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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Regional Movies: What after ‘Jatt & Juliet’?
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Regional Movies: What after ‘Jatt & Juliet’?

The superstars, stories, controversiesand the fringe new wave in the male-dominated universe of Punjabi cinema

A still from Jatt & JulietPremium
A still from Jatt & Juliet

There are certain big-picture stories that are best understood through one person. Like the story of Punjabi cinema through 68-year-old Dheer Singh, who has spent a majority of the last 45 years of his life at Neelam Theatre in Sector 17, Chandigarh, one of the city’s few single-screen cinema halls.

Singh joined Neelam Theatre in 1971 at age 23, as an assistant supervisor. He is a supervisor now, a notch above. “During (actors) Mehar Mittal and Veerendra paaji’s time, there used to be brawls. Watching their movie at Neelam would invariably mean a torn shirt, but now no one comes here to watch Punjabi movies. People watch Hindi films orThe Jungle Book, Batman at multiplexes," Singh says, warding off young couples desperate to enter the safety of the hall, away from the prying eyes of relatives and neighbours.

“Gates will open at 11.20am," Singh reminds everyone sternly. His refusal to let in people early kills a couple’s movie date—the girl’s elder sister turns up outside the theatre, slaps her younger sister and tears the tickets in an intense show of sisterly concern.

The day’s first show, at 11.30am, is still half an hour away. Of course it’s a Bollywood film, but one that everyone in Punjab has an opinion about: Udta Punjab. Abhishek Chaubey’s film has Diljit Dosanjh, one of Punjab’s biggest stars, in a lead role. Dosanjh received good reviews from critics for his performance as the dogged police officer on a narcotics trail.

“Why aren’t there Punjabi films like Udta Punjab?" I ask Singh.

“Serious wala? There are some, but Punjabi cinema is mostly comedy; all same, not what it used to be like before," Singh says.

What is the “all same" stuff? And why aren’t urban young men tearing each other’s shirts any more, jostling to get inside Neelam to watch it?

To describe all Punjabi cinema thus would be harsh. There are more than a few young Punjabi directors making well-crafted, serious cinema. For instance, Gurvinder Singh’s Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan and Chauthi Koot are comparable to the finest in international cinema; tightly scripted and aesthetically shot. While Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan, which focuses on rural distress in the state, is based on a novel of the same name by Gurdial Singh, Chauthi Koot, set against the backdrop of the Khalistan movement, has been adapted from two short stories—Fourth Direction and I Am Feeling Fine Now—by Sahitya Akademi award-winner Waryam Singh Sandhu.

Another young director of much promise is Jitender Mahaur. His Qissa Panjab, which was released last year, is an extremely layered take on drugs, perhaps even a better cinematic effort than Udta Punjab.

Then there’s singing sensation-turned-actor Gippy Grewal’s directional debut, Ardaas. Set in rural Punjab, it is a deftly made film on the tricky subject of spirituality. Ardaas was favourably reviewed by critics in the national media. In a review on CNN-News18, film critic Divya Pal called it “incredibly moving".

Yet it is true that the plots of an overwhelmingly large number of Punjabi films are a variant of this: Jat boy in quest of fortune and fame goes to Canada/Australia, falls in love with Punjabi girl in Toronto/Sydney or at the airport immigration counter, overcomes initial casual racist spurns by the girl/scheming relatives and once professional success and personal bliss are achieved, comes back to his village of mustard fields to live happily ever after. There are minor tweaks here and there: An organic farming field sometimes replaces the mustard field.

There’s another leitmotif to these films: The Jat boy, almost invariably, is played by a successful pop star. With the female lead often relegated to playing a distant second fiddle to these big-ticket pop stars as they sing about booze and big cars and dance in lush fields or neat-looking Canadian suburbs, most Punjabi films would spectacularly fail the Bechdel test. The idea of a strong female character, in short, is almost non-existent in the modern Punjabi commercial film. Take Neeru Bajwa, for instance: She’s been part of some of the biggest hits in recent times, but has barely had more than a scene or two to herself in any one of them.

This is vital to understanding something crucial about the Punjabi entertainment industry: the exalted place of pop music and the way it directly influences the kind of cinema coming out of the state. To truly comprehend the importance of what may at first glance seem like a rather ordinary or even obvious piece of information, one may contrast the phenomenon with Bollywood: After Kishore Kumar, almost no playback singer, no matter how versatile, has had any kind of commercial success as an actor. In Punjab, the biggest movie stars (with the exception of Jimmy Shergill) started off as singers: Gurdas Maan, Harbhajan Mann, Yo Yo Honey Singh, Dosanjh, Grewal, Amrinder Gill. The list goes on.

Are Punjabi pop stars natural actors? To try and understand this transformation from singing to acting, I am at Speed Records, a nerve centre of the Punjabi pop industry. One of the state’s largest music labels and co-producer of some of the most successful commercial Punjabi films in recent times, Speed Records operates out of a few rooms in a nondescript shopping complex adjoining a gurdwara in Jalandhar. Resembling a series of small-town Internet cafés, Speed Records’ office betrays absolutely none of the influence it wields over the state’s music industry—the list of those it has launched includes Jazzy B, Honey, Dosanjh, Badshah, Raftaar and Grewal.

