. It matters less whether you have a point of view on popular woke issues but HOW you are able to express them. Issue based critiquing is lazy and unfortunately getting increasingly popular now.
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Sreehari
June 26, 2020
//a new gen westernized cinema//
This misreading is at the centre of the counter-snobbishness at work here. And it needs to be busted. MANK, if there’s a defining attribute of the traditional masala films that you so revere, it’s that they liberally borrowed their plot-points and characters from Hollywood B-movies and American pulp fiction and potboilers. And this is what you consider “Indian Cinema.” You must be kidding.
The best Indian cinema being made today — at least regional — is actually talking about the Indian experience. Yes those makers are exposed to world cinema, but that’s only given them an idea of where in their own backyard they should go looking for their stories. And this, to you, is “new-gen westernized cinema.”
A disdain for presentism, can be understood. But this whole idea that “our masala cinema used to talk about the Indian experience” is total baloney.
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Devarsi Ghosh
June 26, 2020
Madan: “People today seem to have an enormous attention span for video.”
I think there is no one dominant form or medium for any sort of discourse or dialogue today. I think the scene is fragmented. As BR said in the video, while there is this looming need among writers and publishers today to push out a review ASAP, those like him don’t feel that pressure because they know that even if their piece comes two days late, it will get traction. That’s because BR or JAS are star bloggers/critics in print. (He’s now also a star in video, so yay).
So now those who like to read gravitate towards text. The video lovers you mention gravitate to video. Some want podcasts. Some get their “reviews” from a Twitter thread. There is no monopoly of form is what I am saying. It does appear that video is ahead of them all, but honestly, it’s not about the form, but the star in it, and the platform representing them.
Jai Arjun Singh: Hi, I just remembered the discussion about Welles and Intolerance and how kids now believe film began with Nolan… so recently, there was a lot of chatter about Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People. Among its highlights is the fact that it doesn’t have punctuation.
So I have been told by readers whose opinion I trust that Normal People is simply a publishing sensation of the here and now, with not much lasting literary value. Maybe so.
I was talking to another person, she’s a huge fan of the book. I asked her why is it so great? And she went on and on about how she was amazed by the writing….. because it has no punctuation.
I said, um, none of Cormac McCarthy’s books have no punctuation. And he is the most famous and influential writer on the planet, as far as this rather insignificant tactic(?)/style(?) is concerned.
She couldn’t believe me. She was convinced (up till then) that Rooney “invented” this writing style. It was quite bizarre for me.
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Jai Arjun Singh
June 26, 2020
Madan: just to add to your 2nd comment – it isn’t simply a matter of separating art from politics. (This is one of those areas where my position differs a little from Baradwaj’s.) It is also that ideology-founded criticism can create blinkers that prevent a viewer/critic from seeing the entirety of what the film is doing. I discussed this many times in my Hrishikesh Mukherjee book, responding to evaluations that denounced HM’s films as being conservative or even regressive.
Also wrote about some of this in my two Padmaavat-related posts, the first of which is here: http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2018/02/scattered-thoughts-on-narrative-context.html
And this post, which was a part-reaction to Parvathy’s Film Companion interview: https://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2019/11/meandering-thoughts-on-consumer-art.html
(Baradwaj, sorry for the link-spamming)
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Jai Arjun Singh
June 26, 2020
if there’s a defining attribute of the traditional masala films that you so revere, it’s that they liberally borrowed their plot-points and characters from Hollywood B-movies and American pulp fiction and potboilers
Sreehari: much to discuss on this subject (and I agree that much of the best Indian cinema being made today “is actually talking about the Indian experience”) but I also think MANK was talking about the treatment of the earlier films (the aesthetics, the tonal variations, the more traditional, Parsi theatre-like use of songs) rather than where the plot points came from.
Also, please let’s not conflate counter-snobbishness with the kneejerk, one-dimensional inverse snobbery that comes largely out of ignorance. I hope it’s clear that there is much more than that going on in the video and in the other arguments that BR and I have made over the years.
