28 December,2024 07:25 AM IST | Mumbai | Mayank Shekhar
Bobby Deol returned to play the villain in Kanguva
Cinema, like pop-culture, rolls as much in a continuum as it's cyclical. Which is to say that, for instance, Pushpa 2: The Rule as the biggest blockbuster of 2024 is merely an extension of the totally unexpected, sleeper-hit that Pushpa: The Rise turned out to be, in 2021.
Heralding thus a full blast of onscreen heroism, with a majority of mainstream hits hinged on a man with a gun, at the centre of the poster. But what is this, if not simply the 1980s actioners cycling back in fashion?
You could argue that such hero-villain pictures were always the mainstay of Telugu commercial cinema, in particular. Wherein you saw a lot of Bollywood actors - Sayaji Shinde, Mukesh Rishi, Pradeep Rawat, etc - regularly go over to Hyderabad, to get beaten up by local heroes, before the camera.
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Only budgets and technology have got amped up. Because these movies pander to a pan-India audience. What has that also led to?
Audiences believe, or at least producers do, that the hero is only as strong as the insurmountable villain he vanquishes. Except that since the hero himself appears on the screen without much context - the villain needn't have a backstory either.
It's good enough that this pure evil, wrapped in human skin, growls, snarls, shows up in an atrangi (odd) attire, burdened with no redemptive qualities for you to care, once he's done with.
It's kinda the return then of the Gulshan Grover type khalnayaks, that we thought were long gone. Hence, Abhishek Banerjee in Vedaa, Raj Arjun in Yudhra, Arjun Kapoor in Singham Again, Prithiviraj Sukumaran in Bade Miyan Chote Miyan, Fahadh Faasil in Pushpa 2, Bobby Deol in Kanguvaâ¦
Back in the day, Bollywood awards would have a separate category for Best Villain. Think they did away with it at some point, when the stars themselves began to play more and more anti-hero roles, with multiple shades of grey.
If that award gets reinstituted, as it must, Saswata Chatterjee as the eerie, intriguing Commander Manas might make the nomination for Kalki 2898 AD. Although looking forward more to how Kamal Haasan expands on his villain Supreme Yaskin's part for the film's sequel!
Easily our favourite moment at the cinema in 2024 was Manjummel Boys in Week Four, packed from front to back rows, with audiences hooting out of excitement, hissing from anxiety, biting their nails, all through a weekday, midnight show!
That was a Malayalam movie, hitting box-office gold in Mumbai, the way mainstream Telugu, Tamil or Hindi movies are more likely to. As did The Goat Life or Premalu, nationally registering footfalls worth over Rs 100 crore.
What do we usually love Mallu movies for? The strength of its scripts, and the understated quality of its performances. Also, inevitably, if actor Fahadh Faasil, Fa-Fa to fans, is in the lead role.
He was, in Aavesham, another huge hit. Except, we saw him as a proper badass with a good heart, kicking ass, killing it with his moves, in a different kinda Malayalam movie, suggesting a new mainstream of sorts.
Will this go the same route as other mainstreams? As we write this, there's news of a Malalyalam picture, Haneef Adeni's Marco, that's picked up R50 crore over five days, and is being compared to Animal, for its grotesquery and violence. Hoping that's an aberration.
It all started with Amitabh Bachchan! That is, right after the pandemic, when the fear of people never returning to theatres seemed quite real to some.
As PVR-INOX's head honcho Ajay Bijli put it, a National Cinema Day got rolled out, with tickets at throwaway prices - that's the one time "the needle moved", because people started entering cinemas to watch old Amitabh Bachchan movies, were having their theatrical re-runs, as part of an ongoing festival.
Compare that to the number of old Bollywood movies that have re-released in 2024: Subhash Ghai's Taal, Rakesh Roshan's Karan Arjun, Nikkhil Advani's Kal Ho Naa Ho, Imtiaz Ali's Jab We Met, Rockstarâ¦
Speaking of the latter two, which was the biggest theatrical hit of the year, in terms of pure return on investment? Quite likely, Laila Majnu, produced and written by Imtiaz, that pocketed R10 crore in footfalls, on its re-release.
Which is over three times it made, when it opened first in 2018, and it's been on an OTT platform all along! What was the net investment for the re-run? Nearabout zero.
Will this trend dissipate? Well, can't wait for the re-release of Ram Gopal Varma's Satya in January, 2025.
Where do all of the above leave OTTs and their desi content - most of the original Hindi films on which seemed sub-par?
The others had a theatrical run first, that people didn't turn up for. Because they knew the movies would show at home, in three-four weeks, anyway. So, OTTs ate into theatrical footfalls as well.
Budgets for their own productions got slashed. Sword of self-censorship dangles over their heads. Fear is the party that produced risky, cutting-edge content is over. Which could be an exaggeration, since the same people/audiences are very much there.
First Indian film in 30 years to compete at Cannes; that too taking home the Grand Prix. That was Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine as Light (AWIAL), set around three women.
Kapadia became the first Indian director to be nominated for Golden Globe. Many felt AWIAL was a sure-shot Best International Picture Oscar nominee.
Kiran Rao's Laapataa Ladies got sent as the entry instead, and got knocked out. It's still among the most universally loved Hindi films of the year.
Meanwhile, Sandhya Suri's Santosh, centred on actor Shahana Goswami, is UK's entry to the Oscars; still in the race.
It's not like the Oscars are all that matter, globally. So do top festivals like Sundance, Berlinale - both of which hailed Shuchi Talati's Girls Will Be Girls with awards.
And guess what, 2024 was the year that an Indian actor, for the first time, won an award at Cannes - that was Anasuya Sengupta, for The Shameless.
That's a lot of film history getting made with desi, feminine voice and gaze, simultaneously finding global resonance. Is this a trend? Definitely the present; as likely, the future.
