Although a serious socio-economic study with all the related pitfalls of academic analogues, Rachel Dwyer’s new offer essentially deals with the post-1991 Hindi cinema with an occasional, selective reference to the past that is not always in sync with her hyperbole with regards to the issues examined. Having said that it must, however, be pointed out she sought to eschew more than possible, or necessary and in the process becomes repetitive as the narrative focuses on same stars and films again and again. Shah Rukh Khan being the beneficiary: diasporic superstar and “the face of new India.”
The preface outlines her ambitious plans when she states that the book “is an investigation of the imagined worlds of mainstream Hindi cinema, whose interpretations of India over the last two decades are, I argue, the most reliable guide to understanding the nation’s dreams and hopes, fears and anxieties” while invariably digging into the past, too, she finds similar issues, at times anticipating the likely scenario in the future as well. She also feels “mainstream Hindi cinema has never been quite a national cinema” as it had little or no similarity with what was being done in the other languages but what was not necessarily “festival cinema” as Dwyer has sought to interpret and does get to reflect on the exchanges between Hindi and the Southern languages in particular.
Applauding her attempt, and the manner of her analysis of issues, themes, situations, she at times wrongly assumes that the present set of young film makers are not only singularly confronting reality but also investing their attempts at the changing scenario because what has really changed in the post-1991 Hindi cinema is the packaging and not content especially when she admits “cinema does not reflect society but rather imagines it …in ways that often eschew the values of realism.”
Split into seven elaborate chapters, the book digs out more than what probably the makers and viewers perceived in these films. But then the book is also in part “something of a personal journey,” and “looks at Hindi films as a collective imagined text” and 1991 as the beginning of her interest, and “its point of departure.” The text begins with a general survey of historical films: mythological, ancient, medieval right up to partition that does not mention Train to Pakistan, Pinjar, Tamas as also political cinema, notably Prakash Jha erroneously hailing Raajneeti as 2010’s biggest grosser.
Chapter two examines the presence and effect of religion, caste, class, language and their response by “overwhelming urban” cine goers. The next chapter concentrates on myths, beliefs and practices, and religion (namely Hindu), in post-independence cinema, and the rise of the Muslim social that are “within the more realist film tradition.” High point of chapter four is feelings or emotions, alternatively called ‘melodrama’ as against tear-jerkers, and Indian cinema fulfills “all requirements of melodrama as they foreground emotions over all other issues” and Shah Rukh Khan again is splashed over.
Romance, siblings, friendship, family, marriages, parent and grand parenthood are the focal points of chapter 5 that in many ways re-emphasizes factors already examined earlier. Education, work and lifestyle are issues that find more emphasis in chapter six that might never have even crossed the minds of writers and directors.
The concluding chapter Agneepath/The Path of Fire (1990-2012) comes like a bolt from the blue, like the forced entry of a superstar in guest appearance that is totally out of sync with the narrative but justified to emphasize changes between 1990 and 2012 in the two versions. “These two films frame the changes of our period in many ways showing continuities and disruptions.” But then this is not peculiar, in the context of remakes, to Hindi cinema. Perhaps then, as an afterthought in a contextually different manner perhaps she tries to redeem herself: “Even the films from the early 1990s seem as though they were made in another world.”