A Brit no to Bollywood curry

Bollywood is a big grosser among foreign movies in Britain

Puja Awasthi

In the best tradition of Bollywood fantasies, mine was unexpected and incongruous. Buying chocolates off a white street vendor in Canterbury, I was recognised as an Indian.
“K…k…kk Khan. My wife loves him”, the vendor smiled broadly as he handed over the change. This reference to one of India’s biggest film stars Shahrukh Khan, in a town I’d associated only with the founder of English Literature, left me stumped, happy and proud. 

Growing numbers among India’s film fraternity have nursed this feeling of having arrived in the West for a while now. It stems from promising box office figures that tell you that 66 Hindi films were released in UK in 2005, the highest number of foreign language movie releases. At £12.2 million, Hindi movies took in the highest gross among foreign films and left behind the nearest competition (French) by a healthy £8 million.

It’s the Money, Honey

But figures, like movies can be make believe. Thus, though Bollywood movies feature regularly on the UK Top 10 list, they remain poor earners when compared to the top grossers from Hollywood. So while Dhoom II, a bikes-n-babes  adventure, was number six in its first week of release, its earnings at £881,992 remained a tiny fraction of Casino Royale, which mopped up £27 million in the same time. And while Casino Royale might be argued away as unfair competition, even smaller movies pick up better earnings. 

These box office figures make sense only with a demographic sub text. According to Indian census of 2001, there are approximately 11 million Indians living, working, and studying elsewhere around the world. In the UK approximately 3 percent of the population is Indian/Pakistani. It is this population of approximately 1.6 million and not an imaginary British audience, which is shoring up Bollywood’s pound box office.

Rachel Dwyer, Reader in Indian Studies and Cinema at the School of Oriental and African Studies laughs off the unseemly desperation of mainstream Indian film makers to garner acclaim in UK.

“Bollywood directors are wrong in trying to do well in the West by making films that attempt to be an extension of the West. Why should the Western audience bother about a mini skirt wearing heroine who sings against a Starbucks background? Instead give them something that is beautiful, exotic, colourful and Indian. That does not mean elephants, snake charmers or the cow, caste and curry mix but an India that is young and happening”, she points out.

Indian Spice

Dwyer’s contention explains why Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001), a film about a wedding in an upper middle class Indian family, did well. The movie plays like a typical North Indian wedding video high on song and dance. But in that kitsch are ‘you and me’ characters who speak of recognisable concerns. Most importantly the film is just 114 minutes long, a little more than half the length of a typical Hindi movie. Its the only length that a Briton could realistically be expected to watch after a 10 hour work day.

Indian film makers fail to realise that the movie, like Gurinder Chadha’s Bend it Like Beckham (2002), a film about a British Asian girl who wants to be a footballer much to the dismay of her traditional mother, succeeded only because of the directors’ Western sensibilities. Both Nair and Chadha are essentially Western. The former, born in India and educated at Harvard has spent much of her adult life in America while the latter is a British Asian. In fact, Chadha’s western sensibilities failed to make a success of Bride and Prejudice (2004), an Indian version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Nasreen Munni Kabir, former member of the Board of Governors of the British Film Institute, film maker and writer of biographies of Bollywood personalities, says Indian film makers need to do a serious rethink on why they need the British to watch their movies.

“Is it the Raj hangover. I don’t know. Why aren’t Bollywood directors celebrating the fact of having a dedicated audience in the overseas Indians, the Africans, the Germans and the Russians among others? The world’s biggest film industry should be proud of the fact that it has the might to stand up to Hollywood as the home audience watches more Indian than Hollywood movies. This is something that the English can’t claim given the fact that British movies are few and far between and targeted at a niche audience. Why should Bollywood bother?” Kabir wonders.

For a long time in fact, Bollywood was not troubled by the need to find a huge Western audience. Then in 1995, Dilwale Dulhaniye Le Jayenge (DDLJ), a love story about young non resident Indians battling parental opposition, happened.

 A watershed movie after the lull of the dull 80s, it was possibly the first film, which pulled many second and third generation Asians to the cinemas and away from pirated DVDs. Even the West was wowed. For instance Charles Taylor in Salon.com described it as “flawed, contradictory… (yet) a classic.”

Pauline Toole, a 29 year old who works in a supermarket remembers watching the movie because she was “dragged to it by an Indian friend”.

“The burst of colour, songs and emotions was too much to take. But I was amused enough to go back for more and introduce other friends to the giddy pleasures of Indian cinema”, she says. 

The success of DDLJ became the aspirational benchmark for Indian film makers who fondly hoped to capture the UK audience which would fork out £8 (Rs 688) for a movie ticket instead of the £1.16 (Rs 100) that a viewer in India would pay for the same movie.

Asjad Nasir, Bollywood writer contends that DDLJ also started the trend of more prints and huge advance bookings.