Anyway, like I said, much more to be discussed and too little time…
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An Jo
June 27, 2020
Fascinating conversation. Thank you BR Saab and JAS. Now I know, when the theaters were open, your reviews would be published, as you mentioned on that Friday evening after having watched the movie in the morning. But over a period of time, I am seeing that — correct me if I am wrong — you are taking it a bit slow; in the sense, Saturday morning? But in the end, it works out good for readers like us I feel. And thus, I feel, your reviews are desserts, not the main course: In the sense, in my case at least, I used to watch first day last show after slaving away at work a new movie. Some movies would move me so much, I would immediately come — home, I meant — and write whatever was in my free-flowing mind at that point in time. Some, I could not. I could conjure up the bravery to write on GS after 10 days since there was so much going on in the movie. Your reviews, now, are almost 95% of the times meant for folks who first need to watch the movie and then read your review, akin to reverse engineering. It gives me an advantage: a) I have the freedom of digging into my own singular thoughts and reactions when/having watching/watched a movie, and b) the second biggest advantage is, I have MY life’s journeys, thought-processes to give to the magic on screen and get a reaction out of the cinema I am watching.
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brangan
June 27, 2020
Devarsi Ghosh: longform pieces, such as the ones you or JAS mastered in a different time and age…
Speaking for myself, I don’t think my reviews can be called “longform”. They are about 1000-1500 words usually.
But to address your other concerns, I don’t know if the situation is as dire as you seem to think. Yes, instead of ONE dominant medium (writing) we now have many (video, podcasts, etc.) So I think it’s about finding a niche and owning it.
I fell into my “niche” by default. In the sense that the dominant medium (writing) was also what I personally WANTED to do.
But maybe my niche today is too… niche, if eyeballs are what you are after.
So how do you — Devarsi Ghosh — become the go-to guy for a particular kind of “product” about cinema? I think the only way today is to start with one niche — something you feel comfortable with — and keep seeing what more you can add.
If this niche you settle on doesn’t satisfy your desire to do long reviews, you can always do them on the side, for your blog. (And as your visibility in your niche grows, you can point people to this blog and maybe feed off that!) Believe me, if you want something badly enough, you will always find the time.
The point is to start somewhere.
I started with text. I added video to my plate. Tomorrow, there may be something else that I am either asked to do for FC or feel like exploring myself.
So instead of looking BACK at how Jai or I established ourselves, maybe the way is to look forward.
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Jai Arjun Singh
June 27, 2020
Devarsi: on the matter of punctuation… do introduce her to Joyce and Beckett too, who are (to put it mildly) two of the most famous writers who ever lived. And more recently there is Saramago. And quite a few others, I’m sure…
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Madan
June 27, 2020
To add to the Orson Welles thread, likewise, some people have pointed out that the very original-sounding voice and dialogue delivery style employed by Heath Ledger for his role in Dark Knight came from imitating aspects of Tom Waits’ real life style of speaking.
Often, something appears to be original because its source material is unexpected and/or uncommon. This doesn’t in any way negate what Heath Ledger did because it takes imagination to dream up Joker in a new light by appropriating how Tom Waits speak. Who would actually think Tom Waits could be turned into a super villain, lol? But that is the point, rather than birth of a new galaxy, a new big bang kind of originality, originality in art is about imagination.
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Rahul
June 27, 2020
” It is also that ideology-founded criticism can create blinkers that prevent a viewer/critic from seeing the entirety of what the film is doing.”
This argument can work both ways. For example, someone like Parvathy may argue that most viewers will not be able to appreciate a nuanced view of character like Arjun Reddy, that is, in case such a nuance exists.
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Madan
June 27, 2020
Jai Arjun Singh: Great articles both and yes agree with this: “It is also that ideology-founded criticism can create blinkers that prevent a viewer/critic from seeing the entirety of what the film is doing. ”
The positive flipside of this phenomenon can also be equally irritating. Exhibit A is Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters.
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Alex John
June 27, 2020
It’s ironic we have to thank the unpleasant times we go through for letting us see these 2 veteran bloggers doing a virtual sit-together and ruminating about the older times.
As a frequent visitor of Jai Singh’s blog page, I am always amazed at how prolific and deep his writings are. I am still excited at how he described the time when late critic Roger Ebert contacted him after reading one of his write-ups. It’s any film-writer’s dream that will never come true anymore.
The video was a marvelous experience altogether.Thanks BR and JAS!
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Sreehari
June 27, 2020
Jai Arjun Singh, I don’t think I’m being flippant when I call it counter-snobbishness. I do believe there are very good reasons for why we shouldn’t disregard our Masala cinema tradition, but let’s really get into that discussion.
