In K3G and most of Bollywood, characters are expository and one-dimensional. Watching Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, for instance, there is the acute awareness that this is Shahrukh playing Rahul or Kareena playing Poo - we are never really convinced that Rahul and Poo are real people who actually talk like this, because it is difficult to distill the character on-screen from the superstar celebrity playing at them, and because real people do not dramatise and over-explain. The same applies to its characters, who do not behave naturally, they are superficial at best, if not completely un-human and unreal. Bollywood is founded upon exaggeration and absurdity, on rules that are stripped of their fidelity to the real world. Dead people can come back to life, pills inserted inside paans can impregnate people. A world where natural laws can be defied in the service of a masala script, where the wildest twists can be smoothed out to result in a happy ending. Growing up on Bollywood, I have known it as the site of impossible truth-bending. It is too empathic, too realist, and realism is not a quality one associates with Bollywood. It does not effectively serve its plot-point, the father’s second marriage, which could have been relayed through quicker dialogue. We trust that it will make sense for the moment, we are present with him, moved by the distance he feels. We do not completely understand what is going on - Is his mother dead? But didn’t we see her two scenes ago? - but we trust him. We, the audience, slip into his feet, listening to the music with him, zoning out his surroundings. The rap song he is listening to grows louder, drowning out the wedding music. As the people in the gully make room for the couple to pass, Murad stands fixed on his spot, and plugs in his earphones. Murad (Ranveer Singh), the underdog poet/rapper of the movie, who lives in the slums of Dharavi, is standing by the entrance of his house, watching a man (his father?) walk in with a bride. One of the first scenes in Gully Boy is a confusing, but exciting one.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2023
Categories |