The Changing Narrative of Bollywood

THE CHANGING NARRATIVE OF BOLLYWOOD

“When I started my struggle at 19, I wanted to just be a Bollywood hero, after a point I realised that I should stay true to my art and focus on acting. Actor pehle banja, hero public banayegi”. These words by Siddhant Chaturvedi, aka MC Sher from ‘Gully Boy’, best explains the new age of Bollywood and the new cohort of lead actors that have emerged.

Bollywood has been around for a long time but for the most part it was all about stardom. A select few men (until recently) would enter the movies on a bike, look at a girl once, dance to a couple of songs, beat up a few people and then get married to the girl. There wasn’t much creativity or attention to detail involved and sometimes the plots didn’t follow or make sense, but it didn’t seem to matter. Many an actor, ranging from Shammi Kapoor to Amitabh Bachchan and more recently Salman Khan, have made more than just a living by doing this.

However, recently this method of filmmaking seems to have started failing. 2018 marked a very important year in this process. For the last 10-15 years, the Khans, namely Shah Rukh, Salman and Aamir, had been ruling Bollywood and at least one of them gave a blockbuster each year. However, in 2018, all 3 of them flopped at the box office. Salman was criticised for his lacklustre performance in Race 3, Shah Rukh for the unrealistic story in Zero and Aamir was the star of possibly the flop of the year – ‘Thugs of Hindostan’. The year showed that you can’t just cast a big hero who turns up with a substandard story and expect commercial success.

Instead, 2018 saw the meteoric rise of actors such as Vicky Kaushal, Rajkummar Rao and Ayushmann Khurrana. With performances in a variety of films ranging from ‘Andhadhun’ and ‘Stree’ to ‘Sanju’ and ‘Raazi’, these actors wowed the audience with their talent, flair and versatility. They played lead roles and supporting roles, best friends and emotional lovers, all with utmost skill. The big stars had to match these performances in order to hold their places and only a couple managed to do that – Ranveer Singh with ’Padmaavat’ and ‘Simmba’, and Ranbir Kapoor with ‘Sanju’.

It really shows that India has progressed as a film-viewing nation and the audience is no longer interested in going to cinemas just to see stars ham on the big screen. With the rise of Netflix and Amazon Prime, they can do that for free from the comfort of their home. There needs to be an incentive to pull them into the theatre. They want to view interesting content and nuanced acting; movies that enhance their life in some way or show them something new and unexpected. As Karan Johar rightly said in an interview recently, “for a while in the middle, acting had taken a backseat and it was all about the stardom, however, today is the age of the actor.” An actor’s looks, muscles and abs are no longer the most important things; what’s important now is the script they have in hand and what they do between the time the director yells “action” and “cut”.

Ahaan Gupta