Is Bollywood Really Tanking?
Or are we too blinded by the light of RRR to see what’s really happening?
Everyone seems to agree that Bollywood, post-covid, is struggling. In 2022, movies like 83, Jayeshbhai Jordaar, Shamshera, and Samrat Pritviraj tanked so badly at the box office that theaters cancelled viewings of these movies. People were not going to the cinemas, and the shows were running to empty halls.
There seems to be a consensus on why this is happening: Bollywood fails to provide its viewers with quality content. I have written about this too in The Epidemic of Remakes Part 1 and Part 2. The remake of blockbusters from South India into Hindi, I mused, seems to be pointing to a lack of creativity or drive for good cinema in the Hindi film industry.
That’s another consensus, I suppose, that South Indian cinema is way ahead in content and quality. Type Bollywood post-covid into the Google search bar, and you will get articles praising South Indian movies and questioning Bollywood’s life span.
In a CNBC article titled Why post-pandemic Bollywood films are struggling at the box office, the writer says,
It’s not like people have stopped going to theatres post the pandemic. They are, and in huge numbers. The ticket-window collections of Pushpa, KGF Chapter 2, and RRR are a clear testimony to that. Audiences love movies as much as they always have; they’re just not watching Bollywood anymore.
This opinion is echoed in every article I read as research for this essay. But there is a caveat: none of these articles name any South Indian movies other than Pushpa, KGF Chapter 2, and, of course, RRR. Their case for South India’s cinema quality is riding solely on three to four films. As a South Indian, I can vouch that these fall into the strongly mediocre range in terms of quality.
This makes me wonder: Why are people not watching Bollywood anymore? Is Bollywood really tanking in quality or are we too blinded by the glamour of RRR to recognize what is creeping its way into the Indian viewer’s movie-watching practices?
Let’s take a closer look at this trend. Bollywood movies that are getting theatre releases are bombing at the box office, that’s for sure. Film critic Taran Adarsh wrote an opinion piece in Outlook India called Bollywood is in ICU, And It Needs To Focus On Content For Revival. In it, he attributes this failure to the poor quality of scripts.
Today, people watch a film because of its good script and not because a big star stars in it. The story of a movie, not the lead actor, has become the main draw for the audience. Several big-ticket Bollywood films have failed in recent months simply because they had weak scripts.
If the main draw of the movie is a good story, then, Jayeshbhai Jordaar should have been an incredible hit. This movie is the story of a young man, Jayeshbhai (played by Ranveer Singh), and his pregnant wife, Kinjal (Shalini Pandey), who are on the run to save their unborn daughter from the murderous hands of Jayeshbhai’s patriarchal father, Mithilesh Parekh (Boman Irani).
Jayeshbhai Jordaar has some great comic moments that are sensitively sewn with the story of a societal evil that very much exists even today — female feticide. The script was not weak, the story was original, the costumes were realistic, the acting was good, and the ending was heartwarming.
What then failed Jayeshbhai Jordaar?
Let’s compare this with the South Indian films that people watched in theatres instead. Tamil movie Vikram, starring Kamal Hassan, Vijay Sethupathi, and Fahadh Faasil, is the story of a special agent who infiltrates the gang of a drug lord. To be very honest, I did not understand this movie. Somewhere in the noise of guns, the blasting of cars, and the zooming of motorbikes, all sense and logic in this movie was lost.
Then there was RRR and Ponniyin Selvan — both period dramas which, though entertaining, were nothing new. Pushpa and KGF Chapter 2 were both movies about a common man with big dreams who fights the system to get to the top. On the way, this common man kills a lot of people, says a lot of misogynistic things, smokes a lot of cigarettes.
Don’t get me wrong, these are all very entertaining films. But being a good story isn’t their USP. If these movies were completely erased from all human memory, there are many other movies with the same stories that can be watched instead. In fact, if you watch a lot of South Indian films, you will agree that these stories fall into the average template of a South Indian movie.
What is a South Indian movie giving the audiences then that Hindi movies aren’t? In a BBC article titled Why Bollywood’s big films are flopping at the box office, film critic Sucharita Tyagi is quoted as saying,
If I’m going to a movie theatre now, I want an out-of-body experience, I want the rollercoaster. In the pandemic, a lot of people discovered these non-Hindi, south Indian films, because when you’re sitting at home flipping through streaming platforms, you’ll run out of Hindi films to watch after a point.
What RRR, Ponniyin Selvan, Pushpa, and KGF have in common is not a great, original script. They have larger-than-life sets, catchy songs, and slow-motion sequences. They have a familiar story of a strong hero, a submissive or pseudo-feminist heroine, a grand villain, and a story that confirms the heteronormative, monogamous, misogynistic beliefs that people are used to.
