Creativity and Indian Film Makers
A while back I was browsing through some of the Indian movie websites. In a country with creative directors such as Ray, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Ratnam, Jahnu Barua, and to some extent Cheran, K. Balachander; there are also worthless directors who just disrepute the whole concept of moviemaking. To illustrate, take a look at the movies which came out in recent times (I am limiting myself to Hindi and Tamil). Directors seem love to churn movies of the "Masala" genre with the beaten down love stories. No originality in those. But there pops out good movies in between. Movies like Black, Parineeta, and Paheli are top of the house in terms of production value, story and story telling..But are these stories really original...Nope, not even close..Black takes it soul from the story of Jane Eyre, Paheli and Parineeta from old movies..I can atleast give the directors credit for their effort in giving a good story.. But what about directors like Murugadoss in Tamil and Apoorva Lakhia in Hindi.. The former just released his movie by named "Gajini", a story of a millionarie turned killer who has lost his short-term memory and uses tatoos/polaroid pics to keep track.. Tamil movie magazines are full of rave for the director for having a novel story.. Novel story, my foot...for all those naive souls, the movie is totally based on a Hollywood flick called "Momento". The same with Apporva Lakhia, whose new movie by named "Ek Ajnabee" is a total copy of last year's Denziel Washigton hit "Man on Fire"..These guys are just a prick for the Indian movie industry and the reason why they dont come up with any good films or ones with Novel ideas. Till they get rid of these copycats, who cant think, our national film selectors for Oscar nomination wont have much work on their plate..
A while back I was browsing through some of the Indian movie websites. In a country with creative directors such as Ray, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Ratnam, Jahnu Barua, and to some extent Cheran, K. Balachander; there are also worthless directors who just disrepute the whole concept of moviemaking. To illustrate, take a look at the movies which came out in recent times (I am limiting myself to Hindi and Tamil). Directors seem love to churn movies of the "Masala" genre with the beaten down love stories. No originality in those. But there pops out good movies in between. Movies like Black, Parineeta, and Paheli are top of the house in terms of production value, story and story telling..But are these stories really original...Nope, not even close..Black takes it soul from the story of Jane Eyre, Paheli and Parineeta from old movies..I can atleast give the directors credit for their effort in giving a good story.. But what about directors like Murugadoss in Tamil and Apoorva Lakhia in Hindi.. The former just released his movie by named "Gajini", a story of a millionarie turned killer who has lost his short-term memory and uses tatoos/polaroid pics to keep track.. Tamil movie magazines are full of rave for the director for having a novel story.. Novel story, my foot...for all those naive souls, the movie is totally based on a Hollywood flick called "Momento". The same with Apporva Lakhia, whose new movie by named "Ek Ajnabee" is a total copy of last year's Denziel Washigton hit "Man on Fire"..These guys are just a prick for the Indian movie industry and the reason why they dont come up with any good films or ones with Novel ideas. Till they get rid of these copycats, who cant think, our national film selectors for Oscar nomination wont have much work on their plate..
2 comments:
Leave alone the remake of hollywood films, they do the remake of our own film. Do you remember HAHK (Madhuri Dixit & co movie), I saw a telugu movie (starring shobana, suhasini, sarath babu etc taken in the early 80s) recently which is nothing but HAHK. There is a big list and the list includes people like Kamal, Maniratnam etc. But as long as they can tell the same story in a different style and make it interesting, atleast you dont feel that bad.
I do agree that "Autograph" is different. It is a different storyline as far as I know.
Yeah I agree laks.. A couple of weeks back I was seeing a Top 100 Hollywood thrillers. There was a movie called Mystery in the 80's..Only after i saw that i realized that Balumahendra copied the same as Julie Ganapathy (scene by scene)...very bad..i do agree that people like Maniratnam takes inspiration from others..like Anjali from ET, Nayagan from Godfather..but atleast they put the effort to tell the story in their own way..one for example is the recent movie Sarkar by RGV.. the first part is scene by scene from Godfather, but the second part steals you.. its in RGV style..
well, the movie to watch for is Thavamai Thavamirundhu by Cheran and the movie to see is Iqbal by Nagesh Kukunoor.. these two seem to me as the best among the lot and who dont want to work around the same mill...
one more thing, I should ask Vani for those old english movies from which our Indian movie makers have copied..she used to see a channel called TCM here, where they show oldies.. every now and then she wud tell me abt movies which has been copied scene by scene..
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