Hooray for Bollywood
So we watched Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham last night. I loved loved loved it. A few movie club regulars didn't or couldn't make it and I wanted to put down some thoughts about Bollywood movies in general to try and explain their appeal.
K3G is, it must be said, 3 hours and 30 minutes long, and simply cannot be related to without accepting that glaring fact. On top of that, it has a plot that you could truthfully distill into a single paragraph, or three paragraphs, to do it real justice. In the west, we don't even make movies this long any more, and our two-hour movies will typically still be wall-to-wall unexpected twists, shifts in tone, etc. So how is it that the Bollywood movies aren't lethally dull with 'so little going on' ?
What I've finally decided is that Bollywood scripts and directors are working in a frankly different medium than 'western cinema' and they just cannot be compared or weighed against one another in any appreciable way -- because of their different understanding of the simple concept of 'how long a movie should be and how do we fill out the time' ? It's just that big of an issue.
So, to come back to K3G. It is a family melodrama. We don't even have these anymore, really, in the west, and if we did, there would have to be some indie-hook quirk to make the thing sell to a distributor. (It's about a guy who is in love... with a blow up doll!) And we certainly couldn't make it at that length.
So what does K3G do to fill out this long running time? Well, the first answer is 'the song-and-dance numbers'. Yes, these are often incredible, and entertaining -- sometimes vital to the plot, sometimes tangential -- and they might take up to an hour of the running time in K3G. Even so, it's best to enjoy them for what they are, breaks in the main plot. I'm sure entire film theses have been written about how the musical numbers are spaced out, but it seems to me to be a very careful process indeed. They really lighten the melodramatic proceedings, remind you that you're supposed to be having fun, etc -- look at all the gorgeous people, sets, clothes, etc... -- and to be honest, you need a few breaks from a movie with the emotional punch of Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham.
But even without the songs... there is still a LOT of movie to cope with, and 'less happens' to be sure than in a western romance (or western anything really). Instead, we get very calculated scenes so that we feel 'lived-in' with the characters. In almost every Bollywood movie i've seen, there are scenes with families eating. Every time! And, hey, what could be more universal? Everyone eats, every day. Even though the characters are so often larger than life (corporate moguls, underworld kingpins, fashion models, movie stars, cricket heroes) and typically fabulously wealthy, the repetitive weight of 'family life' scenes, in the end, provides an *invaluable* amount of emotional weight once the matters of the 'plot' come to a head.
And as patently ridiculous as so many Bollywood plots are, with the good movies, the ones that work, i am not remotely bored. Furthermore, I am completely emotionally involved with the characters, to an extent that I virtually never am in any western movie with similar themes or stories. Because the extra time *adds* not subtracts from the bond. The mistaken- or assumed-identity plots and other ridiculous devices work because they HAVE to work, the movies' length sort of beats you down into accepting it, internalizing it.
Kabhi Khushi is all about family. So are a lot of Bollywood films, and even when they more or less are not, they really are, because they exist in a world where famiily still means something. I am starting to watch Bollywood with a different mental lens... i used to think the family melodrama was a bit silly, especially when the characters generally come from such outlandishly 'awesome' families. Now, I'm seeing all the minor and incidental characters as part of other, unseen awesome families, just ones that the movie doesn't have time for. But that it's all implied, all this extra drama, a world of drama. Which is another thing that the whole 'running time / sprawling epic feel' really plays into.
So what if it takes three hours to tell the story? Should we really resent that it takes half again as much time to tell a story the way they want to tell it, than it would for a western film? How did we ever arrive at the 'generic two hour running time' ? Are the reasons really about aesthetics, and not a business-person's convenience in the form of TV running times, more screenings per evening, cost of film!, etc?
K3G is, it must be said, 3 hours and 30 minutes long, and simply cannot be related to without accepting that glaring fact. On top of that, it has a plot that you could truthfully distill into a single paragraph, or three paragraphs, to do it real justice. In the west, we don't even make movies this long any more, and our two-hour movies will typically still be wall-to-wall unexpected twists, shifts in tone, etc. So how is it that the Bollywood movies aren't lethally dull with 'so little going on' ?
What I've finally decided is that Bollywood scripts and directors are working in a frankly different medium than 'western cinema' and they just cannot be compared or weighed against one another in any appreciable way -- because of their different understanding of the simple concept of 'how long a movie should be and how do we fill out the time' ? It's just that big of an issue.
So, to come back to K3G. It is a family melodrama. We don't even have these anymore, really, in the west, and if we did, there would have to be some indie-hook quirk to make the thing sell to a distributor. (It's about a guy who is in love... with a blow up doll!) And we certainly couldn't make it at that length.
So what does K3G do to fill out this long running time? Well, the first answer is 'the song-and-dance numbers'. Yes, these are often incredible, and entertaining -- sometimes vital to the plot, sometimes tangential -- and they might take up to an hour of the running time in K3G. Even so, it's best to enjoy them for what they are, breaks in the main plot. I'm sure entire film theses have been written about how the musical numbers are spaced out, but it seems to me to be a very careful process indeed. They really lighten the melodramatic proceedings, remind you that you're supposed to be having fun, etc -- look at all the gorgeous people, sets, clothes, etc... -- and to be honest, you need a few breaks from a movie with the emotional punch of Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham.
But even without the songs... there is still a LOT of movie to cope with, and 'less happens' to be sure than in a western romance (or western anything really). Instead, we get very calculated scenes so that we feel 'lived-in' with the characters. In almost every Bollywood movie i've seen, there are scenes with families eating. Every time! And, hey, what could be more universal? Everyone eats, every day. Even though the characters are so often larger than life (corporate moguls, underworld kingpins, fashion models, movie stars, cricket heroes) and typically fabulously wealthy, the repetitive weight of 'family life' scenes, in the end, provides an *invaluable* amount of emotional weight once the matters of the 'plot' come to a head.
And as patently ridiculous as so many Bollywood plots are, with the good movies, the ones that work, i am not remotely bored. Furthermore, I am completely emotionally involved with the characters, to an extent that I virtually never am in any western movie with similar themes or stories. Because the extra time *adds* not subtracts from the bond. The mistaken- or assumed-identity plots and other ridiculous devices work because they HAVE to work, the movies' length sort of beats you down into accepting it, internalizing it.
Kabhi Khushi is all about family. So are a lot of Bollywood films, and even when they more or less are not, they really are, because they exist in a world where famiily still means something. I am starting to watch Bollywood with a different mental lens... i used to think the family melodrama was a bit silly, especially when the characters generally come from such outlandishly 'awesome' families. Now, I'm seeing all the minor and incidental characters as part of other, unseen awesome families, just ones that the movie doesn't have time for. But that it's all implied, all this extra drama, a world of drama. Which is another thing that the whole 'running time / sprawling epic feel' really plays into.
So what if it takes three hours to tell the story? Should we really resent that it takes half again as much time to tell a story the way they want to tell it, than it would for a western film? How did we ever arrive at the 'generic two hour running time' ? Are the reasons really about aesthetics, and not a business-person's convenience in the form of TV running times, more screenings per evening, cost of film!, etc?