Let us look at the not-so-famous Hindi films of 2022 and late 2021. Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is a Hindi film that released in December 2021. It is the story of Maanvi Brar (Vaani Kapoor), who starts dating a cis, straight man, Manvinder Munjal (Ayushmann Khurrana).
At some point in their relationship, she decides to inform him that she is a transwoman. The movie explores the struggles that Manvinder, a quintessential Indian man, goes through when faced with concepts of gender and gender norms that he wasn’t brought up in.
This movie created buzz in Indian queer and trans circles, but it was mostly lost to oblivion.
In the same vein, Badhaai Do released in February 2022, and it follows a gay man and a lesbian woman who enter a lavender marriage. Maja Ma was the story of an Indian mother and her society’s reaction to her sexuality. Again, these created buzz, but nowhere close to RRR or Ponniyin Selvan.
There are multiple movies, in fact, that have attempted new and different stories. Loop Lapeta and Dobaaraa deal with time travel and the multi-verse. Jug Jugg Jeeyo deals with divorce in different age groups in an Indian family. Janhit Mein Jaari speaks about the importance of abolishing the taboo around condoms. Doctor G asks an important question: can people who don’t have vulvas and uteruses be gynecologists?
Darlings takes away people’s right to take domestic violence lightly, all while being lighthearted. And Monica, O My Darling! plays with preestablished comedy, murder mystery, and gender tropes.
All of these movies have one thing in common. They did not release on the big screen, and if they did, they did not do well. They were sidelined to OTT releases.
We have to ask ourselves why the makers of Darlings and Jalsa chose an OTT release, while Brahmastra and Pathaan got theatrical releases? Could it be because the two latter films are easy to watch? Could it be because they are familiar and do not make us do any work? They do not make us question our beliefs and change our ways?
Could it be because they are comfortable?
Last December, I visited the Bangalore Literature Fest, and I got the opportunity to watch some intelligent and powerful interviews. The first interview I sat for was Alankrita Shrivastava, director of Lipstick Under My Burkha, in conversation with Stutee Ghosh. Alankrita spoke about a trend she has noticed with women-centered and female-gazed stories.
She was concerned that films by and about women are being restricted to online streaming whereas the theatres are reserved for the big films, like RRR, which give a cinematic, visual feel. She believed that women’s films should not be confined to individual viewing and that they deserve community and joined viewing.
She said that sidelining women’s stories to OTT is like saying, and I quote, “Boys should go to school and girls should be homeschooled”
What she means is that there is value in community viewing. Watching with a group of people means that you are influenced by how others in the theatre react. You have conversations. You are not in a bubble, by yourself in front of your laptop, simply agreeing or disagreeing with the movie. You are asking questions, you are listening to experiences, you are learning.
The issue, I believe, is not that Hindi movies are bad in quality or that South Indian films have suddenly improved in their storytelling. As far as I can see, both cinemas are almost exactly the same. There are brainless movies and impactful movies in both.
The problem is that only some movies get spotlit, and others, as Alankrita pointed out, do not. Today, the movies that do not instill fear in the audience are the ones that get more community viewers.
When Vikrant Rona sings suggestively to Rakkamma even though he has a wife (however imaginary she may be) waiting at home, it consoles people that gender roles are not being bent. On the other hand, when Badrunissa stabs Hamza’s hand with her red heel as revenge for killing her child and abusing her, people get scared. They are forced to reframe and ask themselves if they have ever been Hamza in a situation or if they have ever contributed to this type of behavior in men.
And so, Vikrant Rona gets a theatre release because there is more confidence that this is something everyone will watch, nay, cheer, scream, and whistle for. And Darlings gets a release on Netflix. And then people say that Bollywood is tanking.
I suppose, what I am trying to say is that the failure or success of movies on the big screen is a secondary discussion. First, we must discuss why the movies that get to the big screen get there in the first place. We might then realize that the failure of a movie these days is less reflective of its quality and more of where we stand as a society in India today.
Sources
Bengani, Sneha. 2022. “Why post-pandemic Bollywood films are struggling at the box office.” CNBC TV 18, July 30, 2022. https://www.cnbctv18.com/entertainment/why-post-pandemic-bollywood-films-are-struggling-at-the-box-office-14308272.htm
Adarsh, Taran. 2022. “Bollywood is in ICU, and it needs to focus on content for revival.” Outlook India, September 15, 2022. https://www.outlookindia.com/art-entertainment/bollywood-is-in-icu-and-it-needs-to-focus-on-content-for-revival-news-222375
Inamdar, Nikhil. 2022. “Why Bollywood’s big films are flopping at the box office.” BBC, July 18, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-62145780
I do not own any of the images used in this essay. Images have been picked from koimoi.com, Zee 5, Economic Times, and YouTube solely for commentary on and review of movies.
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