In a room with an exceptionally loud air conditioner, I meet Dinesh Auluck, a co-founder and director of Speed Records. Auluck, who started off as a Punjabi content creator for the music production and distribution firm Tips Industries Ltd, is a talkative man, eager to show off his position in the ecosystem. “I am Jazzy B’s manager, I am his all-in-all," he says. “I was also the only banda Honey was in touch with when he was missing in action. We would talk regularly."

So what is it with this pop star turning actor phenomenon? “People like Punjabi music, so producers tend to put money on them, but you know what really works? Concept. Concept ke bina Honey also doesn’t work (Without a concept, even Honey doesn’t work). Look at his last film, Zorawar. Big flop," Auluck says.

But haven’t almost all the films that Speed Records’ has co-produced featured these singing sensations? “See, Jatt & Juliet, which we had co-produced in 2012, was a blockbuster hit because it was really close to what Punjabi people feel, very close to reality. The boy went to Canada to earn and he sent money back home; people could connect, so people of the Punjabi community accepted the movie," says Auluck.

Jatt & Juliet was Dosanjh’s first hit and at the time one of Punjabi cinema’s biggest grossers. The sequel, Jatt & Juliet 2 (2013), was an even bigger hit. According to Boxofficeindia.com, the first movie made around 14 crore, while the sequel did around 20 crore worth of business.

“Punjab has a robust music industry that is independent of films. The singing stars bring a ready-made fan base to the table. When a producer signs a singing star, he is assured of a certain face value. Also, most of these stars are confident and comfortable in front of the camera by virtue of having acted in music videos. So, I guess, it makes sense to make movies with them," says Anurag Singh, the director of the Jatt & Juliet films, on email. Anurag says box-office figures do point to the fact that romcoms work at the box office. “I have always been a firm believer in the fact that a good movie will find an audience no matter what the genre is," he adds.

Auluck says “comedy films" work best: “People watch movies to relax, they prefer light-hearted movies." The assessment seems fairly accurate, considering Speed’s next two hits after the Jatt & Juliet series were two slapstick comedies without much of a plot, Goreyan Nu Daffa Karo and Daddy Cool Munde Fool.

The anatomy of a hit

What qualifies as a hit in the Punjabi film industry and how much does it really take to make a Punjabi film? Anywhere from 3-10 crore, says Auluck. “Most films have an average budget of around 3-3.5 crore, but if you want a superstar like Dosanjh, the budget goes up to as much as 10 crore."

So a film that grosses more than 10 crore at the box office is considered a blockbuster.

Even by regional cinema standards, these numbers are low. In comparison, consider Baahubali: The Beginning, which earned 48 crore by the end of the third weekend in just Tamil Nadu, according to an International Business Times report.

There are many reasons for this. First, the Punjab territory (an industry term for the north Indian market outside the National Capital Region) is a difficult territory to make inroads into—unlike the southern films, these have to compete directly with Bollywood. “Things work differently in Punjab. The multiplex-single-screen break-up is 80-20%, which is almost the opposite of other states like Rajasthan. And urban audiences have not yet taken to the new wave of Punjabi cinema," explains Munish Sahni of Omjee Cine World, a major distributor of Punjabi films in the region.

Yes, there’s an overseas market in Canada, Australia and North America, but apart from Canada, the audience is scattered. What about Delhi, where no party seems to be complete without Punjabi music? According to Sahni, only movies with big names such as Dosanjh and Grewal work in the Capital.

For more than a decade, Punjabi cinema was dead for all essential purposes. The industry has had to make a fresh start; the last four-five years have been better in terms of the sheer volume of cinema, but commercial viability is still elusive.

The backstory

Though the industry was almost dormant through the 1990s and a good part of the 2000s, Punjabi cinema goes back a long way. The first Punjabi sound film, Pind Di Kudi (also called Sheela), was released in 1935. It featured the iconic Pakistani singer Noor Jehan as a child artiste.

The slowdown began in the 1980s, with the economy sluggish, and came to a virtual halt as militancy gripped the state. The death knell was the assassination of the hugely popular actor Veerendra by suspected militants in 1988, while he was shooting for Jatt Te Zameen.

The decade that followed was Punjabi cinema’s darkest. Virtually no films were made in this period. Members of the film fraternity migrated to safer destinations such as Mumbai and Kolkata.

Then, on 14 February 1999, a political satire directed by the late Jaspal Bhatti hit screens. It was named, aptly, Mahaul Theek Hai. The worst was over.

After Mahaul Theek Hai came the Harbhajan Mann-starrer Jee Aayan Nu, in 2003. Directed by Manmohan Singh, the movie was a perfect prototype of the romcom formula that would go on to become the cornerstone of commercial Punjabi cinema.

