Hit, Flop

Newspapers and magazines are full of stories about how Bollywood has lost hundreds of crores this year – mainly because two of the year’s biggest films (Kites and Raavan) have crashed at the box office.One of the reasons given for the poor performance is the inflated price tags of these films. When films are that expensive, it’s difficult to recover the money. But it is equally true that if these films had done even reasonably well at the box office, the situation wouldn’t have been so desperate. But since they just collapsed and died in theatres all over the country, there’s no hope in hell of anyone recovering the investment.

Why did audiences reject these movies? In the past, viewers have liked bad films and rejected good films, so box office performance is not the best indicator of a film’s overall quality. But it is an objective if ruthless yardstick. Audience reaction – that’s something no one can control. Once a film is released, it acquires a life of its own. If it connects with audiences -something every single person in the movies craves for, dreams about – it becomes a hit. Unfortunately, most of the time it doesn’t connect with audiences.

It’s tough to figure out why a film becomes a hit (or why it doesn’t). Usually, it’s only with the benefit of hindsight and intelligent analysis that you can try and come to some conclusions – and even then, you can only hope to identify broad trends and phases in cinema (entire books and PhD theses have been written about why Amitabh Bachchan’s films hit the jackpot so consistently in much of the Seventies and Eighties).

But sometimes, you just know why a particular film won’t work. Maybe you can’t pinpoint the reasons – but you know. Instinctively. Usually it’s because the film has failed that one basic test no film should ever, ever fail – it hasn’t engaged you for those two or three hours that you watched it. You got bored. You moved restlessly in your chair. You furtively looked at your watch. You didn’t care what happened to the characters. In emotional/charged scenes, you wanted to giggle. Once this kind of thing happens, the film is doomed.

I had most of the above mentioned responses when I went to see both Kites and Raavan. I went to seeRaavan with great expectations (actually I see all films with great expectations; every time I walk into a theatre, I’m all set to like the film and enjoy myself).

I like Mani Ratnam’s movies very very much. I think he’s one of the best filmmakers we have. Roja,Bombay and Nayakan are among my all-time favourite films. And Abhishek Bachchan has done some of his best work with Mani Ratnam (Yuva, Guru). I so wanted to like Raavan. But I didn’t like it — at all. Neither, it turns out, did most people who saw the film.

I kept wondering – what happened? What went wrong? How could Mani Ratnam not have known – while making the film – that Beera was so totally off-key? How could he not have known that the narrative wasn’t working?

I don’t have any answers but I guess even the best of directors can trip up sometimes. The good thing is, film audiences in India are very forgiving. We’ll dutifully queue up for tickets next time Mani Ratnam makes a movie, hoping we’ll like it. Only if we’re disappointed again and again and again with a particular filmmaker/actor will we turn our backs on him/her.

Otherwise, there’s always the next Friday to look forward to. And we’re all primed to be once again – hopefully — mesmerized by the story unfolding on the big screen…