Film Studies: Bombay Cinema - An Archive of the City

Posted on Wednesday, 26 September 2007 @ 00:00:00 by tim milfull

Reviewed by Sree Ramachandran

Hindi cinema from Mumbai, India, or more popularly (if inaccurately

and derogatorily ) known as Bollywood, has witnessed a flux of
analyses in the past six years or so. In parallel to its rising exposure,
access and appeal throughout the world, reactionary literature about it
delves into its history, trailing its trends, seeking explanation in
academic lingo for its perceived kitsch and seeming illogicality.

Ranjani Mazumdar’s Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City, might be the first of its
kind that deliberately shies from anything introductory about this new entrant into
exposed world cinema. An independent filmmaker, ex-Marxist and professor of
cinema studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in
New Delhi, India, Mazumdar has authored and co-authored several notable texts on
Indian cinema, the more significant ones being chapters in the seminal Making
Meaning in Indian Cinema in 2000.

While Mazumdar’s previous examinations have focused on various traditions of

character and plots of Indian cinema over the decades, in this book she transcends the
expected treatise of explaining Bollywood as if to a beginner. Bombay Cinema
presumes knowledge of this rising cinematic phenomenon as a global influence, and
limits its focus to the relationship between cinema that’s about and from Mumbai, and
the validity of urban space that the films correspond to. The text is rife with case
studies, illustrating the painstaking research that has gone behind it. While brief plot
summaries are supplied, much of the analysis would be lost on those unfamiliar with
the canon; this is definitely a book for the serious aficionado, not one with a passing
interest.

However, Bombay Cinema also deals in detail with the identity of city-hood, through
the means of exploring urbane internal spaces, globalised fashion, the darker
underbelly, the explosion of rage, and the existential rebel – all elements that embody
and identify with city life anywhere. In that sense, the reader is able to immediately
place the book not in the niche category of Indian cinema as an art form, but in the
wider perspective of cinema as an expression of urban analysis.

The uniqueness of analysing Hindi films in the context of the city, though, is, as
Mazumdar explains, that the image and the narrative of the city in Indian public
consciousness, apart from films, is almost nil. From Gandhi’s independence struggle
to Nehru’s non-aligned socialism through the fifties and sixties, much public
discourse of nationhood and Indian identity has centred on the rural landscape; the
village was seen as the repository for morality, religiosity, national unity and the spirit
of the virtuous. Indeed, much of early Indian cinema portrayed the city as the root
cause of all evil, as in the classic Shree 420.

Hindi films, therefore, especially from the Seventies, which is where Mazumdar starts
the book, happen to be the one and only true archive of the Indian urban experience
over the decades – an unflinching mirror to the excessive and aggressive survival that
forms the daily ritual of every urbanite. In attempting to frame the actuality of the
city’s illustrations in cinema within the specific logic that permeates Indian cinema in
general and films from and about Mumbai in particular, Mazumdar has categorised
her case studies not only in chronological terms, but also within the various aspects of
the modern urban experience.

The first chapter deals with the phenomenon of the Angry Young Man in Hindi
cinema, a highly popular protagonist archetype in the Seventies. Embodied in the
charismatic personage of Amitabh Bachchan, Mazumdar argues on the interactions
between the general despair and disillusionment of the individual in a government
becoming overtly corrupt, and its link to the Hindu spiritual epic the Mahabharatha,
which had till then propagated countless blemish-free, supervirtuous film
protagonists. It is the anti-hero who gets glorified in the protagonist role, mirroring
Karna, the most complex character of the above epic. Torn between moralities and
loyalties, both Karna and the Angry Young Man made less than noble choices, a
direct result of a corrupt environment.

Subsequent chapters deal with the impacts and possibilities that came with the liberal
policy of India in the 1990s, when doors to foreign investment were thrown open, and
for the first time, middle class families possessed disposable income. With the rapid
setting in of conspicuous consumerism, it was only natural, Mazumdar argues, that
Indian movies, particularly the songs, took on the role of covert advertising.
Following the long film tradition of setting fashion trends through the heroine’s song
pieces, fashionable attire, accessories, and other desirable status symbols, they
became increasingly strewn across film songs, as a means of publicising them.
Mazumdar’s case studies here are incredibly well-chosen, with analysis of songs that
have the guest star literally parade like a catwalk model, as part of the song’s
choreography.

Mazumdar’s most detailed chapter remains The Panoramic Interior, where the art
director’s work of the film set is finely surveyed. Given the increasingly lavish
production values of Hindi films in the past ten to fifteen years, it’s significant in its
warrant for analysis. Mazumdar argues that in a city like Mumbai, whose population
equals the entire population of Australia, space is a rarefied commodity. This inner
craving for physical space in the living environment finds fulfilment, however
temporarily, in the world of the characters of a film. Hence, Mazumdar concentrates
on a few blockbusters that were lavishly mounted, with original artworks requiring
separate security adorning palatial walls, all for a single scene. She also hits upon the
usage of this mythical urban space as a means to reinforce the realism of Indian
cultural identity – an identity that much of India fears it is losing to the face of
globalisation. The large palaces of the movies are always adorned with Indian
sculptures, religious rituals in elaborate home shrines are constant occurrences in the
narratives – the traditional is always reflected in the interiors of these seemingly ultra-
rich, ultra-modern homes. It’s a way for the average Indian to indulge in an escapist,
consumerist fantasy, while secure in his belief that no harm has been done to his
century-old traditional Indian values.

The book’s conclusion, after some brief analyses of further case studies (some yet to
be released commercially due to censorship issues ), seems to forecast a darker, more
gothic and nihilistic world view. It might be the author’s idea of the future urban, one
of increasing cynicism and despair, in a globalised urban space that spawns as many
forgotten side effects as memorable success stories.

In attempting to canonise Indian cinema as an archive of the city of Mumbai,

Mazumdar may well have created an archive of it herself. Though incisive in her
insights and observations, her passion for the medium is immediately apparent.
Unlike many professors of Indian cinema, who are entrenched in Western
universities, Mazumdar, living and working in India, contributes to an increasing
respectability to a field that is rarely taken seriously, least of all by its own audience.