The Southern Dominance: Has Bollywood Worshipped Mediocrity For Too Long?

Mainstream Hindi cinema has stagnated; it’s not even a topic for debate anymore. It needs to reinvent itself with new energy and fresh ideas if it wants to survive competition from filmmakers from the South. This is a very clear message from the astounding pan-India success of originals and sequels of Pushpa, KGF and Baahubali, and standalone films RRR, Kantara and Kalki 2898 AD among others.

Big stars of the industry have realised it and are seeking out directors from down South to score major hits. It was story ideas first, now the filmmakers. Forget top stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, even younger actors like Varun Dhawan are sceptical about the creative potential of the Hindi film industry. “Bollywood. is in dire need of reinvention…Resisting change is challenging but essential for everyone,” he said in an interview, adding people in powerful positions have been following the same approach for years and it needs to change. Allu Aravind, film producer and father of Pushpa protagonist Allu Arjun, recently commented that “Bollywood filmmakers are stuck with a particular kind of stories…They are somewhere locked between Bandra and Juhu.” He meant their vision of filmmaking reflected the specific culture they have grown up in.

We don’t know what exactly Varun meant by people in powerful positions – maybe he was referring to top directors and producers – but the fact remains the Hindi film industry remains in a time warp, refusing to grow out of it. Just think of it. How many sequels of Hindi movies have been worth waiting for? How many original movies are exciting in terms of content and presentation!

Mainstream cinema has to survive within the formulaic. It caters to the mass audience, so the themes have to be universal and follow a catch-all approach that appeals to a wide age and taste band. But who stopped anyone from being creative and imaginative? South movies are formula-driven at the core but they pack much more energy and ingenuity than their Bollywood counterparts. The dubbed versions – much more polished these days – of Telugu, Tamil and Kannada movies have virtually demolished the hegemony of Bollywood in North and East of India.

Southern mass cinema is characterised by the high sense of drama, emotional depth, visual splendour, well-choreographed action and dances, adequate development of characters and, in the case of directors such as Mani Ratnam, Sukumar, SS Rajamouli, S Shankar, AR Murugadoss, Gunasekhar and Puri Jagannath, exceptional story-telling. Also, made primarily for the local audience, it has strong cultural roots. It’s not that the South does not have its share of trashy movies; it churns them out in good numbers, but extra effort and commitment to be audience-pleasing is clearly noticeable in general. The star do much more than just look winsome.

Bollywood’s approach towards mass movies is more ho-hum. Its bane has been the paucity of ideas, leading to repetitiveness of stories, experiments with scale rather than inventiveness, inability to relate to the audience in small towns with content, lack of vibrancy and the inability to bring more energy to films. With the audience having tasted the difference after watching work from the South, they have reason to be less warm to Bollywood.

Is it going to change? It should. Big stars are already putting more faith in directors from the South. Production houses are looking for tie-ups with counterparts in the South. It’s a matter of time Bollywood would be dominated by the latter across India. It’s the price to pay when creativity loses its dynamic power. It’s also the price to pay for complacency. Mass movies need not be dumb movies. At some point Bollywood needs to acknowledge the reality.

(By arrangements with Perspective Bytes)