piracy: the only door to good cinema

Thanks to UTV world movies / Lumiere etc, we now have legal access to movies like 400 blows, 13 tzameti, red, blue, white, the lives of others etc. Otherwise, the only way out was the illegal one, which, I'm against, on principle, but principles are means to set others’ right, to gain an upper hand over an adversary, to win an argument, not for implementing upon ourselves. But, seriously, the only way you can procure non-english/non-indian language movies is through the internet or from the gaudy, swarming shopping holes invariably called AC markets. They have everything laid out for air conditioning, closed areas, little ventilation, no windows, self-closing doors, everything except the air conditioner. So when you enter the place, you can get a whiff of each shopkeeper’s body odor, but you can’t make it out because there are so many of them, and fused with it is the physical 'exuberance' of so many shoppers. In this oppressive atmosphere, you have to jostle for space with five or six more maniacs like you, each eying with greed the cardboard boxes in which the Kieslowskis, Bergmanns, and kubricks are waiting to delight you. The experience of traveling to such a place and then finding a gem like ashes and diamonds which you’d been looking for quite some time, is so exhilarating, it gives you goose flesh all over.

I was initiated into this milieu and subsequently into the world of 'sub-titled' cinema by a close friend, who’d led me to a similar place, except that due to a crackdown on piracy, it appeared much shadier and scarier back then. In Mumbai, constructions appear small externally, when they are viewed against the backdrop of the massive behemoth of the city itself. Once you get in, they seem to expand, and I used to be amazed at the sheer multitude of entities these apparently insignificant little buildings contained within themselves. Little galleries, which seem to be closing in on you, in which you’d have to turn sideways to let someone pass., small offices and shops, barely enough to allow two to sit, no windows and no way in for the sun. The darkness used to be spooky and morbid, be it morning, noon, or night, it was impossible to tell if the weather was cloudy or the sun was shining.

Anyway, I was led into such a setting and presented with some DVDs suggested by my friend and I realized that there's a plethora of great cinema beyond the english/hindi language stuff waiting to be explored. Initially, I was slightly circumspect about buying the DVDs, arguing about how piracy could destroy the film industry and so on and so forth. But once I caught the fever, I realized that someone who loves cinema and is not considerably rich cannot help but buy pirated movies. If I were looking for a legal DVD of say, a La Strada, or a fairly well-known 81/2, or even relatively unknown English movies like barry lyndon, would I get it? As far as I’m aware, I won’t be able to find it in any store in India. If I do choose to buy it online, it’d cost me half a grand at the very least. Around two years back, Palador and Moser Baer introduced a collection for World Movies; I thought this would be the end of all our problems. But I turned out to be wrong; each DVD was priced at 499, and later reduced to 399. Now, for a movie addict, the expenditure would turn out to be somewhere in the range of 3000-4000 per month. And if you opt for pirated cinema you'd get 10 DVDs at the price of one legal copy.

Now you can even avoid paying the 400 by downloading anything you want from the www. The only hitch is that if you want to watch movies in languages you dont understand, you might find it difficult to get sub-titled versions.

I fail to understand the rationale behind selling a DVD for 400-500. Even if you dont consider the economies of scale, a single DVD wouldn't cost Moser Baer not more than Rs. 15. Of course, they have to pay for the content and the rights, but even then, how much would be the net cost of a DVD, certainly won't be so high so as to justify the pricing. So what sort of returns are they expecting? And when they don’t sell, it will be conveniently concluded that India does not have a market for ‘intelligent cinema’. I don’t think the market dynamics justify the kind of pricing that we see in DVDs. As far as supply is concerned, as long as the prices are so high, the sales will remain low from the legal channel, so the perceived demand will remain less, and obviously the supply will not increase, a proverbial chicken and egg story.

