Newspaper
(Manish Chand)
Indian cinema
Author :Manish Chand
Abstract by:saroj kumar Mishra/300/7 May 2006
Abstract type:Abstract
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actor and filmmaker Shashi Kapoor, who deftly blended the popular with the artistic in his decades-long career in showbiz, is outraged by the "kitsch" and "false sentimentality" that have swamped contemporary Indian cinema.
"Feeling is dead in Indian cinema. Indian cinema needs to be rescued from false values and false feelings," Kapoor, who has acted in 200-odd films, said in an interview.
Although not the kind to wallow in nostalgia and emotional posturing, Kapoor sported a profoundly forlorn look as he spoke about impresarios of Bollywood family extravaganzas "hijacking real feelings and content from Indian cinema". "We didn't glamorise family sagas as it's being done now. They are trying to sugar-coat films. The kind of films Satyajit Ray did were realistic and beautiful films," said the veteran actor.
Clearly, opulent family musicals that often blitz the box office these days are not quite his taste. What interests him are films that strike a delicate balance between popular fantasies and the realism of feelings.
"Nowadays I am not keen to see films as they deal in escapism. The fare they dole out is not realistic," said a wary Kapoor, who bowed out after four decades of acting in the early 1990s. "By realism, I don't mean showing poverty, filth and squalor. Raj Kapoor (Shashi's late elder brother) also showed poverty in films, but it was done differently," he said.This delicate balancing act turned out to be a tough call as Kapoor has turned to producing and directing films. In his new avatar, he made some classy films that penetrated into the vanities and ironies of Indian urban middle class culture, but almost all of them turned out to be crashing box office disasters - an experience that left him sceptical about the future of meaningful cinema.
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