Why Bollywood doesn’t make movies like ‘la la land’ or ‘Manchester by the sea’

There is a audition song in ‘la la land’ sung by mia. She talks about her aunt who jumped in the freezing water in Paris and sneezed for a month but she said she would do it again. And then she raises a toast to the dreamers. Its a beautiful song, very well written and very well sung.

While listening to it I thought why people in India don’t make movies like this. With almost a million musicals coming out every year why is that we are stuck in a very clumsy and uninspired style of film-making. Why is that movies only with big actors are recognized and not with the actual filmmakers who ‘dream’. This is where the problem with Bollywood lies. No, not with the good songs and lyrics, we have abundance of that, but with how the industry work. We don’t create good cinema because of the fear of sneezing. Bollywood has stopped taking chances.

We make so few of magical, inspiring cinema and so much of crap that people have started enjoying even the bad ones. Just go and look at the highest grossing films of all time and see for yourself. Now, I am not saying the commercial cinema is bad, but if you don’t give a chance to stories that are a little unconventional, the art will die out with time and that is not a good thing. A movie came out last year ‘A death in the Gunj’ directed by Konkana Sen Sharma, was not supported by any big production houses because nobody wanted to take a chance. It was a brilliant movie, a master storytelling but you will neither hear about it nor see it in the award shows.

Now, another problem is with the casting. Most of the actors and filmmakers working in the industry are sons and daughters of people from industries. No, I am not saying all of them are bad, but majority is crap. We produce way more Varun Dhawans than Shahrukh Khans. If the industry won’t give chance to people who are educated in filmmaking and know the tricks of the trade better than others, you will never have a people like Damien Chazelle or Kenneth Lonergan, who is a Harvard and NYU Graduates and great filmmakers.

So, I just hope that the industry opens up to new comers. A little bit like the Anurag Kashyap’s camp and we make good movies. Movies, which are not just meant to entertain but also to leave the audience in the awe of the stories and how they are portrayed. We need more ‘Queen’ and ‘Titli’ than ‘Sultan’ and ‘Happy new year’. I hope we see more next year.

Cheers!