Cinema plays an important role in keeping the country united
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Arvind Das, writer-journalist
Modern India cannot be imagined without cinema. It is an integral part of the socio-cultural life. In the recently released Karan Johar’s film ‘Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani’, the characters live their memories and dreams with the help of film songs. Life is also a bundle of memories, desires and dreams.
Remember, in the story ‘Punchlight’ by famous Hindi writer Phanishwarnath ‘Renu’, seeing Godhan Munri, he sings the song ‘Salima’ – ‘Hum Tumse Mohabbat Karke Sanam..’. Cinema has included various arts-literature, music, acting, dance, painting, architecture in itself. Being a medium of mass communication and being a part of popular culture, cinema has an impact on a very large community. Obviously, in independent India, Bollywood has played a major role in keeping the country together.
Immediately after independence, the government also took interest in the promotion of cinema in the country. Today films are produced in about fifty languages including Hindi, Marathi, Bangla, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Assamese, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Manipuri in the country. It is not surprising that India produces the maximum number of films in the world today, but where Bollywood films are discussed, films of other regional languages remain out of sight of critics.
Business, entertainment and star elements may be at the heart of Bollywood, but it is not that it has lost sight of the socio-political reality of the last 70 years. In these decades, the cinema portrayed the social trends on the screen. Especially, in the last decades after globalization and liberalization, technology and changing market has inspired it to explore, sensitively present and experiment with new themes.
In the romantic films of the fifties and sixties of the last century, along with modernity, the expression of dreams of nation-building is found. Films of the fifties-sixties, such as Awara, Do Bigha Zameen, Naya Daur, Mother India, Pyaasa, Mughal-e-Azam, Saheb Biwi Aur Ghulam, Guide etc. gave a strong base to Hindi cinema. There is a clear impression of Nehru’s thoughts on the films of this decade. Dilip Kumar emerges as its representative star-actor. Although actors like Raj Kapoor, Devanand, Guru Dutt had a distinctive identity.
Satyajit Ray emerges with Pather Panchali in the fifties, about whose films famous Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa said- ‘One who has not seen Satyajit Ray’s films, is as if he has lived in the world without seeing the sun or the moon. Is’. After independence, the indecisiveness between the changing country, tradition and modernity is found in these films. The idiom and aesthetics of Ray’s contemporaries Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen’s films were clearly different from Ray’s. Where Ghatak’s films were wrapped in melodrama, the political attitude and experimentation of Sen’s films greatly influenced the coming generation of filmmakers. Sen’s sense of beauty was different from Ray’s. He never ran after artistry. He did not like Ray’s lyrical humanity too. Along with this, he also had a distance from Ritwik Ghatak’s melodrama.
The sixties saw the establishment of the Film Institute in Pune, which produced filmmakers like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Ketan Mehta, Saeed Mirza, Janu Baruah, Girish Kasaravalli, John Abraham, who differentiated cinema from entertainment in different languages. established as an art medium.
Cinema in the seventies expresses the disillusionment, resentment and corruption of the youth through the background of ‘Naxalbari movement’. Amitabh Bachchan emerged as the representative of this decade with films like Zanjeer, Deewar. However, in the seventies and eighties, Indian parallel cinema was also popular in the country and the world. Films like Aakrosh, Ardh Satya, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Mandi were discussed. In fact, from the beginning, the flow of ‘popular’ as well as ‘parallel’ was flowing in Indian cinema, but in these decades, Pune Film Institute (FTII) trained young directors, technicians as well as Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri Artists like Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil emerged. Cinema started expressing social reality in a better way. Cinema became close to literature. Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s films are examples of this, where a special vision of the director is visible. We can say that the journey of parallel cinema continues even in the 21st century, even if there is a difference in format. Avangard filmmakers like Anoop Singh, Gurvinder Singh, Amit Dutta come under this category.
The socio-economic changes that took place in the country after liberalization and globalization in the nineties, films of Shah Rukh, Salman, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgan have given prominent voice in the last three decades. Of course, Bollywood provides entertainment as well as a vision to see the society.
No art is cut off from the contemporary time and society. Nationalist sentiments are being heard a lot in Hindi cinema today. There was a tone of nationalism in the films made immediately after independence, although there is a substantial difference between the nationalism of that era and the form in which we see and hear nationalist discussions today. This is a topic for a separate discussion.
In this era of technological revolution, there has been a lot of change in the way of production and consumption of content in the world of entertainment. According to a figure, the market of OTT platform in India is about ten thousand crore rupees including subscription, which will reach thirty thousand crore rupees by the end of this decade. Bollywood and theaters are getting challenged by the OTT platform. Along with this, the doors of possibilities are also open. Here the possibilities of experimentation have also increased along with the portrayal of new subjects. Not only the audience, but the producer-director and actors of Bollywood are also eyeing this growing market.
In the last decade, India has emerged as a center of power in the world economically, but when we talk of cultural power (soft power), only cinema is seen. This is the success of Indian cinema.
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