Your next five Bollywood Rules of Engagement:
6. Actors and actresses are to be judged by different criteria to their Hollywood counterparts. Usual recruits include the ranks of the Miss World competition, or offspring of already famous acting parents. Women are selected for their good looks, especially while being rained on or rolling in the waves of a tumultuous sea. They should be able to dance well, and mime to someone else’s singing voice. If they are pretty they will be a star. If they are in any way sexy they will almost certainly become an “item girl” – basically a bit of totty who does a song scantily clad – but never a star. The success of men in the industry seems to be based on ruggedness, flexibility, usefulness in a fight scene and some imaginary, nebulous “cool” factor. In the case of brooding brainless beefcake – and alleged woman-beater – Salman Khan, he seems to have succeeded without holding any of these informal qualifications. Perhaps he just knows some secrets about somebody, in this most sordid of industries.
7. Acting in Bollywood is almost a by-product, a distraction from the real business of singing and dancing and wearing clothes. We must judge Bollywood’s acting on a different scale than one we’re used to. For example, the biggest star in the universe, Mr Amitabh Bachchan, displays an acting style so stiff you might wonder if he hasn’t already kicked the bucket and desperate studio heads are keeping him going with the aid of a broom strategically stuck up his bum. But, he is the recognizably the biggest star in the cosmos, because 30 years ago he made a series of films beloved of Indian’s everywhere, wherein he played an angry young man. Films like Sholay mainly consist of him beating people up. Next to this Shah Rukh Khan, the second biggest star in the universe, looks like a method acting Daniel Day Lewis. He once played a prisoner, in Veer Zara, who aged in prison from age 30 to age 50. His magical rendering of a 50 year old was a vacantly staring grey haired old twit who shook so much he might have had Parkinson’s. Exceptions to the rule include the always sensible Aamir Khan, who has his finger on the pulse of Hollywood and has released the English language Lagaan to great success. Of the women Rani Mukherjee stands out for her naturalism and light comedic touch, Kareena Kapoor for her feisty gregariousness and Preity Zinta for her verging-on-screwball comic antics. The biggest letdown you are likely to encounter is the biggest star of them all, and Filmfare’s most powerful woman in Bollywood, Aishwarya Rai. Although a very pretty face and undoubtedly a lovely person she invariably gives humourless, snobbish performances in her less than challenging roles.
8. Be forgiving. Although the Indian film industry churns out more films per year than Hollywood, the vast majority of them lack any serious production values, budgets or, indeed, qualified directors or actors. Here I’ll be focusing on mainstream masala movies from the big studios. Even if you don’t like them there’s no denying they’re professionally and glossily made.
9. DVDs you buy or rent in this country will be subtitled, and the subtitles will almost always make sense. VCDs you can buy anywhere in India and in the more salubrious places in the UK may also be subtitled, but the subtitles will have been provided by the unscrupulous, well meaning but illiterate pirate you have purchased the hooky copy from. They may not make an sense at all. Keep an eye out for odd moments where the script turns Hinglish and you hear what’s going on for a heavily accented line or two.
10. One more thing to look out for is Westerners appearing in Bollywood films, usually in a tiny bitpart as “man in street” or similar. These people are hilarious. Presumably rejected by televisions channels everywhere in Europe, they have gone to India to make their fame and fortune. And act badly. They usually appear to be German or Dutch, unaware of the camera, and deliver their lines bruskly and entirely without emotion, as if at a read-through. Watch out in Kabhie Kushie Kabhie Gham for “man outside sweetshop” saying “Listen mate, I don’t want any jaggery. Just tell me which way the Red Fort is”.