When someone puts that class of cinema down citing “ideological” pointers, they should be offered an alternative higher than ideology. And I think that alternative stems from the fact that cinema is essentially a body-focused art: how actors move inside a frame is central to the pleasure that cinema offers — and in our best examples of Masala movies, you can actually see this maxim being fulfilled. But then, critical analyses of our Masala cinema have hardly ever focused on its this aspect. These analyses tend to be mostly plot-centric, or of the superficial kind such as: “Actor X is here named Sanju, which, if you remember, was his name in the movie Y.” That’s an odd way of drawing people into Masala movies. (We’re banking on our nostalgia to get others excited).
But while on this subject, one shouldn’t overlook a subtle change that has occurred in audience’s expectation from our mainstream cinema. We all would agree, rather tamely, that back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, people saw movies, largely, as a form of escape – they’d venture into a movie theatre, making total peace with the fact that three hours later, they’d have to go back to the drudgery of life. I think now, people, when they step out of our movies, want to hear and see their environment in a new way. And the kind of cinema that tries to draw from life rather than other movies (which is the kind of cinema that loosely gets called “realistic cinema”), is more attractive suddenly. There are changes that have occurred in our movie-going habits, which cannot be discounted, when discussing this generation’s indifference toward Masala cinema.
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Jai Arjun Singh
June 27, 2020
Rahul: yes, of course it can work both ways. But (at risk of sounding like a snob myself now!) I am not talking about viewers whose level of engagement with a work is so casual that it rarely if ever moves beyond: “oh, Arjun Reddy is such a cool dude! How dare these stupid feminists say bad things about him. What’s with these stupid critics over-analysing everything? Why are they all so serious?” I am talking about viewers who start from a position of deeming any work (whether “popular” or “arty”) as being worthy of serious, considered engagement. And I am saying that once we are in those exalted regions, a great deal of analysis seems to take the default position that popular cinema/literature is regressive or shallow. Or that (for instance) when a film ends on a conservative-seeming, status-quo-affirming note, it completely negates the many little transgressive things it might have done along the way. I think that attitude is a simplification.
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Madan
June 27, 2020
Is it masala that is gone or melodrama? You still have Salman Khan films or Tiger Shroff films becoming hits. Likewise, the Tamil superstar films are still masala. But they never come up for discussion here. Because that’s not what people are missing. It’s melodrama that people are missing. A Sairat had all the masala beats but had a very realist tone. I would object in the first place to the notion that a realist tone is by definition Western because the realism in question here is very much an Indian realism. But the sensibilities are neither elevated nor overwrought. And gone with it are the infamous angry string BGMs like the ones you hear in Ramayan and which used to ‘punctuate’ our films at regular intervals. Melodramas had already started to die out in the 90s as the tone became either lighter or action oriented. In Tamil, the action oriented tone began to dominate in the noughties and it has stayed that way while urban chic emerged as a new genre in Hindi in the noughties.
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Aman Basha
June 27, 2020
@Madan: Agreed, this discussion that masala is dead is completely baseless. Our biggest blockbusters are the Bahubali films, Dangal and Bajrangi Bhaijaan, all three of them are masala in a way. Even the Bachchan masala flavor was overwhelmingly accepted by the audience in KGF. The problem is that apart from the South, whose remakes are the present Hindi films let it any of Bhai or Tiger Shroff’s hits or even Rohit Shetty’s “Cop Universe, Bollywood seems to be very snobbish when it comes to these sort of films with newer film makers thinking they’re above this and all. Same with Melodrama too, without melodrama it is impossible to have a tent pole romance and in the attempt to be all hip, they threw it in the dustbin. It’s a tone that can still work, proved by both A Star Is Born or even Aashiqui 2
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Rahul
June 27, 2020
Jai, my point was , Parvathy’s criticism\interpretation was not academic. It was derived from how most\many of the viewers will interpret a film.
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Devarsi Ghosh
June 27, 2020
Apropos of the discussion here on masala movies: I strongly believe in what BR says about the difference between “mass” and “masala”. A lot of what is deemed to be “masala” movies today by people who don’t know better are actually “mass” movies.
I personally feel right now not many directors know how to make masala. You can count the serious practitioners of masala on your fingers. And when these folks make films, they seldom fail, like, say, Rajamouli.
Another misconception I’ve noticed is that in the masala genre, a stick-thin plot will do. I disagree.
I think if the story isn’t working on an emotional and primal level in the masala genre, you can’t pull off the film. Maybe you could at one point, when people just rushed to theatres to see the stars lipsync to the superhit OST, but with YouTube and everything out now, just that can’t make your masala movie work. Today, Baahubali became such a box-office phenomenon because all of its beats w/r/t its masala-ness were on point.