The 2000s were a period of trial and error, though nothing could quite shake off the inertia of the dormant decade. The commercial renaissance began in 2012 with Jatt & Juliet, the first Punjabi film to break the 10 crore barrier. Punjabi cinema was finally staging a comeback.

Punjabi film critic and analyst Sapan Manchanda believes success has come at the cost of quality. “The second innings of Punjabi films has been marked by unprofessional producers, quite a few of whom were property dealers, making formulaic films without any kind of research," Manchanda says over the phone.

But aren’t they doing reasonably well at the box office?

“Not at all. There were almost 50 films released last year; all but two bombed. People want to watch films like Love Punjab and Ardaas that truly reflect the traditions of the state, but most producers don’t seem to get the pulse of the audience. Both these films have done really well at the box office," says Manchanda.

Love Punjab is the story of a Canada-based Punjabi couple in the middle of divorce proceedings who return to the state with their clinically depressed son.

Though there are films that break away from the formula, they are few and far between. “Much of Punjabi cinema, which is plugged into the popular, is a diasporic imagination of what Punjab should be," says Radhika Chopra, associate professor, department of sociology, at Delhi University.

She says Punjabi cinema has never been at the forefront of the country’s cinematic culture. “In fact, Pakistani Punjabi cinema and serials have always been of much superior quality." The reason for that, Chopra explains, is that cultural production in Punjab has always been under “enormous threat from a fundamentalist discourse".

Gurvinder is scathing when he talks about mainstream Punjabi cinema. “It’s a statement on Punjab itself. The state’s become like a frog in the well. All that’s being made is escapist cinema. The whole desire to make movies stems from making quick bucks," he says.

Mahaur insists the problem is not just with producers: “There aren’t enough film-makers who want to initiate dialogue; they don’t come from that sensibility. Also, most of these singers who double up as actors don’t want to do hard-hitting stuff because they don’t want to antagonize their core fan base of non-resident Indians (NRIs)."

The NRI is one of the most important consumers of Punjabi cinema, so important that a certain genre of Punjabi movies thrives almost entirely because of them, such as movies on the militancy in the 1980s. “A lot of these movies on 1984 make all their money through private screenings abroad. Even before Kaum De Heere was finished being shot in India, I saw posters of the movie in North America," recalls journalist and documentary film-maker Daljit Ami. Kaum De Heere, a movie on the assassins of prime minister Indira Gandhi, was banned in India (it was, however, released in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand).

Sartaj Singh Pannu, director of the controversial but critically acclaimed Nanak Shah Fakir, says: “A lot of political cinema is just badly made, desperate to court controversy and, honestly speaking, just plain hurtful to the community."

But not all movies based on the 1984 Operation Blue Star and its consequences cater to a foreign audience. Punjab 1984, made by Anurag of Jatt & Juliet fame, achieved both commercial and critical success in India. In fact, it won the National Award in 2015 for the best feature film in Punjabi.

Back to where we began then: Why did it take a Bollywood to make an Udta Punjab? Or was such a film lost amid the dime-a-dozen slapstick comedies? The answer depends on who you ask.

Harjit Singh Ricky, director of Once Upon A Time In Amritsar, whose trailer had raised the hackles of religious leaders in Punjab, says he had tried researching the subject but just couldn’t find anybody who had ever been an addict. “There is a problem, but it’s not as bad as it’s being made out. They say 70% of Punjab is on drugs. None of my friends do drugs. Look around you; do you think it’s that bad?" We were sitting in a coffee shop in a newly constructed shopping complex in Mohali. Just minutes earlier, while waiting for Ricky, I had come across two boys in the parking lot sniffing into their hankies and looking visibly zoned out. They didn’t look a day older than 12.

Auluck offered a similar explanation: “According to Udta Punjab, seven out of my 10 friends should be addicts. There’s not even one."

Anurag says he was working on a drugs-related subject but dropped the idea when he came to know about Udta Punjab.

Journalist Ami doesn’t believe that Punjabi film-makers are reluctant to broach the subject of drugs. “There has been a lot of home-grown cinema on drugs. It’s just that when people in Mumbai speak, Delhi tends to listen and vice versa," Ami adds.

Most of these films are not marketed enough. “See, Qissa Panjab released at a time when there was a statewide curfew because of an incident of the Guru Granth Sahib being desecrated, so that’s why no one got to really see it in theatres. There have been a few other movies too, but such is the distribution mechanism of Punjabi cinema that films get lost. There are no prime-time shows, movies get pulled off in a day, it’s a mess," says Mahaur.

On 24 June, another Dosanjh-starrer, Sardaarji 2, hit theatres in Punjab. It registered the highest ever opening, of 2.75 crore, for a Punjabi film, according to Boxofficeindia.com.

Dosanjh’s character in the movie goes to Australia this time. And yes, he falls in love with an NRI girl.

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Published: 07 Jul 2016, 02:50 PM IST
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