Good Morning India:Good Luck, Omar Abdullah

Media Pulse

'Lagaan' was released at a time when the real Indian team was flopping badly on the field and did a lot to prop up the people’s morale with a fictitious victory over the "gora log."

Forget the media hype. The facts speak for themselves. Patriotism on the screen rarely works. If one thought the tension with Pakistan and the possibility of war would stir the spirit of nationalism, think again. The box-office fate of the numerous films on Bhagat Singh show that the Hindi cinema audience is not eager to lap up a slice of history, however, important it might have been in shaping the country’s destiny.

A Lot of effort had gone in to make the two big-budget films on the life and times of Bhagat Singh. While one starred the Deol brothers, the other had Ajay Devgan in the main role.

Filmmakers have sought to cash in on aggressive patriotism that appealed to the new middle class, in the wake of the Kargil war. The success of Aamir Khan’s Lagaan and Sunny Deol’s Gadar since, combined with the India-Pakistan exchange of war rhetoric, after the attack on Parliament and the Jammu killings misled the filmmakers to assume that it was the right moment to exploit patriotism.

The box-office failure of such films as Maa Tujhe Salaam, Indian, and the Bhagat Singh films - has let them down and they are licking their wounds with heavy losses.

Is it because they are badly made films or is it that ‘pop patriotism’ is fizzling out? The irony of Bollywood, is that while better films bit the dust, there are unexpected hits. The so-called "formula" for a hit is no longer valid. Top-notch movies with high paid stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Salman Khan or Govinda flop, a low-budget thriller Raaz, a remake of Hollywood’s What Lies Beneath, went on to rake in the moolah. The Mumbai moghuls are scratching their heads to find a winning formula. Romance, comedy, family themes, action films everything had been tried out without success.

It was only the legendary Manoj Kumar who could sell patriotism sugar-coated with catchy songs and good dialogues. Manoj, who made a fetish of being a "son of the soil", banked upon the nationalist theme in film after film, and emerged triumphant everytime. Though the critics generally lampooned his movies as being pseudo-patriotism, Manoj never failed to deliver. His storyline always pitted the virtues of Indian culture and values against the permissive, corrupting Western influence. He had a clinical approach towards his heroines like Saira Banu, Sadhana or Hema Malini, and rarely touched them. In fact, the females would try hard to seduce him! No one could package Indian culture and patriotism like he did.

In recent years, there was 1942 A love Story and Mission Kashmir. Both well directed, but not a great success at the box-office. Mission Kashmir, despite good production values disappointed the viewers. One police officer (Sanjay Dutt) single-handedly ends terrorism, which is unconvincing. If terrorism could be ended so swiftly, India and Pakistan would not have been on the edge of a serious conflict. It also had its quota of songs and dances, that hardly go well with a film on terrorism. This is exactly what’s wrong with Bollywood films that venture into dealing with serious issues.

Border, directed by J.P. Dutta starring Sunny Deol among a galaxy of stars, hit the right note. The fantastic action scenes did a lot to make the film a genuine war film. It successfully portrayed the life of the soldiers on the front. Though there were heroic performances, it was convincing enough as soldiers like Sunil Shetty and Akshay Khanna die fighting valiantly. No wonder the film ran away with maximum honours at awards functions.

Two films, Lagaan and Gadar both hit the bull’s eye with their treatment of the plot. But both Aamir Khan’s film and Sunny Deol’s movie were very different. Lagaan dealt with the British time and how simple game of cricket solved the problem of heavy taxation on villagers. The British were not portrayed too much in an evil light and in fact, one British woman was shown helping the makeshift Indian "cricket team" learn the rules of the game and have a fighting spirit. It was a blow to British pride without recourse to violence or use of guns. The movie cleverly exploited the Indian penchant to cheer the home team.

The film was released at a time when the real Indian team was flopping badly on the field and did a lot to prop up the people’s morale with a fictitious victory over the "gora log." Gadar on the other hand, focused on the bloody events at the time of partition and the love of an Indian boy with a Muslim girl who moves over to Pakistan later. The underlying India vs Pakistan theme proved a massive hit . There are still thousands of families who have not forgotten the horrors of partition. For the members of the families, Gadar was a painful reminder of 1947. Not surprisingly, the film was a big hit in the North. Thus while Lagaan managed a lot of foreign pressure, it was Gadar which made box-office history. One charge against the latest crop of films on Bhagat Singh is that they try to romanticise the freedom fighter’s life. Facts are at a discount and fiction takes over in many scenes.

The Bollywood defence is that the aim was not to make a documentary but a film that would appeal to the larger audience around the country.

But it is not entirely a question of accuracy either. Though the successful Manoj Kumar film on Bhagat Singh, Shaheed made nearly four decades ago, was truer to the martyr since it focussed on the activities of his secret organisation, Raj Kumar Santoshi’s The Legend of Bhagat Singh is fairly close to the facts, according to historians. Perhaps the failure of the Bhagat Singh films to vow audiences lies in the diminishing memory of historical figures. The new generation of film watchers have not read anything on these figures. Bhagat Singh figures highly in folk history. But the movies on him hardly match up to people’s expectations or curiosity. How can one digest an Aishwarya Rai dance scene in Bhagat Singh’s personal life!

At a time when a new kind of "foreign invasion" is taking place, with unregulated entry of foreign companies and goods, the concept of nationalism fails to appeal to the people. In the new age of competition, where success is more valued, the saga of a martyr who went to the gallows is hardly box-office material.

Is there a message for film producers who rushed in to be the first to release their "own version" of Bhagat Singh’s life and sacrifice for the nation in fighting the British? Movies based on history are less likely to succeed. Bollywood cannot fictionalise history competently or convincingly.