Also, I feel masala is not the same thing as a melodrama. Someone recently pointed out to me that at a double bill of Strangelove and Pyaasa at MAMI, when Pyaasa begin right after Kubrick’s film, 90% of the young South Bombay crowd left the hall, which says a lot. Now Pyaasa is not a masala movie. Pyaasa is a melodrama.
What’s happening is that these Indian “forms” of storytelling are on the verge of vanishing completely, and our cinema aesthetically is now becoming one with a standardised form of what is considered proper narrative storytelling by the West. I am not going into the debate over whether that’s a good or bad thing. But it’s happening.
BR: Thanks for your lovely reply. I have been too pessimistic, perhaps, if not realistic. Maybe, I will give a serious shot at executing my personal vision of film writing. Thanks again.
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Madan
June 27, 2020
“Another misconception I’ve noticed is that in the masala genre, a stick-thin plot will do.” – But if that is so, then we are looking at slim pickings of greatest hits from the years when masala actually reigned at the BO. How much plot does a Hum Kisise Kam Nahin have once you remove the songs? And I am still talking about a really good film, a popular one from that epoch. There are some near unwatchables too like Imam Dharam. Izzat Ki Roti is another.
I think from our vantage point of today when a well etched Baahubali series revives masala traditions in the guise of medieval fantasy and makes a big splash with not much else on either side of it, it is easy to be nostalgic about masala and forget how many masala films there used to be back then and how many of them were either bad or just terribly predictable and mediocre. During the single screen years, every Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa or even a Yes Boss was welcomed as much needed respite from the procession of mediocrity. And Satya…just forget it, critics went delirious. One of the very few five star ratings Khalid Mohammed gave at the time and a well deserved one.
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Devarsi Ghosh
June 29, 2020
Madan: Yes, true, but I do mention that songs were often the only things making some of these films work, but that can’t be the case anymore in the YouTube age.
“…if the story isn’t working on an emotional and primal level in the masala genre, you can’t pull off the film. Maybe you could at one point, when people just rushed to theatres to see the stars lipsync to the superhit OST…”
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Madan
June 29, 2020
Devarsi Ghosh: Right, so my point is the decline and now near-comatose state of masala has been a long time in the making and didn’t start with new directors who were out of touch with or disliked masala sensibilities. Many here will disagree but AB’s blockbuster success already shrunk the space for using great music in a film because he was far more action oriented than Kaka or Dev Anand. This is not me saying AB can do only action; I am like the biggest fan of AB (ok, not as big as AnJo). But the potential to use him in these dhamakedar roles like Deewar and Trishul was tantalising and even when songs were used, there was a premium placed on their tempo (Khaike Pan/Main Hoon Don in Don). A wholesome musical feast like Aradhana, Kati Patang, Yaadon Ki Baarat or HKKK was not possible with Amitabh though Kabhi Kabhi, Abhimaan (somewhat before his angry young man phase) and Manzil had good songs.
There was a slight rebound with the arrival of SRK and Aamir but the musical talent in Bollywood had diminished heavily by then and it was now the directors and actors willing the music to magic rather than the other way round (Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa/DDLJ/KKHH).
After n number of tacky Abbas Mustan/Dharmesh Darshan and other 90s masala specialist movies, the audience badly wanted a change. A DCH used music far better (both good music and music that fit in the narrative with great choreography) than the more ‘traditional’ Humraaz. It was not the likes of Farhan Akhtar who let down masala movies but the ones who were supposed to be the reigning custodians of old Bollywood sensibilities. They had completely lost any interest in technical values and their idea of a Hindi movie was a noisy, tacky affair with zero sense of light and sound design. A Farhan Akhtar seemed breathtaking in contrast at the time. It was a similar phenomenon in some ways to the Roja thunderbolt striking film music in the 90s. Not to open up the Raja-Rahman debate again, but the point is in Hindi, Roja and the other Rahman soundtracks that would come were miles ahead of the typical Anu/NS/JL soundtracks of the time.
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Devarsi Ghosh
June 30, 2020
Madan: “A Farhan Akhtar seemed breathtaking in contrast at the time.” Exactly! Was watching the sequences of Main Hoon Don and the exquisite Aaj Ki Raat recently. What “picturisation”. Every pan, zoom, and cut in such sync with the choreography…
Yes, the decline of masala did happen for multiple reasons, and one of them is certainly the fact that folks assumed to be the custodians of this genre, like Dharmesh Dharshan and all, were just so inept.
