Confused Connoisseurs of Cinema

Double standards of brainwashed connoisseurs. National sense of inferiority in cinema.

Snobbery, impressionability and intolerance — when they converge, people mistake it for connoisseurship, but in reality you get the gist of Indian audience. Plagiarism subsists in Indian cinema (not just Hindi cinema), but these days any similarity with a foreign film is pronounced plagiarism by lifestyle gurus. And there are gross inconsistencies in the accusations. Take for instance, Dhoom 3 is called a copy of The Prestige just because both movies feature a similar magic trick. (Rabid critics whine that both films dealt with revenge too; hence, it’s a copy. In The Prestige, a magician held a fellow magician responsible for his wife’s death and became his enemy as a result. It wasn’t a classical revenge tale. It dealt more with obsession, rivalry and magic. On the other hand, in Dhoom 3 a son seeks revenge of his father’s death from a bank owner. That way the revenge theme in Dhoom 3 is similar to that of yesteryear Hindi films like Trishul or Akayla. But revenge is one of the most commonly used themes in Indian cinema.) The core similarity between Dhoom 3 and The Prestige is the magic trick involving twins. I doubt if most of the accusers have even seen The Prestige. If that similarity makes it a copy, then the French film Irreversible should also be called a copy of Memento. Like Memento, the narrative is in reverse chronology. In both films, the protagonist is in pursuit of his spouse’s killer or rapist. But of course Irreversible, being a foreign brand, is venerated by the weak-kneed moral gurus of India. Barfi is practically a collection of copied scenes from a few foreign films and Charlie Chaplin’s gags, yet everything is brushed under the carpet because it is supposedly intellectual cinema. Even the recently released Imtiaz Ali’s Highway’s plot bears resemblances with The Chase (a 1994 Hollywood film): a rich girl is kidnapped by man from ghettos; after initial antipathy, she develops a strong bond with him. I do not mean that Highway is plagiarised work (it’s more of an inspiration), yet the same stratum of lifestyle connoisseurs, who get in a moral outrage over minor similarities, have stayed quiet this time — simply because Highway is a highbrow film. Aamir Khan’s own Ghajini had striking similarities with Memento, yet not many people made a fuss out of it — because it came in as a remake baggage from the highly feted south Indian cinema. Salman Khan’s Jai Ho’s premise is lifted from Hollywood’s Pay It Forward, but it has barely attracted any notoriety from lifestyle gurus and connoisseurs. The 2007 blockbuster Jab We Met was quite comparable to My Sassy Girl, yet Indian audience dote on it without any fuss. The yuppie breed’s front runner Hum Tum had many similarities with When Harry Met Sally, but the lifestyle gurus stayed quiet. Dhoom 3 is also called a copy of Now You See Me. There are certain similarities, but Now You See Me came only four months before it — a long time after Dhoom 3’s shooting had finished. It’s downright absurd to proclaim that they modified the script, re-shot the film, did all the complex post-production work (visual effects, editing etc.) just after seeing Now You See Me’s trailer and got everything ready for Christmas.

©Yashraj Films

In Dhoom 3, people found the motorbike’s transformation into a Jet Ski ridiculous. If a Hollywood film had done that, the same crowd would have gaped in awe. When James Bond’s car turned into a submarine, it was greeted with whistles and cheers from connoisseurs. Many Hollywood films have implausible action scenes: in Goldeneye (1995), James Bond jumped off a cliff on a motorbike and entered an imminently crashing aeroplane. It was a conspicuously impossible stunt, notwithstanding in contravention of the laws of physics. Nevertheless, it met with negligible disapproval. Had it been executed in a Hindi film, even with the same finesse, it would have led to bigoted moanings from the national bellyachers. Tom Cruise wore sticky gloves to climb vertical surfaces in Mission Impossible 4 and the propaganda connoisseurs applauded with deference; yet a similar gadget in Hindi film would be received with rabid disapproval. In Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Uma Thurman killed hundreds of assassins with a sword in one scene. In another scene, a girl decapitates a man, pumping a fountain of blood at a high pressure for a few seconds. But none of the weak-kneed connisseurs winced. The comic book themed Sin City (one of my favourites) was full of implausible fight scenes, but the spineless Indian audience didn’t complain. They would never extend the same level of tolerance for an enterprising Hindi film like that. If a film like Sin City were to be helmed in Hindi cinema, it would become an object of national scorn for its “unrealistic” fights and “stupid” comic-motion scenes. This is one of the reasons why Indian writers dread trying anything out of the box. Anurag Kashyap endeavoured Franz Kafka and Federico Fellini-style surrealist world in No Smoking. It was received with hateful hysteria from film cults. Since then, he has limited himself to easy-to-comprehend austere cinema, though he hasn’t pandered to the lusts of lowest common denominations. Imagine if Virender Sehwag had only played T20 cricket. He would still be a great cricketer but it would be such a waste of his enormous talent. People received intellectual orgasms with Gravity after it had received global acclaim. If made in India, the same film would get sardonic responses like “there is no story”, “it is like a documentary”, “it is too slow” and so forth. This is the reason why nobody would even dare to envisage a concept like this.

Lifestyle gurus, whose bellies start aching over long Hindi films, have no qualms about the lengths of long Hollywood films, namely, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Titanic etc. Even the second-grade Hollywood movies like Fast Five, Fast & Furious 6, G.I. Joe Cobra, Cave are treated as cinematic deities by the class-conscious connoisseurs of India who even deride movies like 3 Idiots. How can it not be anything more than mental slavery? Choice seems to be either manufactured by peer pressure or it just does not exist. 

The level of ignorance, impressionability and intolerance spewed by snobs is metaphorical of mob violence. If in the past, Indian audience were afraid to express their opinions, now they are afraid to form an opinion; as it shows, media and lifestyle gurus do all the thinking for them. Mob mentality is considered a virtue in Indian society. Lifestyle gurus exploit this sentiment to manipulate mental slaves. Snobbery and impressionability always go hand in hand; add ignorance it, and it becomes a fatal combination.