Madras Cafe and Bollywood

"Duma Dum Mast Kalandar" is playing loud into my ears through recently acquired headphones. It is a song from a Bollywood movie. Unlike in Hollywood, almost all Bollywood movies have a soundtrack or are Musicals. They are designed for the masses to really have a great time through them. A lot of time I hear people worry about the lack of content, lack of context in Indian movies. This would be mostly because people in India don't go to the cinema to see a reverting story, extraordinary acting ability or direction. They only want to for the 2-2.5 hours relax, watch something they would like to imitate in front of a mirror. It is not a mental exercise (which is a great!), rather one that is hearty, emotional. 

In the recent years things have been changing with more people drawn to story lines and their implementations. It no more about the actor playing the character, but a character played by the actor. Many extraordinary people with unique skill set have ventured into filmmaking and its supporting arts. One of the most exciting actor prospects of todays Bollywood is son of yesteryears actors Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Kappor, Ranbir Kapoor, who is a self claimed "typical Bollywood actor". But that might not be entirely true. The Le Straussberg trained actor doesnt take himself too seriously and attributes his success to the people around him, downplaying his role or contributions, a first for an actor so deeply loved. He was the part of extremely successful 'Barfi' a film about "A mute husband, A mad wife" as comically circulated over various social networking websites. The movie also featured Priyanka Chopra, arguably the best female actors in mainstream Indian cinema, who built her career up from literally nothing, not the norm in Bollywood. 

There had been groundbreaking unconventional movies throughout the last 10 years of Indian cinema. Case in point, movies like Udaan, No Smoking, Omkara, Kabul Express, Corporate, Kaminey, My Name is Khan, Like Stars on Earth, among others. India also has its very own superhero, and it is not clearly inspired or copied by any of its Hollywood counterparts, which is truly refreshing as far as Bollywood movies go. He is called Krrish and the third installment/sequel of his story is to released within two months time. 

What really inspired this post was a recent movie Madras Cafe, produced and acted by an model turned actor, John Abraham who garner most attention with his looks than about the content of his movies or the character he plays. Madras cafe is not a typical Bollywood film, it does not have any songs and dance numbers, or an item number (Wikipedia definition: An item number or an item song, (Hindi: आइटम नंबर) in Indian cinema, is a musical performance that has little to do with the film in which it appears, but is presented to showcase beautiful dancing women in revealing clothes, to lend support to the marketability of the film. The term is commonly used in connection with Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu cinema, to describe a catchy, upbeat, often sexually provocative dance sequence for a song in a movie). 

This is not a review of the movie, so I'd just like to say its a really great film and deserves a watch or even two. John Abraham shows he is much more than a pretty face or a very fit man nearing his 40s.

Just that!