On the vanishing interval

Something kept returning to me while I was trying to do some reading for another puzzle I was trying to solve, so I thought I may as well write it down here and get it out of my head - the lack of an interval break in Kai Po Che. More specifically, a story Danny told me about being at the press screening and how he and a few others stood up at about the time it felt that there should be an interval break but the film kept going and they had to sit back down again. This tracks closely with my own experience of watching Kai Po Che and spending about half an hour in the middle of the film waiting for a break that never came.

“But this rough magic I here abjure...”

Is it me or is there something missing from recent Bollywood films? Some magic that certain filmmakers have either forgotten how to wield or deliberately put aside.

The secret lies in the interval.

The audience expected one; it was withheld. Why? I suspect it was because either the director or UTV felt that it would be too filmi and artificial. No longer does it matter that audiences need an interval because in today’s hip circles, there is nothing worse than giving the audience what they want. Another casualty of the slow creep of the Western ideal of Art as Meaningful Self Expression Rooted In Personal Experience at the expense of everything else, like enjoyment, like entertainment, like engaging with cinema goers.

And if the people sitting in the cinema aren’t the audience that a filmmaker (Hollywood or Bollywood) is trying to please, who is? The corporate shareholders who demand ever expanding profits? The global soft drink brands and car companies who need stars to help hawk products? The endlessly chattering denizens of the Media Industrial Complex? The Cable TV companies who need product, any product, to fill airtime? His or her old classmates back at whatever college in Los Angeles or New York he or she went to? Daddy?

Or maybe it’s the medium. Films are no longer made to be seen in the theater, on a large screen, but on television or the computer. Watch a “serious” film, in perfect silence, sitting underneath a poster of The Godfather, ready to have every preconceived notion of comfortable middleclass life confirmed, whether it’s relatable relationship drama or the gritty, destitute lives of the poor. “Ah, now that’s real life,” says the serious film viewer, shoving chips into his mouth while watching a prostitute get beaten on screen.

Popular films are also for sitting alone in your room. As background noise. Television on low, computer game going, iPhone next to the keyboard for livetweeting. A hero strutting towards the screen with entrance music playing and an appropriate pause for applause is no longer needed, a comedy track too distracting. “Dude, Katrina Kaif is totally banging Shah Rukh Khan right now. I gotta pause for a second,” says the popular film viewer into his headset. “Her legs aren’t as good as Blake Lively’s.” Popular films should blend in with everything else on television—Gossip Girl, episodes of MTV’s Roadies, Family Guy—and there is no point in putting anything meaningful in because who’s paying attention?

Well, I am.

I’m paying attention to the growing Hollywoodization of Bollywood’s film culture. I don’t mean just the lack of intervals or applause breaks that assume a live audience is watching the film together in an actual theater and not on a mobile phone but this growing divide and separation between mass and class films; single screen and multiplex. “Oh, the 100 crore club is stupid,” say people like Irrfan Khan, Hollywood Actor, but really, what is so stupid about making a film that connects with people?

It’s all in our heads that anything popular needs to be dumb, or, worse yet, that popular audiences only understand anything dumb. Do we really think people weren’t devouring the complex moral dilemmas in the original Don, alongside the wide lapels? Pondering the cruel fate it is to be born a woman in Karz, as well as cheering for Rishi Kapoor’s dance moves?

“It’s a one time watch,” all the reviews say and they have a point. Are any of these films built to stand up to repeated viewings any more, serious or popular? Are there layers to uncover? A bit of comedy you missed the first time? Different shadings to important dialogue now that you know the ending? Or does a strong breeze blow the film right out of your head as you walk out of the theater and into a shopping center.

Maybe we’re the dumb ones, who assume that movies are to be watched once and tossed away, with the a dancefloor remix of the item song the only thing that lingers in cultural memory. “My Name is Sheila...”

Maybe we’re the dumb ones for letting popular culture become dominated by all this pointless crap, for allowing corporate shareholders to drain away meaning and put consumer products in its place. To turn heroines into Bikini Bodies waiting to be judged on their outfit choices on one of a zillion fashion blogs. To turn movie magic into fakery and navel gazing into honesty. (Everybody knows REAL LIFE comes in three acts with a tight narrative and sweeping orchestral score by John Williams. Also, REAL LIFE is always about guys. Who are writers.)

It’s far too late for Hollywood but Bollywood hasn’t fully embraced the lowbrow/highbrow divide just yet. As long as Aamir Khan is around making films like 3 Idiots and Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai forcibly adding Movie Magic into Dhoom 2, there’s still hope.

And if it all turns into theaters full of nothing but Race 5: Coke Vs Pepsi Vs Thums Up and Anurag Kashyap Presents A Boring Film About A Guy Who Doesn’t Know What Love Is Also He’s Poor and Just Wants To Write, Man then I’ll just have to learn Tamil.

(Originally posted March 17, 2013)