Personally, I do not really miss masala. I mean I can just go back and look at old movies. What I DO MISS HOWEVER is that the art of song picturisation, and a certain form of storytelling is more or less gone insofar as filmmakers and producers now are simply either disinterested or plain incapable of doing anything interesting with these forms. Must say that even when someone like a ROM tries to do something in this lane, like with a Mirzya for example, it just ends up being a clever meta formal exercise, and not the wholesome five-course thaali an ideal masala movie ought to be.
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Madan
June 30, 2020
Devarsi Ghosh: It’s somewhat like the dying out of blues based rock. The decline was precipitated by an exhaustion of possibilities on the one hand and the increasing mediocrity of its practitioners. It is not a coincidence that by late 80s, hardcore blues practitioners strutting their Gibsons and Strats made a comeback in the conversation. Because those trying to channel the blues spirit in rock lacked imagination and/or were swept away by the tide of glam metal and later grunge and alt rock.
Happens again and again in various genres. Takes longer in movies because what you see gets saturated at a slower pace than what you can hear.
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vivaciously_yours
July 7, 2020
I finally caught up to this video… It was a fantastic conversation. I went back in time, it was BR’s blog that connected me to the tamil movie space in ‘03/’04 sitting 10k miles away from Chennai. I seldom commented in the past decade or so, just a silent reader of everything that happens in this space. Blogs gave such fertile playing ground to talk about anything back in those days, and today, blogosphere is over saturated, readership has gone down, to the extent of people saying, “blogging is a dying art”.
I agree with Jai Arjun Singh, that youngsters these days think movies started with Christopher Nolan, and not everyone is enriched with the history.. But one can’t blame them either, today, we have exposure to art forms of all languages and genres on planet earth at our fingertips, with the most expensive resource- TIME, and everyone is fighting for that resource.. With the Twitter/social media world, everyone is seeking instant gratification, it’s a then and now world. I get super annoyed these days when people start tweeting within the first 10 min of a Mersal or a Petta, or a Padmavat, and every Tom, Dick and their dog is a reviewer these days.
An essay of Cinema in a medium to long-form did not exist before the internet era in India, and people like BR, Raja Sen and Jai Arjun Singh opened the doors, and its people in my gen who has tasted that, and Yes, the literature for cinema is going to die with this generation, and its important that cinema literature be preserved. Afterall, movies are a reflection of society and culture and the generation that comes after will have a solid history and our Indian Cinema needs rich analytical essays.
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Madan
December 17, 2023
Watching this again (had forgotten that I had watched this, lol!) thanks to Rahul’s reminder. I found the example of Mr Natwarlal curious (maybe it was just an offhand choice?). That opens up a bigger discussion on what exactly is traditional Hindi cinema anyway. Because it changed from the 50s to the 60s and again in the 70s and yet again in the 80s. Natwarlal imo represents the tacky end of the spectrum and not by a modern ‘Western’ standard but even compared to what had passed before in Hindi cinema or some of the films that still harked back to those sensibilities/standards. Angoor came after Mr Natwarlal but was much more like the Chupke Chupke/Padosan kind of hilarious but gentle comedies that Hindi cinema used to turn out before. Somehow, Gulzar, though not a Bong, assimilated the Bengali director-in-Hindi mode perfectly.
I wish more of the discussion had been on each other’s likes and pet peeves (if I am not mistaken, Jai Arjun Singh is as notorious a Sanjeev Kumar basher as you are a Meryl basher!) and more so, what you look for in movies, what aspects may make you stay with an imperfect movie, etc. And more about Hollywood too.
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Jai Arjun Singh
December 17, 2023
Madan – I didn’t realise Baradwaj was a Meryl-basher; I have to say I am probably more of a Meryl-basher than a Sanjeev-basher myself! (Though some of that has to do with the fact that poor SK is so under-the-radar now — very few people who started watching films in the last 30 or so years even know how canonised he used to be. While Streep is still getting award-nominations and halos every time she just shows up for something.)
Agree that it would have been fun to have a more personal chat. Maybe Baradwaj and I should organise something along those lines soon.
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Madan
December 17, 2023
Oh, Meryl gets overrated for sure, you won’t brook any argument from me on that.
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