Sadly, the biggest losers here are the film makers and their crews. If there are legal avenues to procure content at logical prices, I’m sure most viewers would prefer to use it. But if the price differential remains so high, this trend is likely to continue and flourish. I, at least, owe my ardor for cinema almost entirely to the illegal business of piracy.

lost gems

The 80s, a time when Hindi cinema was probably at its nadir, with movies like ‘Justice chaudhary and Nagina making it big, was also the period which saw the emergence of some of the greatest Indian film-makers, whose brilliance was given the recognition it deserved much later. The period when the audience’s sensibilities were being insulted so rampantly, when even Amitabh Bachchan was becoming unwatchable with disasters like Mard, Geraftaar and the likes, also witnessed the emergence of a wave of brilliant film-makers churning out phenomenal works consistently under the ambit of NFDC. Unfortunately, even before these films were made, they were graded as esoteric and arcane, and in a bizarre and hostile classification, ended up being identified as ‘art’ movies. There was absolutely no attempt to change this perception, or maybe there weren’t enough resources to do so, but due to these slants, these brilliant works invariably ended up on the idiot box, shown during the least-watched time-slots and with so little enthusiasm that they were destined to flounder and fade away from memory. I’m quite sure movies like Mandi, Trikaal, Disha and many others would have appealed to a huge audience which was being tormented at the hands of lewd 45 year old men jumping around earthen pots, winking and trying to grab at the asses of south-indian women playing coy. But it almost seemed as if NFDC did not want to sell these movies, their only concern was to get them made and their job was over. In a way, the fact that it was a non-profit organization, which in the first place allowed such movies to be made, turned out to be their bane, as the producer didn’t seem to give a damn about the film’s success, which is the reason many of the remarkable works of art from that era are now untraceable.

Thankfully, some of these movies, like Ankur, Mirch Masala etc. are available to us now in DVD/VCD formats. Additionally, some are legally available online such Party, Massey Saheb etc. But there is still a surfeit of movies which have been forgotten. Probably NFDC didn’t preserve the prints because it didn’t seem worth it to them or maybe they were not considered commercially viable, the fact that we are unable to retrieve some of the masterpieces of our times is really distressing.

The few I can recall from that era as being breath-taking but probably not available anywhere would be:

• Sudhir Mishra’s Ye Woh Manzil To Nahi: College politics captured remarkably well, a precursor to hazaaron khwahishen aisi. One of the best acts from pankaj kapoor
•  Prakash Jha’s Daamul: Rural Bihar and the tragedy it is (i'm sure it still is, despite all claims to the contary by the nedia on Nitish Kumar's magic)
• Current: Don’t know who made this, but it was smashing,  a simplistic premise of how one farmer (played to perfection by om puri) depserately tries to get electricity for running his tube-well and how he finally smashes it in despair
• Aziz Mirza’s Albert Pinto ko gussa kyun ata hai: Funny yet tragic, aziz mirza's best
• Mani Kaul’s Bagh Bahadur: Pavan Malhotra was outstanding in this, similar to kafka's take on trapeze artistes
• Goutam Ghose’s Paar: Brilliant premise of a couple trying to cross a river with their livestock, can you imagine anything like this being made today?
• Basu chatterjee's Do ladke dono kadke

I’m sure many of us could think of quite a lot of other such movies from those years. If anyone reading this post knows where they can be acquired from, do share it.

best hindi film albums of the decade

Gulaal: Piyush Mishra
The very first time you hear the soundtrack of Gulaal, you’ll inevitably ask, where were you all these days, Piyush Mishra? Easily the most authoritative and innovative work of our times, this was a one-man show all the way. Penning the lyrics, composing, singing, and even acting, Piyush Mishra floors you with his brilliance. Each and every composition was a gem, and choosing the best would be quite impossible. How often do you come cross poetry which can carry itself with or without the accompanied music;
Not that the music wasn’t brilliant, be it the brooding ‘raat ke musafir’, the raunchy ‘chakmak’ or the tongue-in-cheek ‘ranaji’. Throughout the movie, the somewhat directionless script would suddenly spring to life with a jolting ‘aarambh’ or a cynical ‘duniya’. And the poetry wasn’t restricted to the unconventional; even ‘aisi sazaa’ rose way above the mediocrity dished out in the name of lyrics these days.