Cool Thing

“Hindi movies began to get record opening weekends even though word of mouth would not sustain the momentum in the coming week. That also meant that Bollywood began appearing in the media and that generated interest. Suddenly it was cool to watch Hindi cinema”, Nasir says.

Then in 2002, Lagaan was released. The story of plucky Indian villagers taking on the might of the British Raj through a game of cricket was the perfect cinematic curry for success despite the jarring notes of an English song and couture blunders such as evening gowns being passed off as day wear. The filmmaker narrated a local story, packaged it internationally and made his way to an Oscar nomination, showcasing wonderfully what the right script and good production values could do for a movie.

However university student Erina Happold, 20, goaded by an Indian friend to watch the movie,  remembers it only as a “bum numbing” film. “I love the way Indian film actresses look, the shiny clothes they wear and the dances. But the logic of Hindi movies is difficult to figure out”, she shrugs. 

Silver Sheen

Happold’s sense of bewilderment is perhaps the key to understanding the true impact of Hindi cinema. While the movies themselves remain side-shows, they have unleashed massive spin off effects, the most prominent of which are Indian music and fashion. When Cherie Blair drapes a sari it is as much recognition of an economic powerhouse central to Britain’s concerns as it is of its cinema. When Andrew Lloyd Webber has AR Rehman compose the music for Bombay Dreams it is the acknowledgement of individual talent and the culture it is rooted in. It is the same when critics point out that the Oscar-nominated Moulin Rouge and Chicago are examples that the musical is re-emerging thanks to Bollywood. 

Through these routes, Bollywood finds itself closer to a whole hearted Western embrace. This year for instance, Yash Chopra became the first Indian to be chosen a lifetime member of the British Academy of Films and Television Art. Last year an India-UK Films Co-Production agreement was inked. In 2003, Cinema India, an exhibition of Bollywood cinema posters, became one of the starting points for Image and Identity, a three year project initiated by the Victoria and Albert Museum to encourage young people to use museum collections to explore their image and identity. The same year Channel Four launched a search for potential Bollwood stars.

In May 2002, Selfridges paid tribute to Bollywood in its London and Manchester stores by setting out ornaments, drapes, posters, decorative elements and the like against a backdrop of Bollywood sounds and images. The store went as far as declaring itself Bollywood during the promotion.

Also high on the popularity metre are the regular Bollywood “nites” hosted by a number of London bars. Among them Bar Saaqi, off Oxford Street which has Gabbar Singh Sling, Disco Dancer and Bachchan Banger on its list of Bombay Funkadelic Cocktails. A typical Bar Saaqi regular would be a sequin shirt clad, bindi wearing young British woman swaying vigorously in her bejewelled jootis (shoes) to the beats of Rang De Basanti, a Bollywood number high on patriotic fervour.

Despite these obvious influences, the British media continues to poke fun at Bollywood. Thus Hrithik Roshan is dubbed as “the most famous person you have never heard of” (GQ, March 2002) and Amitabh Bachchan, is “the world’s most famous actor and you’ve never heard of him” (The Sunday Times, December 3, 2006). But reaffirmation of Bachchan’s superstar status was provided by a solidly British institution, the BBC, which in a turn of century poll declared Bachchan “star of the millennium”.

British Stage

The British media’s irreverence cannot mask the fact that Britain is keenly wooing Bollywood, the world’s biggest film industry that churns out approximately 1,000 titles a year. More and more producers are being weaned away from the traditional favourite Switzerland, to shoot “dream sequences” in UK.

Kay Ram, of Kay Express International Limited, a company that scouts location and provides logistical, production and distribution support to Hindi films says that on an average a one week shoot costs in the region of £80 – £100,000. 

“UK offers production support and subsidies to filmmakers to encourage use of local resources and boost tourism. However the fact that a film has been shot in London or that London features in the title (as in Namaste London) will not necessarily help in drawing crowds to cinemas in London – there’s only a sense of mild connection and enthusiasm – eventually a product has to speak for itself”, Ram reasons. 

Jyoti Deshpande, Chief Operating officer of Eros International Plc., a media and entertainment company that distributes Bollywood cinema worldwide avers that the great Indian crossover is just around the corner, but it needs the support of better marketing and distribution strategies.

“We need to hype our movies. Press screenings, more prints more cinemas in areas that are not Asian dominated, a bigger share for marketing will definitely see us break through their cynicism”, she offers.

Rumblings of change can already be heard in Bollywood which has begun a serious bid to streamline and corporatise its functioning after it was awarded industry status by the Indian government in 2005.

Financial institutions are keen to invest in films and there is a new, disciplined breed of stars willing to work to deadlines and bound scripts, so far unheard of in India. In the midst of these frills, filmmakers are telling Indian stories, even adapting Shakespeare to a gritty Indian ambience (Omkara, 2006), polishing production values and making regular appearances at International film festivals. The songs and dances are intact, as they should remain but the length remains a sticking point.

But, as any Bollywood buff (even one in Canterbery) would tell you, in the end all falls in place. It is that happy ending that Bollywood is hoping for.