The audience wants entertainment first!

The recent flicks ‘Begum Jaan’ and ‘Naam Shabana’ were made on a small budget and both were women-oriented films. While, one without a huge star cast won the accolades of the audience for its content; the other, even though with strong performances, was a run-around-the-mill cinema…

While doing a small random fact search I stumbled upon a simple fact. The cost of making of both ‘Naam Shabana’ and ‘Begum Jaan’ is almost the same i.e. 15 crore. If you were to compare; ‘Naam Shabana’ features a not so big star Taapsee Pannu and ‘Begum Jaan’ had the presence of the phenomenal screen star Vidya Balan and backing of the Bhatt camp.

Yet in comparison ‘Naam Shabana’ has won audience appreciation and box office numbers in a big way. This despite the intellectual aura that was bestowed upon ‘Begum Jaan’ and to be fair, another brilliant effort by Vidya Balan and Gauhar Khan. ‘Begum Jaan's box office numbers would make the accountant of ‘Rangoon’ proud.

Today, ‘Naam Shabana’ is increasingly coming across as the smaller star Tapsee winning because the content of the film was far better packaged and presented than ‘Begum Jaan’. So many times the audiences have told our intellectual filmmakers that content, which is boring and dragging does not qualify even as mature content.

There is a big difference between a slow subtle intelligent movie and a film that simply does not move. ‘Gandhi’ and ‘Shawshank Redemption’ can claim to be slow intelligent movies and therefore are also watchable once at least.

The irony in the case of ‘Begum Jaan’ was that the basic plot had huge opportunities. The biggest mistake that the director did in ‘Begum Jaan’ is keeping its length at 2 hours 15 minutes and in the process, he could neither develop characters nor made it a fast-paced thriller.

So many of its subplots remain unfolded or very unconvincingly delivered. ‘Begum Jaan’, probably, can be watched only for Vidya Balan's epic performance. But is that what the movie makers had planned to offer the audience?

That is the failure of ‘Begum Jaan’. Sure a lot many of us will again blame it on the shallow taste of the feudal theme, etc. We, however, refuse to acknowledge that the Indian movie audience knows how to separate pure content from pretentious content.

‘Naam Shabana’ made no bones about being a total commercial masala thriller. Comparatively its screenplay, its characters are all well placed. The conflict of good girl vs bad guys is far better placed here. Take the intellectual aura away from ‘Begum Jaan’ and look hard how different is the central character of ‘Begum Jaan’ from Shabana?

Both believe in their own set of rules when the system fails them or treats them unfairly. Both believe in delivering justice by their own hands should the system fail or refuse to deliver it their way. In the process, they even keep their own life on high stakes. Sure the difference is Shabana wins and Begum loses but the fact is losers get more audience points and sympathy in India and our Begum failed to score there too.

Fact of the matter is ‘Naam Shabana’ was actual intelligent content delivered in the cloak of masala brainless cinema and I will not even go into the point of what an intelligent spin-off it is and how the team of ‘Baby’ will be smiling at the aura they have created around their movie series, whereas ‘Begum Jaan’ was a very third grade screenplay dished out to us in the garb of intelligent cinema.

Promotions in comedy shows will get you laughs and TRPs and a viral effect in media for a day or half. Once it hits the iceberg of audience expectations such over-hyped “Titanics” will always sink.

‘Naam Shabana’ and ‘Begum Jaan’ therefore are two parts of the same audience lesson. I am also sure the self-obsessed intelligent makers of Bollywood will not listen and continue belting out duds like ‘Begum Jaan’.