The May 2010 issue of UTV World Movies Magazine carried an article I wrote comparing Bollywood and Mexican Cinema with urbanization as its underlying motif. I am not very happy with it. I think essays of such kind need a person with greater expertise about the subject matter and with greater skill. My article reads more like a generalization extrapolated from a very limited knowledge of Bollywood and Mexican Cinema. As several friends have expressed a wish to read it, and as it is past May the month of the issue, I am posting a version of the article somewhere between my final draft and the one printed. All good parts were suggested and/or directly written by my editors.
Mexico has a small film industry. About 350 movies are released annually including Latin American, European and Hollywood ones. Hardly 60 of them are produced locally. Billion-dollar Bollywood is twice as big with over 100 movies produced and released each year in theatres alone. Even as the world cinema makes inroads into the lucrative Indian markets, it still prefers Mexico when it comes to creative talent. Names like Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Guillermo Arriaga, Guillermo del Toro, Gael García Bernal and Salma Hayek are a few examples. That may not be without reason.
Your God, My God
With over 85% Roman Catholics, secular Mexico is somewhat similar to India with its 80% Hindu population. Nearly half of Mexico’s population is estimated to be regular churchgoers and in India there are more religion-based programmes and dedicated channels and more temples and pujas than ever before. Gods, like their followers, prosper in the face of development. What is surprising is the steady decline in religiousness shown in Bollywood movies. Probably not so surprising.
The movies that travel across the world are often those set in urban milieus . They are the kind which portray the progress and problems of the shining economies and thus resonate better with the higher income groups at home and overseas.
Today Bollywood rarely makes movies where religion plays a major role, other than when it takes up its favourite themes of relationships beyond religions, of communal riots, or of terrorism. The clichéd scenes of a mother or a wife visiting a large idol of Lord Shiva, a Muslim stopping himself from committing a crime on hearing the echoes of a namaaz recital, or a joint family merrily standing in the mandir wearing white are mostly a thing of the past. Neither are these days for mythology, nor for atheist militancy. While increasingly large numbers of youth aimlessly vacillate between religious fervour and agnosticism, recent movies that address faith as a concept and not merely as a category hardly come to my mind. As if drowned by the din of modern machinery, conversations with God – blameful, remorseful, and thankful ones – and externalised internal debates have become antiquated and not yet upgraded.
Sins (Vinod Pande, 2005), set in a coastal town in Kerala, is one recent movie in which religion played a central theme, but it sank to such abysmal depths that its director chose to make Red Swastik (2007) next. Reincarnation is central to Karzzz (Satish Kaushik, 2008), but it is only a remake of Karz (Subhash Ghai, 1980). Interestingly, Sins may have borrowed a thing or two from the Mexican Oscar-nominated The Crime of Padre Amaro (El crimen del padre Amaro, Carlos Carrera, 2002) which was itself adaptated from renowned Portuguese writer José Maria de Eça de Queirós’ novel of the same name. Both movies are about a small-town Catholic priest who becomes infatuated with a young girl. The Mexican movie became the biggest commercial success of all time in Mexico, even after the offended Catholic organisations emphatically asked the government to ban it and the people not to see it. This is not an exception. Acclaimed director Carlos Reygadas is most known for Japón (2002), Battle in Heaven (Batalla en en cielo, 2005), and Silent Light (Stellet licht, 2007), all of which examine Christianity and its myths.
Sex and Other Stories
Unlike the controversy surrounding the “sexually explicit” topless scenes of Seema Rahmani in Sins, the controversy of El crimen del padre Amaro only had to do with them involving a Catholic priest. While exploring sexuality more “openly” is fast becoming a favourite among our directors demonstrating the urban leap of faith in movies, unabashed exploration, depiction and even reception of sexuality has been common to Mexican mainstream movies and audiences. In the coming-of-age movie And Your Mother, Too (Y tu mamá también, Alfonso Cuarón, 2001) two teenage boys learn about love, friendship, sex and life during their road trip in company with an older woman that they both become attracted to. The movie set a record by getting the biggest ever opening in Mexico and went on to become a cult classic around the world.
