Decoding Bollywood: Stories of 15 Film Directors by Sonia Golani
From the Back Cover
Some like Farah Khan and Zoya Akhtar had sterling antecedents but it took a tough childhood and intermittent assignments on film sets to win the box office with Om Shanti Om and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, while Ashutosh Gowarikar auditioned for folk dances and failed with his debut film, Lagaan created cinematic history and Anurag Basu had to first dance as a background extra and later overcome cancer to witness Barfi win hearts and awards. These and other hitherto unfamiliar stories of directors belonging to the "100 crore club" like Rohit Shetty and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, the adventurous Kabir Khan and the maverick, Mahesh Bhatt take us through the unusual lives of 15 filmmakers of extraordinary films. Sonia Golani achieves the incredible by sitting each director down to candidly discuss the hype around the Oscars, the exclusivity of the "100 crore club", effect of corporatization and much more. Decoding Bollywood is more about demystifying the "world of Bollywood" than a mere decoding of 15 directors who have created benchmarks in their respective genres for generations to follow.
Decoding Bollywood: Stories of 15 Film Directors
I start with quoting a recent article by David Mouriquand in Euronews Culture (https://www.euronews.com/culture/2022/10/11/indias-bollywood-facing-its-biggest-ever-crisis) which speaks about the current condition of Bollywood or the Hindi film industry, "India's Bollywood film industry, long part of the cultural fabric of the movie-mad country of 1.4 billion people, is facing its biggest-ever crisis as streaming services and non-Hindi language rivals steal its sparkle.
The South Asian giant churns out on average around 1,600 films each year, more than any other country, traditionally headlined by glitzy Bollywood, with fans worshipping movie stars like gods and crowds thronging premieres.
But now cinemas have fallen quiet, even in Bollywood's nerve centre of Mumbai, with box-office receipts plunging since Covid curbs were lifted."
I do not agree with everything written in this article but much of the information is correct to a certain extent. The assumptions made for the Telugu film industry and the pandemic situation are not all correct. Regional cinema especially movies made by the movie powerhouses of the south, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam have often made forays into national cinema houses with the latter Malayalam known for its content driven movies and the former two for their glitzy glamorous movies juxtaposed within earthy and complex stories. Exposure to these movies dubbed in Hindi and other regional languages have been on in mainstream Hindi channels for over a decade and that is probably one of the reasons for the influx of South Indian movies and stars into the national framework. Extraordinary stars like Kamal Hassan, Rajnikant and Chiranjeevi have always had their national presence especially Kamal with his different takes on movies.
Kannada movies has been a relative new entrant to the national sphere although the KGF twins and Kantara have made history.This discussion could go on and on so we move to the topic at hand or rather the book.
Under such a somber backdrop I re-read and completed this book by Sonia where she catches up with the Hindi film industry with stalwarts and new age successes who define the industry currently.
This book provides a glimpse into the lives of the fifteen of the most successful directors in the industry, inspirations for people providing brief biographies of the people behind the cameras and the brains behind some of the most successful Hindi films.
The book follows a nice template for each of the stories with a focus on the early years, initial influences, and their careers have panned out. The facts and titbits spread around makes this book an interesting read.
The book covers a lot of points about film making and is essentially a collection of the learnings that these successful directors have about movies and the business of movie making.
Where this book falls short is that for such an intriguing title and collaborating 15 of the best heads in the business we do not find out about any definitive solution, yardstick or template for movie making in the industry. This was one aspect that the author could have targeted for when talking with these mavericks. What we get is a sum of many parts and this also in part tells us about the finicky nature of this business and the industry as a whole and brings me a whole circle back to the initial discussion at the start of this review; with this industry in crisis and movies, stars and directors not living up to expectations where does the industry go from here?
With this intriguing question I leave the readers who would read this review.
As always my request stands. 👇 If you have an answer or reaction to my above question.
Please do not forget to post your comments. I am an equal opportunity person so would love to hear your love or your hate for the review or book in any order. Please write what you did not like or whether the book was an absolute disaster for you and why.
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