Within city limits
Within city limits
At the rate at which our cities are going, Hindi film-makers are going to run out of places in which to set their films. Mumbai’s widespread squalor and tendency to build, rebuild and demolish every piece of concrete in sight have resulted in one ugly megapolis. Delhi is very pretty—and the Metro is a boon for the sprawling Capital—but regular reports of people getting beaten up or shot and women being raped hint at a scary atavistic anger bubbling away beneath the elegant surface. The cities south of the Vindhyas have a big red mark against their names—Hindi isn’t their dominant language. Thank heavens then for Kolkata, which still has charming neighbourhoods that haven’t yet been painted blue by Mamata Banerjee’s government.
It’s not that film-makers aren’t trying to provide realistic portrayals of other places—Vikramaditya Motwane’s Udaan travelled to Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, for instance, while Chandan Arora set his Main, Meri Patni... Aur Woh! in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Delhi and Mumbai, however, continue to hog the attention, one of the reasons being that the multiplexes in these cities determine the opening weekend fate of new releases. Film-makers and writers from Delhi and Mumbai also find it easier to set their films there because of familiarity. But since when did geography come in the way of creativity? Even though Indians are insular to a fault, there is no reason to believe that a Dilliwallah or a Mumbaiite won’t watch a movie set in, say, Bhopal or Jaipur, if it tells its story well enough.
More interesting than the landmarks and sights of a city are dramas about the lives of its residents. Ray’s Calcutta trilogy from the 1970s (Pratidwandi, Seemabaddha and Jana Aranya) memorably explored the impact of the city’s changing political landscape on its middle classes. After all, there’s a limit to how inventively you can shoot the Gateway of India or India Gate, although film-makers haven’t stopped trying. Mumbai’s slums and so-called gangster ghettoes are more yawn-inducing than ever before, simply because nobody is saying anything new about them. Where are the independent films about the metropolis’ mortgage-burdened middle-class families, its old-money clans and its nouveau riche? The small bunch of Delhi-centric films has felt more real than anything we’ve seen in a while, but films like Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Band Baaja Baaraat are ultimately mostly about Punjabis. I’m still waiting for the murder mystery set at the India International Centre or the domestic drama that plays out in Maharani Bagh, Delhi.
Kahaani releases in theatres on 9 March.
Nandini Ramnath is the film critic of Time Out Mumbai (www.timeoutmumbai.net).
Write to Nandini at stallorder@livemint.com
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