War and History: Indian cinema's pathetic record

Bollywood has been obsessed with Dawood and his henchmen. However, it is a pity that a large industry such as this does not have sufficient exhilarating war movies post 1995

Main Aur Charles’ is another movie whose trailers look decent enough and it also brings me to the hard, cold reality of Bollywood – that we probably do not have even five decent war movies made post 1995. But we have at least 10 decent enough movies made around Mumbai underworld.

We probably do not have five well-made movies on the independence struggle post 2000, but we at least have five decent movies on not just Sir Dawood but even his henchmen like Maya Dolas. Bollywood is yet to make one authentic movie on the 1857 struggle, but we now have movies being announced even on Dawood Ibrahim’s relatives. In fact, the last movie that I remember watching, which also worked on the box office was Manmohan Desai’s ‘Mard’ and that was anything but authentic history.

That is my point – Why is it that the modern contemporary Bollywood does not touch the subject of war? We have fought at least five decent scale wars, and if our most authentic war movies are Chetan Anand’s ‘Haqeeqat’; Border and ‘Lakshya’, then frankly, Bollywood has missed a whole treasure of entertaining cinema.

Most of the time, the army guy is the one who first woos the heroine and then goes missing; when she promptly finds another man, the first one comes back from the missing files and ends up playing the piano while the lady dances with the other guy, full of tears. In short, the Army was extensively used by Bollywood to make love triangles - some good, and some rank third-rate. Blame Raj Kapoor for his ‘Sangam’ and then Shakti Samanta for his ‘Aradhana.’ Now, fauji means, a smartly dressed lover boy before interval and a langda frusto post interval. It only made a much ridiculed JP Dutta give us our first reasonably well-made movie on 1971 war called ‘Border,’ as much as purists will pull their nose at this one. ‘Border’ made us proud of our jawans and the nation came to know about the Battle of Longewala. Then came Farhan Akhtar, with the polished, suave and very today movie on the new generation and Army. The outcome we got was ‘Lakshya,’ extremely well-crafted movie on the 1999 Kargil War.

‘Haqeeqat’ woke India up to the tragedy of the 1962 war and how not everything about Nehru’s leadership was great. It remains our best classic till date. Following that, Bollywood and its best makers got obsessed either with Dawood or the white train of Switzerland and they made nothing else.

Sure, the torch bearers of realistic cinema have done some great work and given us some of our most enticing, riveting cinema. But that is another genre and most of this cinema frankly celebrates negativity.

The other weak point of Bollywood is its aversion to make historic cinema. Frankly, when Ashutosh Gowarikar’s ‘Jodha-Akbar’ is Bollywood’s attempt at history, then you feel a tad disappointed with this bunch of new makers. The success of movies like ‘Border,’ and to an extent, the well-crafted ‘Lagaan’ prove a point that we are willing to take lessons in war and history, provided the content is given to us in a watchable manner.

But alas, from ‘Satya’ to ‘Once upon a time in Mumbai Dobara’ to ‘Bombay Velvet,’ our makers remain obsessed with a gangster falling in love and then dying like a cornered puppy. And now we are at the receiving end of movies on the sisters, mothers, chachus, etc, of the gangsters!

You might have expected the Yash Chopra’s and the Johars to make movies of such scale and effort, but then, both these makers decided to walk into the steps of India’s only-make-marriage-videos-release-on-Diwali director named Sooraj Barjatya.

Honestly, according to me, ‘LOC kargil’ from JP Dutta is a much better effort. At least he did not make ‘Ek Vivaah... Aisa Bhi’!

Rahul Deo Bharadwaj http://thesocietyasiseeit.blogspot.in