Here’s your first five Bollywood Rules of Engagement – things to bear in mind before you sit down to watch the latest from the subcontinent:
1. Bollywood movies are long. Very long. Go to see the early showing at the cinema, start the DVD as soon as you get home, or even better set aside a whole Sunday afternoon. You and a bunch of hysterical Indian actors are going to be spending some time together.
2. Most have an intermission halfway through. In India this is so you can go and buy more tea and samosas. In a nice touch the official DVD releases usually retain the intermission so, again, you can go and get more tea and samosas.
3. They’re lightweight. They are little pieces of fluffy air. They are pure escapism. In the October 2007 episode of Imagine… Alan Yentob asked Amitabh Bachchan, arguably the greatest living Indian movie star, whether he should be making films which reflect the real issues facing India – poverty, religious intolerance – instead of the disposable and materialistic fantasies he churns out. He replied, obviously astonished, that India’s millions of poor should be sent to the cinema to watch films about their own lives, of poverty, of rural despair. So, for now, we get glossy, bright, optimistic cinema, with a sheen of sophistication and an undercurrent of naggingly conservative traditional values. Enjoy!
4. Don’t be afraid to laugh AT the film – they are often unintentionally hilarious. But you’ll get further if you also remember to laugh WITH the film too. They don’t take themselves that seriously.
5. There will be song and there will be dance. Lots of it. It will often be mushy and slushy. It will also have killer hooks and will come back to you in your sleep for weeks afterwards. The music and the images in a Bollywood movie work symbiotically. You will be unable to hear the soundtrack without picturing the actor or actress from the film, even though they did not sing any of the songs. Music is “picturized” on the actors while they mime to the song. A small number of “playback singers” dominate the industry, and you will come to recognise the voices of the most prominent of them. Feel free to fast-forward through the songs, they rarely add anything significant to the story and act mainly to embellish a plot point. But to do so would miss the essential point of these films. In some ways they embody the original idea of cinema more than current Western films do – they exist as pure spectacle, an audio visual assault on the senses. Admire the gaudy sets, the beautiful women and the flexible men.
Another five Rules of Engagement soon. Then I’ll run down some reviews of individual standout films, suitable for both beginners and intermediate Bollywooders.