The Legend of Bhagat Singh: A R Rehman
Like most of Rehman’s best works, music of ‘legend...’ does not strike you as being outstanding when you hear it for the first time. But give it a patient ear and you’ll fall in love with it. A R Rehman has the knack for choosing the perfect voice for a song, and extracting the best out of the playback singer, exemplified by ‘pagdi sambhal’, ‘sarfaroshi’ and ‘des mere’.

Swades: A R Rehman
For some reason, Rehman’s best works, quite like R D Burman, figure in movies which turn out to be duds on the BO. And his most ordinary works become runaway hits, cases in point Ghajini (atrocious by his standards) Slumdog Millionaire (definitely the most overrated of all his albums) and Taal (just above average). Rehman has introduced or discovered some of the most successful and unconventional playback singers of this decade, be it Kailash Kher in Yu hi chala chal, or mohit chauhan in masakalli.

No Smoking: Vishal BhardwajEasily the most under-rated and unheralded composition of this decade, ‘No smoking’ was again brilliant in all the three aspects, poetry, music, and rendition. To create 7 songs all focused on a cigarette, and doing it so remarkably, is something only Gulzaar could accomplish. Definitely the best from Vishal Bhardwaj after Maachis in the 90s.

Jism: M M KreemWhere has M M Kreem gone? Probably because he was associated with the Bhatt clan, his talent was criminally wasted in the Hindi film industry. The Bhatt clan movies in the past decade have come up with some of the best traditional urdu poetry, ably led by Sayeed Qadri. Awarapan and Mere Khwabon ka hare k naksh were absolutely brilliant, and were enhanced by the uncomplicated and conventional music by Kreem.

Delhi-6: A R Rehman:
Another dud with great music by Rehman. Unlike Legend and Swades, Delhi-6 did not seem to find enough takers even for its music, largely because of the concurrent brouhaha about the Oscar-winning slumdog. But I’m sure even A R Rehman would acknowledge that slumdog was way below his best, while Delhi-6 was quite close to it. Rehman’s most memorable compositions have been the devotional ones, one of which was arziyan from Delhi-6. Mohit Chauhan arrived with a bang with a superb rendition of masakkali. Along with Tere Bina from Guru, Rehna Tu was probably the best from the songs Rehman sung himself.

Omkara: Vishal Bhardwaj:
Zabaan pe laga, is reason enough for this album to appear in this list. Superbly penned by Gulzar and amazingly sung by Rekha Bhardwaj, this song and most others in the album were excellent. Notable also was the unfancied O sathi Re.

Hey Ram: Ilyaraja
There are many who emphatically aver that IlyaRaja is a much better composer than his protégé, Rehman. While I disagree with it, there’s no doubt that the rare occasions when he has composed for a hindi movie, he’s delivered.

Saathiya: A R Rehman:
Nothing more to write on Rehman, again his use of Adnan Sami in udi udi, reaffirms his knack for choosing the right singer.

Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India: A R Rehman:
The songs were ordinary by Rehman’s standards, but in the cinema hall, their impact and relevance to the script was awesome

A few more which were almost there:
· Tehzeeb by A R Rehman: Wish Rehman had not used percussion as much as he did on the songs of tehzeeb, they were melodious enough as it is. The poetry reminds you of sahir.
· MAI MEri patni aur wo by Sanjay Jaipurwale: Who can possible forget the remarkable ‘guncha’ again sung by Mohit Chauhan, or the melodious doob jaana re from this absolutely unknown composer who has since vanished from the scene. Not surprising, as no one really noticed the movie, leave alone the music.
· Rock On!!: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy: Not so outstanding more so for a musical but pretty imaginative
· Guru: A R Rehman: Two great numbers: jaage hain der tak and tere bina
· Jab We Met: Pritam: All the songs were slightly above average
· Rog: M M Kreem: Typical kreem
· Kaminey: Vishal Bhardwaj
· Namastey London: Himesh Reshammiya-Surprise
· Dev.D: Amit Trivedi: Not memorable but quite different
· Oye Lucky Lucky Oye: Sneha Khalwankar As unique as it gets, inspired by the music of rural punjab
· Welcome to Sajjanpur: Shantanu Moitra: Ek meetha marz de ke, great on the ears
· Ajab Prem Ki Gazab Kahani by Pritham: Tu Jaane Na..