The apparently progressive views of the urban youth, the controversies about the morality of pre-marital sex, a greater and more open dialogue, and most importantly the emergence of the multiplex crowd have all laid a foundation for “bolder” experiments. Love’s a Bitch (Amores perros, Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000), one of the most well-known Mexican movies in India is an anthology film in which one story deals with the forbidden love between a man and his brother’s wife, and another with the extramarital affair between a family man and a much-younger supermodel. Showcase it beside Bollywood anthology Love, Sex aur Dhokha (Dibakar Banerjee, 2010) which dealt with love and sex (although between unmarried adults) like no other Bollywood movie before it. It is common knowledge that CBFC India bisected a sex scene in LSD because it deemed it too long for the Indian audiences.
Mexican cinema enjoys a vastly more liberal censor board and a protective government. Mexico decriminalised homosexuality in 1871 — an achievement for a country with such a great Catholic majority. Violence against members of the LGBT communities (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transsexual) remains a serious issue in Mexico, but movies have moved beyond the derogatory comedian “marica” (sissy) stereotype that was common till the seventies. Julián Hernández, for instance, is making a name for himself by writing and directing movies about homosexuality, like A Thousand Clouds of Peace (Mil nubes de paz cercan el cielo, 2003) and Broken Sky (El cielo dividido, 2006). The Mexican government not only protects these movies for frictionless screenings, but it also supports efforts toward greater sexual tolerance and AIDS awareness through MIX Mexico, an annual LGBT film festival held in Mexico City.
More than a decade after venues and posters of Fire (Deepa Mehta, 1999) had been set afire by fanatics and thugs in broad daylight, Bollywood is yet to produce a movie that does more than running ludicrous gags about a couple of characters pretending to be or wrongly perceived as homosexual. Indian cinema and audiences (including the multiplex crowd) continue to squirm when a movie explores sexuality beyond the consensual intercourse between an Adonis and a Venus, with strategically-placed props and camera angles. On the other hand, Indians have for long been comfortable with graphic violence.
In the Thick of Action
The claim is undeniable. Many Indian parents take their children to theatres showing “fighting movies”. Action blockbusters are broadcast on television channels during primetime hours. Bollywood has always banked heavily on “action”, though its renditions have evolved dramatically. Extravagantly choreographed stunts featuring risk-taking heroes and their doubles have replaced dishum dishums. Cold silvery handguns which can bore neat holes or make messy spaghettis off a skull have replaced cardboard machine guns. Cavemen villains operating from beeping, kitschy hideouts have made way for the chic face of evil. Besides, even the nature of these crimes are now more urban, more sophisticated. Stories are being drawn from real-life inspirations and movies featuring the increasingly dangerous cities rife with extortion, kidnapping, corruption, the omnipresent underworld, sex crimes and now terrorism are being abundantly made.
The appetite for violence in Bollywood and Mexican cinema and of their audiences is comparable. In Without Name (Sin Nombre, Cary Fukunaga, 2009) two men force a child to carry out the execution of their prisoner, and then feed the prisoner’s viscera to dogs. In Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000) the protagonist of the first story primarily earns money through brutal dog fights, and pissed off bad men shoot their defeated dogs in Bollywood ishtyle. While crime in Mexican movies is usually about the drug cartels, corruption in the Church and the government, and illegal emigration, they have also started scratching beneath the surface with movies like The Zone (La Zona, Rodrigo Plá, 2007). La Zona is an unsentimental critique of the urban society, of the great virtual wall between the rich and the poor, and especially of the changing realities and requirements of the well-to-do to live peacefully within the confines of their secure, gated communities.
People, lives and stories will keep changing till they reach stable ground during urbanisation. Both Mexico and India are in that stage now where the past is a powerless patriarch, impotent but an influence nonetheless on whatever the future is to bring. Change is imminent and exciting. Especially for filmmakers hoping to tell riveting stories of a generation caught in conflicts, external, internal and liminal.