Bollywood Cinema Observed
The UK Observer's glossy magazine is all about India this week, with a lavishly illustrated profile of Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan (NEVER SAY GOODBYE) and an essay on the international cinema by Amit Chaudhuri, on why he loves and loathes Hindi films.
One element that's big--really big--in Hindi film is fate. No matter how light and pop-ish the music may sound, the characters are swept along by the relentless pull of destiny. "Unlike Hollywood, Hindi film is not an innocent genre - it knows that the notion that we control our destiny is a myth. This isn't just the wisdom of the ancients; it's a realism quite different from anything in Hollywood. This doesn't mean Hindi cinema is fatalistic - its exuberance is indispensable to its conviction that life is an unrecognisable rather than categorisable thing.""Time reveals this to us gradually as individuals, and the way Bollywood reveals it to its audience is through a series of devices: for example coincidences, doubles, brothers separated at birth. These devices make the Hindi film embarrassing but also, at its best, very moving; sometimes they make it embarrassing and moving at once."