Film and foible

I met a friend for lunch today. He is a filmmaker, with ad films, short films and even a music video to his credit. We did not spend too long together, but I enjoyed the time – it was perhaps the first real conversation I have had with someone apart from my father, my friend Nina and my unusually cheerful boss in a time that has been too long. Over pasta and a sandwich, we talked about a lot of things, none in any great detail, sort of a catching up and introduction that has been a long time in the happening. And there will be more, when we have the leisure and the inclination, I know.

But one of the things we did talk about was movies, albeit – like everything else – in very brief. This meeting happened just after I had finished writing an editorial on the latest on Manoj Night Shyamalan, the director who made the unabashedly fabulous Sixth Sense and the not-bad Unbreakable. Since then, the brilliance that everyone had learned to expect from him seemed to have faded. ‘Night’ had become lost in the daylight, with no real sense, sixth or otherwise, of where he was going, cinematically speaking. His films were not bad as productions – The Village, which spooked me after the first ten minutes so that I never watched the rest, and Lady in the Water, which sounded so bad that I never made any attempt to see any of it – but they didn’t quite do the trick. Not in the way that Sixth Sense did, at least.

So why Shyamalan now? The news is out that his Lady in the Water has been nominated for four Razzies. Which couldn’t be worse for a man who made a film that made it to the Oscars a few years ago. Of course, a lot of people who are well known, from Ron Howard to Sharon Stone to Nicholas Cage to Jessica Simpson are on the list as well. Which makes for distinguished company. And, at some level, the Razzies are taken seriously – since they happen the day before the Oscars, those who win know well that they need to get their cinematic act together and get to work to do better, regain their form.

Why don’t we have Razzies in Bollywood? For such duds as the new Umrao Jaan, the recently released Salaam-e-Ishq, the fabulously dreadful Bhaagam Bhag…there are so many that I can’t even remember them. Watching Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham for the millionth time (only for Kajol’s Chandni Chowk part, I swear), hastily clicking past Kabhi Alvida…, looking for anything apart from Jaaneman – life is not easy for someone who has fun watching Hindi movies but refuses to waste time on anything dire, dreary or difficult to understand. A Razzie or four (as poor Shyamalan may just go home with) could possibly change the trend of making terrible movies into one of making decent, even watchable films.

Or maybe not, who knows. We need to ask Karan Johar, Nikhil Advani, Pridarsan and their ilk to find out!